Listen in as we discuss the Q2 market outlook for home inspectors in 2024. The landscape is changing: a thinning in the ranks of home inspectors and real estate agents has leveled the playing field, offering insights into a market that's slowly rebounding. We'll dissect the complexities of a subtle yet significant transformation—where buyers are opting for modest abodes and the ramifications this has on the spring selling season.
As we peel back the layers of the real estate onion, we uncover a world where homes linger on the market just a bit longer, prompting a resurgence in thorough inspections. No stone is left unturned in our analysis of the National Association of Realtors settlement, potential VA loan complications, and the unusual market patterns emerging in regions such as California. Moreover, we forecast a 'feel-good quarter' ahead and ponder the exciting adaptations needed by home inspectors as they pivot towards direct-to-consumer relationships. Join us for an engaging exploration that promises to arm you with the knowledge to thrive in this evolving environment.
Check out our home inspection app at www.inspectortoolbelt.com
Need a home inspection website? See samples of our website at www.inspectortoolbelt.com/home-inspection-websites
*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.
Listen in as we discuss the Q2 market outlook for home inspectors in 2024. The landscape is changing: a thinning in the ranks of home inspectors and real estate agents has leveled the playing field, offering insights into a market that's slowly rebounding. We'll dissect the complexities of a subtle yet significant transformation—where buyers are opting for modest abodes and the ramifications this has on the spring selling season.
As we peel back the layers of the real estate onion, we uncover a world where homes linger on the market just a bit longer, prompting a resurgence in thorough inspections. No stone is left unturned in our analysis of the National Association of Realtors settlement, potential VA loan complications, and the unusual market patterns emerging in regions such as California. Moreover, we forecast a 'feel-good quarter' ahead and ponder the exciting adaptations needed by home inspectors as they pivot towards direct-to-consumer relationships. Join us for an engaging exploration that promises to arm you with the knowledge to thrive in this evolving environment.
Check out our home inspection app at www.inspectortoolbelt.com
Need a home inspection website? See samples of our website at www.inspectortoolbelt.com/home-inspection-websites
*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.
Ian R
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk, everybody. And it is our much anticipated quarterly report. Or quarterly outlook rather, I forget what this is called now, Beon.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah, we’re looking ahead, not looking, well, some looking back I guess, but we’re trying to look ahead.
Ian R
Yeah, we’re a little late with our q2 Market Outlook, mostly because we had a couple of other podcast episodes that we already had in the works. And also, there was a few things that I wanted to see how they would play out over the past few weeks before we did the report, because I think that they actually mattered to our outlook. So a little late, but this is our q2 Market Outlook. And looking forward to it.
Beon DeNood
Seems like these are coming by really fast. At the moment. Like, I can’t believe how fast these quarters are going by.
Ian R
Well. And that was the other thing is to be perfectly frank. I’m like, didn’t we just do a quarterly report?
Beon DeNood
Right.
Ian R
Yeah, back in January. But that’s good, though. Because you know, the q2 market outlook is always going to be one of the better ones, because we’re heading into the spring market. Although last year’s q2 market outlook was a little dismal. But this year, looking a lot better. Looking light years better. So let’s let’s dig in right into the information here. Should we start with the good news or bad news first, Beon?
Beon DeNood
I always choose bad news so I can feel good at the end.
Ian R
Okay, well, people might turn us off if they get too far into the bad news.
Beon DeNood
Fast forward to the second half of the podcast.
