Ep002: What to Expect During Your First Meeting with a Buyer's Agent

In this episode of the All Things Real Estate Podcast, hosts Chris McAllister and Laci LeBlanc walk homebuyers through their first meeting with a real estate agent. Whether you’re buying your first home or your tenth, this conversation offers invaluable insights into how to establish a successful partnership with your agent.

From discussing your goals and timeline to understanding contingencies, inspections, and financing, Chris and Laci ensure you’re prepared for every step of the journey. They also share tips for finding an agent who truly aligns with your unique interests and priorities.

Key Takeaways:

1. The Importance of the First Meeting:
   • Think of your first meeting with a real estate agent as an interview.
   • This sets the foundation for a long-term partnership based on trust, communication, and shared goals.
2. What to Expect During the Meeting:
   • Defining Your Goals: Your agent will ask key questions about your needs, concerns, and timeline to tailor their approach.
   • Discussing Buyer Representation Agreements: This formalizes your relationship with the agent, outlines their services, and clarifies compensation structures.
   • Customizing Your Search: Agents use tools like MLS to create personalized searches, helping you focus on homes that match your criteria.
3. The Role of Financing:
   • Getting pre-qualified for a mortgage is essential before touring homes.
   • Pre-approval strengthens your offer and ensures you’re looking at homes within your budget.
4. Making an Offer:
   • Your agent will guide you through understanding market value and crafting competitive offers, especially in a fast-moving market.
   • Offers should balance getting the home you want with meeting the seller’s needs.
5. Contingencies and Inspections:
   • Learn about financing, sale-of-home, and inspection contingencies and how they protect your interests.
   • Inspections are critical for identifying potential issues and negotiating necessary repairs or adjustments with the seller.
6. Closing the Deal:
   • From appraisals to final walkthroughs, your agent will guide you through the closing process, ensuring all steps are handled smoothly.

Actionable Steps for Buyers:

1. Prepare for Your First Meeting: Reflect on your goals, needs, and financial situation to articulate your priorities.
2. Get Pre-Qualified: Speak with a lender to understand your buying power.
3. Ask Questions: Ensure you understand buyer representation agreements and how your agent will support you throughout the process.
4. Use Tools Effectively: Collaborate with your agent to set up custom searches and streamline your home-buying journey.
5. Stay Informed: Learn about contingencies, inspections, and the importance of making competitive offers in today’s market.

Resources Mentioned:

• Buy with ROOST Brochure – A step-by-step guide to working with Roost Real Estate professionals.

P.S. Want more practical tips for buying and selling real estate? Our ever-growing library of books, blog posts, podcast episodes, masterclasses, documents, and other tools is at your fingertips.

Learn More >>> The All Things Real Estate Resource Hub

Transcript

Chris McAllister: Welcome to the All Things Real Estate Podcast. I'm Chris McAllister, and it's my job to create and coach real estate opportunities and strategies that support and add value to homeowners and residential property investors. And I'm joined today by my co host and marketing partner, Laci LeBlanc. Good morning, Laci.

Laci LeBlanc: Morning, Chris. 

Chris McAllister: How are you? 

Laci LeBlanc: I'm great. 

Chris McAllister: You're great, huh? Oh, that's good. Yeah, 

Laci LeBlanc: I can't wait. I'm excited about this. This is our newest, newest podcast and, uh, the content is, is fresh and I'm excited to get into it. 

Chris McAllister: All right. Well, today's episode is for the home buyers in the audience and it's all about what to expect.

When you meet with a Roost real estate professional for the first time as a buyer and, you know, Roost is what we do. That's who sponsors the podcast. That's a, it's basically my life's work. So I can't help, but use what we do at Roost as a reference point. But if you're not working with one of us, or you're not in an area where you could even possibly work with one of us, I think this will give you a great framework for how to approach.

A, uh, buyer agent relationship when it comes time for you to seek representation, uh, when you, when you buy your next home. So we're going to talk about a, uh, buyer meeting specifically today. And this meeting is absolutely critical because it sets the foundation for your partnership with your real estate professional when it comes time to buy your next home.

And we're going to walk you through, uh, The exact process that we use with our clients. And we're going to follow the same steps that we have laid out in a brochure called buy with roost, and we'll actually include a link to that in the show notes. So you can download it and, and take a look, but I want you as a buyer to think of this first meeting as an interview.

You know, after all your goal is to hire a buyer agent that you're going to work with very closely from anywhere from, you know, a few weeks to a few months, or I've had buyers I've worked with, honestly, for two, three years before they actually, you know, purchased a home. So you want to get this relationship right.

And you want to make sure that you're hiring an agent It was going to keep your unique interests at heart, not just your best interests at heart, but your unique interests at heart. Because if there's one thing I've learned over the last 20 plus years is no two, no two buyers goals are alike. No two buyers are alike.

No two homes are alike. Everything is, everything is always. It's always new, always different. And there's just always a little bit of twist with every, with every transaction. And that's what makes it fun. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. Not everybody has a Nana who has their very best interest at heart. I guess on this new podcast, it's worth mentioning that my grandmother is, uh, my family has been in real estate for a long time and my grandmother is my real estate agent.

Um, so. And so it's kind of a no brainer for me, but if you're in a position where you do need to select someone that you, you know, didn't birth the person that birthed you, um, then it's, it's simple. This is even more important, right? It's just, uh, finding somebody you can work with, somebody who's sincere, somebody who, who knows what you want and is there to help you get it.

Chris McAllister: And is a professional and, and honestly knows, knows what they're doing. So before you start interviewing agents, and this is true, whether you're buying your first house or your 20th house, you know, you and your family, if you're, if you have other people involved in this decision, you got to get clear on what you're doing and why you are doing it.

You know, the fact is there's no way any real estate professional can help you if they don't know What you can do what you want to do and and to educate them to inform them as a as a partner in this endeavor. You've got to be able to articulate you know what it is you're looking for. So to help with that, we use something called a.

Uh, buyer consultation or a buyer information sheet, and we're going to put this in the show notes as well. It includes just a lot of basic information that when you fill it out as a buyer, it's going to help you get clear on what you really want to do. To do, you know, what kind of house you want, where you want it to be.

What, you know, what are you looking for? Well, how is this going to impact your life? How is it going to make your, your, your life that