Ian R
Well, why don’t we, why don’t we mix it up a little bit, we’ll do a little good news. A little bad news. First, bad news is that the market isn’t changing in leaps and bounds. So even if you Google, you know, market, real estate market projections and predictions and stuff like that. All of them say the same thing. You look at I mean, there was many different websites that we looked at, NAR released some stuff, which is funny, Newsweek, Forbes, and all these industry experts, a lot of Wall Street, they all say the same thing. This isn’t the year that the market quote unquote, recovers. Because that’s what do you see as one of the major search terms right now, “Is 2024, the market recovery?” And the answer is no. But a little bit. And the reason people are looking that up, is because things are getting better. And there’s the good news, things are actually getting a lot better for a smaller pool of people. As we mentioned before, a lot of home inspectors went out of business last year and the year before, a lot of real estate agents have gone out of business. Some estimates are around 30 to 40% of real estate agents. And then even more they’re predicting and even Nick Gromicko said on our one of our previous episodes, is getting rid of a lot of agents that were kind of low hanging fruit that dropped to the ground anyways. And that’s actually making a lot of room. So a smaller pool of people, smaller pool of houses and inspections. But it kind of equalizes a little bit better. So things are looking good on a smaller scale. My favorite word anecdotally, I’m just seeing numbers go really great for a lot of guys, guys that last year said, I’m going out of business, or I’m getting a job. And I’m like, dude, hang in there, it’ll get better, are this year coming around saying, okay, I’m back on track, back to you know, 2022 numbers and things are looking good. And a lot of them are saying too, you know, three guys that were my main competition, only one of them’s left, you know, or this guy, two towns over doesn’t work anymore. And he went back and he’s a trucker again, or went back into construction. So that’s the initial bad and good part of our market outlook. I think, I think this next quarter is going to make everybody feel warm and fuzzy, because it’s going to be the best quarter that we’ve seen in a long time. In at least the last year or two. So there’s my initial thoughts. What are your thoughts, Beon?
Beon DeNood
Yeah, I agree with that outlook. Fundamentally, not a lot has changed. We still, like the pressures on the market are still there. We still got high interest rates, and they started edging a little bit higher. We had that red hot jobs report, employment report. And that was interesting, because it’s always interesting to see how like a strong economy. So okay, if your jobs report is hot, the Fed is interested in trying to keep the inflation cooled. So we were hoping to see lower interest rates. But as long as the economy stays strong, you probably not going to see those interest rates go down very soon, very quickly. But another interesting dynamic that some folks have commented on is the fact that because employment is so good, people are employed, they’re feeling a bit more secure financially, and they may be more inclined to want to you know make that house purchase. The other interesting thing, and this is, again, just anecdotally, not any sort of like data that I’ve gathered, but recently I’ve had a conversation with one of my neighbors down the road, and they are renting their property and have been for the last few years, their hope was to be able to buy the house that they were living in. But with the increasing prices over the last few years, that’s no longer affordable, but they’re now looking at buying a house, but they’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s not going to be this kind of house, they’re gonna have to look for something smaller, something more affordable. But they’re coming to terms with the fact that that’s just how it is for right now. So I don’t know if that’s an indication of a broader sentiment. But that’s a good thing for us too because all we care about is is real estate transactions going up. And it looks like we should see a surge into the spring like we always do. Although interesting, the last thing I’ll say and then just maybe get your feedback is, it seems year on year, the numbers for this year are still a little below last year. But I wonder maybe because the markets, individual markets, there’s less service providers, there are less home inspectors available. So if the numbers are going up, even if it’s not quite at what it was last year for you locally, if you’re still in the game, you’re probably going to see more business. So anyways, that was just what you made me think of as I was listening to your comments there.
Ian R
Yeah, and you said that, the last part of what you were saying there, exactly what I was trying to say, if there’s $100 this year, and it was $102 last year, even though we’re slightly under, if you have 50 people to that $100 instead of 70 people to the $100, everybody’s still getting a little bit more. So it’s just basic math, there’s less home inspectors in the market, and less real estate agents in the market. But there’s also some good things. You know, it’s funny, you told me about your neighbor renting the house, industry experts are, and I said this actually, I want to say in q3 2022 Market Outlook, that what’ll end up happening is people will finally resigned themselves to the new norm of interest rates. And I’ve always said interest rates don’t matter as much as we all think they do, it’s just the easiest metric to look at. But interest rates are in April anyways of this year, 7.08%, according to bank rate. So that’s a, I mean, that’s a big chunk. But what people are doing is they’re like, well, okay, so interest rates aren’t going down. They, although they keep saying they will, and then they just go down, they go back up again. So what they’re doing is they’re buying and then refinancing later on, which really isn’t a bad idea. It’s, it’s like, okay, well, so I can get the house that I want now, stop paying $3,500 a month in rent, and refinance in maybe five years. And in fact, I was just looking at a five year projection. And they’re saying we could get back down into the 5% range, which is where they want to be in within that time period. So it’s actually not that bad. People still have to move because they work, they have to move because of family, and people that are waiting to move, they’re like, oh, let me wait this out, are realizing now, year and a half, two years later, okay, this isn’t, this isn’t changing. So right, let’s do it. Well yeah. It’s not only a general feeling, but there’s real numbers from inspection companies in local areas to say, here were our numbers last year, here are numbers this year, reporting states are showing improved numbers. One of those things, one of the metrics that we look at for home inspections is how long a house sits on the market. So recently, it went up from 34 days on the market to 38 days on the market. So first of all, that doesn’t seem great. Like you may be sitting there thinking, oh, man, that doesn’t seem like very long. It sits on there for a month and four days. It’s like that’s not much either. But when you consider that the average house, when a market was at its hottest, sat on the market for a week and only sat on the market for a week so that they could collect all of, the all of the offers that they were getting in. That’s a huge jump. So four days is sometimes how long the house would sit on the market, and we’ve increased that much. So the longer a house sits on the market, the less likely a skipped inspection situation is going to happen. So more houses on the market are getting an inspection, a house that sits on the market for five days, almost guaranteed to skip an inspection, house that sits on the market for 34 days, very likely that house is getting a home inspection. So that’s also contributing to an increase for home inspectors is skipped inspections are on a downward trend. Also, agents have felt the burn, I say agents, agencies would be a better situation. So let’s say you’re Keller Williams, and you’re dealing with six lawsuits right now, in the state that you operate in of people suing you because there was no home inspection, and your agent made you waive it, or quote, unquote, the client felt like you made them waive it to get, to get the house, you’re going to rethink your policy and say, listen, guys, make sure you get inspections. So skipped inspections is on a downward trend. So that’s also helping, same number of sales approximately. Not not that much difference, I should say. But more inspections actually happening. So that’s that’s a good thing.
Beon DeNood
Right. Because I mean, when you look at the actual dollar amount, so you were saying like over five years, that you know, 2, 3% higher interest rate that you’re paying over those five years, what does that really represent in $1, I haven’t done the calculations, but I guess people are looking at that amount and saying, well, it’s not really that, I’m willing to take that hit to make bigger moves and bigger decisions in my life. So yeah, it is interesting to see how that is driving things. But among home inspectors, their perception, the feeling is things are coming back, this is looking good. This is feeling a lot better. And that makes me happy.
Ian R
Yeah. I wonder if this whole like NAR’s settlement thing will ultimately result in an uptick in inspections. I don’t know, I guess we’ll have to see. Because especially guys who are gone with like, no buyer’s agent, they’ll probably, their one thing they’re going to be relying heavily on is the home inspector. But I don’t know, that’s just in my own mind. I’m not sure if that’s actually what we’re going to see have happening. Well, we’ve talked about that on that previous podcast that we did on that just a few weeks ago. I don’t think it’s going to make a huge dent. But I do think it contributes to more inspections. I really do. Also, I mean, we haven’t really seen the fallout of it. July is when sort of thing is going to happen. And then on top of that, something that happened in between our last podcast on this one is the lawsuit was settled. But is it called an injunction, Beon, I forget what it is, not an injunction, something where the Department of Justice, the DOJ, inserted themselves and says this settlement does not cancel our case against you. We’re investigating you still.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, in fact, I think there was a previous injunction that was in place where they couldn’t continue their investigation. Yeah. But they got that cleared. And I think we’ll have to call Nick, he knows all about injunctions. He’ll know if we’re using the right, the right terminology.
Ian R
I think it was a reverse injunction, like it removed the injunction. You said injunction so much. That doesn’t sound like a word anymore.
Beon DeNood
Injunction, injunction, injunction. But yeah, so I think that whatever blocker it was, it was cleared, so they’re now free to investigate, which which will be interesting too, so we’ll see how that pans out. Another interesting nugget. And I don’t mean to like divert our podcasts, but it is kind of current stuff that’s happening. I was seeing that there was some commentary made about like VA loans, for example, they are now requiring a buyer’s agent contract to be signed, they will not issue loans without you having buyer representation. And that was interesting.
Ian R
So there’s actually, we are diverting a little bit, but in my research, I actually noticed that, and I didn’t really think about that. So we do a lot of VA loan inspections. In my area, I would say at any given time, maybe a third of our inspections have to do with a VA loan. And they always have these requirements, and you have to meet these things. One of the, one of the requirements is that the seller can’t pay the buyer’s agent. Interestingly, there’s some other stuff and I’m probably getting it wrong, because it gets complicated. Like in certain VA loans, you can’t have the buyer pay for the, oh no, that was it, the buyer can’t pay for certain things, like the buyer can’t pay for the wood destroying insect. So we always have to do a workaround, because New York State law says we can’t accept any payment from the seller if they’re not our client. So we always had to have like, this whole thing, and the seller would reimburse the buyer. But the new NAR settlement makes a VA loan technically impossible. So they’re actually trying to work out a workaround for that right now. And they don’t have long to do it. But I forget the exact reasons why. But yeah, that’s that’s a side point. I didn’t dig too far into that. But no, that’s interesting. They’re gonna have to change the policies, or the how they go about this whole change July 1st, because there’s a lot of VA loans out there.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah, we’ll keep an eye on it. And if your particular area is quite affected by you know, a lot of your business, business comes from clients who are getting VA loans. You know, we’ll keep an eye on it for you and report back but that was, that was something interesting I just noticed as well.
Ian R
Yeah, but something else I noticed there too. Is in California home prices are starting to go down in localized areas, in weird ways. So in San Diego, the one article I was looking at, they ended up selling a condo that they bought just a couple years ago for 1.2 million, and they sold it for just under 700,000. Almost exactly half. And that is unheard of for California. In fact, yeah, in fact, Newsweek, an article that reported on part of this said that San Diego, 20% of homes are taking a loss on their sale. Now, that’s unheard of, again, for California. They’re always kind of the odd man out. Because you know, it’s funny, if you go to, if you go to Forbes housing market website, they have this cool little map. And you can hover over each one of the states. And it’ll tell you the value of the average home today, value of one year ago, and the value of a home, average value of a home five years ago. So California is like nutty, it’s like five years ago, 549. One year ago, 743,000. Value today 785,000. I’m like, oh, those are good numbers. But we actually compare them to other states. It’s not, like you get New York, average value of a home five years ago, 287,000, value one year ago, 398, value today 428, your state and Florida, it goes from 248 to 396 to 409. So California is actually one of the first times lagging behind a little bit numerically, percentage wise, over other states, but in localized areas, taking a big kick to the face. But that’s actually good for home inspectors. So that house that sells for half price, and sat on the market for nearly a year, means inventory goes up. That’s what we wait for, the longer a house sits on the market, the more inventory there is, the more inventory there is, the more times a buyer will. So let’s say you have 10 buyers in a week. And one of them rehires you to do another house after a failed inspection. That doesn’t happen as much anymore. So when houses sit on the market, more, buyers like okay, you know, this one didn’t work out, we’ll check out the next one. Now, maybe two or three buyers are hiring you again, after, after I say quote, unquote, failed inspection, you know what I mean? Like something big happened, and they walk away. So that’s good for the market, it creates more inspections, we can’t just go by the housing numbers, we’re going by number of inspections. So all of this is looking very good for us in that that line of things.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, man, it’s pretty nuts. I, you know, sorry, I stopped listening because you gave me a map to play with here.
Ian R
It’s a cool map.
Beon DeNood
Looking at all the numbers. But I mean, so one thing you have to think of, I just, you know, as you hover over these numbers, it’s just the sheer numbers themselves. I mean, this is nuts, right. Like you want to buy an average home at any one of these states. And these are the numbers you’re playing. Florida 409,000. You said New York was, what..
Ian R
428.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, Massachusetts $616,000.
Ian R
Average home.
Beon DeNood
Average home. I mean, that is that is insane. But and you can see, I mean, why folks are in the situation that they’re in, you know, it’s just crazy.
Ian R
Well, places like Massachusetts, the numbers are artificially driven up because they are a smaller state with a couple of large cities and dense populations. And New York City tends to drive up New York prices in general, you go to like West Virginia and stuff like that the numbers are going to be you know, 114, 149, and then 155. So there are affordable places to live in. But interestingly, the difference in average income between a place like West Virginia and New York is not, there’s not a disparaging difference, it’s nominal at best, so it’s just pushing people out of areas like California, there’s what they’re calling a mass exodus. I’m not calling it a mass exodus, but you know, the places like Arizona and California people are leaving to come back east, which hasn’t happened in years. People are coming back from Florida to go to New York. But effectively it shows that if you bought your house five years ago, the value of your house has almost doubled, and almost everywhere. And it’s nuts. I know my house, I bought my house that I’m in now in 2015. Dude, it’s more than doubled. And I can’t believe the numbers. Even, even if it, even if it dropped dramatically, I’d still be making out way better than I ever imagined. It’s nuts.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, so if you sold now and move to a Arkansas, or Louisiana, you’d make out really well.
Ian R
Yeah, exactly. Except I don’t like the heat. I’m a cold weather guy.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, for sure. But it Yeah, it is. It is interesting to see that. And I think all our listeners, depending on which state you’re in, you know all the details of the stories in these numbers, because you’ve, you’ve lived through through them for the last five years and seen how it’s affected things. But yeah, that’s interesting. So I don’t know. Should we go this far, I wanted to ask you about 2025. Have you gotten any like inklings about that? Do you want to go that far yet? Or what are you thinking?
Ian R
I would like to stick to q2. But just as a side point on 2025. I said this in our last q1 podcast in January. 2024 is not going to be, you know, banner year with fireworks and amazingness. But we’re out of the nosedive, and we’re pulling up, and that I am super thrilled with. The April, yeah, April, May and June, I think are going to make us feel really good. There are more inspections out there. Even though we may hear agents say, oh, that everything’s down, everything’s this. There’s actually more inspections out there. We’re gonna get more direct to consumer. I’ve had guys, oh, I wanted to talk about this guy. Don’t let me forget about this guy that called me. And he didn’t even know about our podcast, shame on him, first of all, but…
Beon DeNood
Where’s he been, hiding under a, I don’t know, rock somewhere?
Ian R
I don’t know. He actually had never heard of podcast. Is that like a radio? Q2, I really think this is going to be our feel good quarter. We’re seeing things on the market longer, we’re going to be doing real inspections again, I’ve never, I’ve not seen in the past two years less walk, walk and talk inspections happening, I’m feeling really great. We’re out of the nosedive. We’re pulling up. 2025 into 2027 is really when we’re gonna start to see numbers big again. And actually towards the later portion of 2027 and to 2029, I think we’re gonna see another boom, like we did back in 2020, which is not just because of the 10 year cycle, but just how the market’s going. It’s, it’s just going to be right about on it, I like the upward part of the boom, I hate the boom itself and the time after it. So 2025 to 2028 is really going to be the sweet spot. I really think that’s going to be awesome.
Beon DeNood
So then based on, if you’re a home inspector right now, based on your current numbers, we could say that the drama is kind of subsiding. And you’re gonna look more to kind of an annual cycle of the market, as opposed to the wild rides we’ve been having last few years.
Ian R
Yeah, 2020 through 2023 were the most dramatic, if you looked at it on a chart, it was off the chart, just right off the paper, never seen anything like it. I think that is done. And I think it’s going to, the market’s going to normalize over over the next five to six years. And it’s going to be a good time for home inspectors. This year, we’re still going to, you know, it’s not like we’re going to be like, oh man, I’m gonna go hire five more guys this year. And this is going to be our best year ever. There are some guys actually having their best year right now. But, man, if you had started last year, I said this too. I’m like, if you have started last year, you’re doing good this year, because you got all the junk out of the way, half your competition’s gone. And now this is the year where things really pick up. So it’s good, but it is a changing market too. And so going back to that guy that doesn’t listen to podcasts. He said, Ian, I don’t know, he was talking to me about a website and marketing. He goes, you know, I’ve had the same agents referring me for the past 10 years. And then all of a sudden, I don’t know what happened. It was like, they all went out of business. And then I don’t have any agents. And then I had to figure out how to, how to market to consumers and get new agents. And I’m like, oh, were some people nervous about the NAR lawsuit? He goes, yeah, at least a couple of my best agents are like, oh, this is a good time to retire. I’m like, huh, I wonder where you could have heard that. And we were laughing about it. He’s such a cool guy. But he’s like, it is a changing market. And he’s like, I’m seeing it boots on the ground that it’s not the same game show, there’s a different wheel to spin, and there’s a different host. And we need to, we need to change our methods a little bit. You know, it’ll swing back around. I think it’ll come back around to agents again. But I think there’s enough of a percentage of the market where you have to grab direct to consumer because we’re going to lose more agents. So if 30 to 40% percent of agents are gone, let’s say that trickles down to us. And we have 100 referring agents. And we just lost 30 or 40 of them, oh, no, well, we can survive. But now July, July comes around, what happens if we lose five or 10% more, or 30 to 40% more? That would be a very dramatic number. But there’s already people that are like, burned coming out of 2023 as agents. And this might just be the last kick to the shin that says, alright, I’m retiring. I know lots of people, lots of agents, not just saying people, lots of agents, and brokers that are like, you know, I’m just going to retire. You know, it was fun, I’m done. But those were the agents that were my favorite, you know, they always, always sent us 10 to 20 inspections a year, great to work with, never had problems. And those are the ones who are gonna go out of business because they’re retired. And then the low hanging ones that are just like, you know, hey, I bought these new shoes, these new snakeskin shoes and with metal tips on them. And my Ferrari outside because I did one deal last year. Those are, those guys are going to be gone too.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah. It’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out and how it affects things. And it will take a while to figure out what the new market looks like. I’m excited to see what new opportunities we can identify and help our listeners with as well. Because they are going to be new opportunities. It’s just figuring out which ones pan out. We kind of touched on before, but seeing which ones pan out and how you can take advantage of them. I think it’s actually kind of an exciting time for home inspectors if you, if you play it well.
Ian R
So, there are guys out there right now, call me and ask me my opinion on things. And they’re just, there’s one who’s starting a, I think he had a name for his company, like “The Closers” or something. And that’s basically, he’s not doing a showing service or anything, but he’s taking a spin on that. Of like, okay, so it’s really hard for these agents to get to closing now, how can I facilitate that, and he’s starting a company of just, I’m not going to get into details of it, as some of it is proprietary. But the concept is not, it’s actually been done before. But there’s more of that coming out. Guys are talking more about even doing showing service, pre listing inspections, they’re coming back around too, I love pre listing inspections. But either way, there’s, there’s going to be a lot of, there’s already opportunity. And there’s a lot of new opportunity to come along, to come down the pike.
Beon DeNood
Cool. Well, this all feels oddly optimistic. After all that negativity we’ve had for such a long time.
Ian R
Which one, we skipped one of our our quarterly podcasts. I think it was q3 last year, because we’re like..
Beon DeNood
Oh, yeah..
Ian R
We can’t stomach this.
Beon DeNood
What’s the use, we’re just gonna depress everybody and tell them what they know already.
Ian R
I feel good about this. I don’t know if the listeners can hear me smile. But it, it’s good. And interestingly, I kind of talk sometimes, and I have my own opinions. And sometimes in my own head, I wonder, am I just kind of spitting, you know, spaghetti sauce and calling it ketchup? Or is that the expression the other way around?
Beon DeNood
I’ve never heard that expression. But we’ll go with that.
Ian R
We have a developer that works with us. And he says, what, what is it that just makes about as much sense as chewing on your socks?
Beon DeNood
Now it’s like, I feel like I may be smoking my sock.
Ian R
Smoking my sock. In other words, it just doesn’t make sense. I really got to use that expression. But interestingly enough, I was wondering if I’m like, am I on track? And there’s this big wig guy that they interviewed in one of the Forbes articles that I was reading. And he said 2024 is going to be a quote unquote, better market, not great. 2025 onward is going to work its way to greatness. And then we’ll see another even market and then a buyers market and then the big swing like we typically do. So that’s all good news. And I’m glad he agrees with me. He must listen to the podcast, this multibillion dollar…
Beon DeNood
Must be, you know, you should sue him, you know.
Ian R
I should.
Beon DeNood
Come on. Not an original idea.
Ian R
I’ll call my lawyer from down the road. He’ll have to come in from the field. He’s got horses. You take down this big city guy for copying my thought.
Beon DeNood
I could picture him now as he, as he stops, looks at you and like spits on the ground.
Ian R
Welp…..side Ian story, I had a, I had a guy on one of my properties. He was kind of making trouble and my neighbor, my neighbor goes over and he’s like, I’m gonna check it out for you and shows up on one of my trail cams. He’s got an automatic rifle in his hand, semi automatic, and he has a license for it and everything. He’s got this big beard. He’s an ex professional power lifter. So he’s 70 years old, but his arms are like my thighs. And he’s walking around, I see him on the game camera. I’m like, please do not find this guy that was on my property, because he’s going to be dragging them out like a deer in a second. And he didn’t find him. But he went and, he’s like, I went and had a good old country talking with that fellow, he ain’t coming back. I’m like, if I ever need an attorney, I’m just going to call you.
Beon DeNood
So up where you where you live, it is a common sighting to see guys walking with rifles, just in case you’re a listener from the big city and you’re wondering what’s going on.
Ian R
No, that’s normal. I have people, people come up to my property with a rifle on, hey fellow, I’m your neighbor over there. I’m like, hey, what’s going on? Nice rifle. That’s actually pretty normal.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, it is normal for most of the country, I guess. But, you know, it may be, like I grew up in suburbs, you know, still not normal for me.
Ian R
Well, I grew up in the suburbs too, it’s just different. One thing I do want to say that could spin things one way or the other is this is an election year. So that’s the only caveat as I don’t think it’s going to have a huge effect on the housing market. Because people are already at a pressure point where I don’t think the election is going to change their home buying decisions. But it is going to affect different policies. And we’re not political here one way or the other. It’s going to affect, but it’s going to affect different policies, interest rates, and some other things that are going to affect people’s buying decisions as to where they buy and how much they spend. So there are some factors that will happen with that over the course of the year. And that happens in November, obviously. And so we’ll see the effects of that next spring, I think. So don’t worry about that right now. In my opinion, right now, enjoy the ride. This is going to be a great q2, it already is. Even if it’s not great. It’s just better than it was last year, be happy about that. And we’ll talk about the q3 Market Outlook when that comes up.
Beon DeNood
Yeah, no, it’s great. And if you’ve, if you’ve made it through all of the rough stuff, and you’re still doing business as a home inspector, it’s like Monopoly, you’ve just passed begin, and you can collect your $200 dollars, you got another round. So yeah, well done. And we’ll, we’ll keep trying, I know Ian’s gonna keep trying to get everybody the information they need to make their business not just, you know, not just get by, but actually thrive as a home inspector, especially when we got good times ahead. So that makes me excited.
Ian R
Yeah, I’m excited about a lot of stuff. The commercial real estate market for home inspectors, going into that market has been, has been fantastic. There’s lots of opportunity with ancillary inspections that weren’t as common before, and now they’re becoming more common in certain areas. There’s legislation that will benefit us like everybody’s talking about that one in Massachusetts, requiring that the home inspection be added as an option on agreements can’t be scratched out, not requiring the inspection, that again, I still feel is not good, but requiring it to be there as an option for the buyer is good. I think stuff like that is, a lot of it’s working in our favor right now. So very happy about that. And I’m glad you, glad you agree with me, Beon.
Beon DeNood
Awesome. Yeah. Thanks a lot, man. Thanks a lot for having me on as always.
Ian R
Thank you and everybody listening to the next episode, and we’ll see you soon.
Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.
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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.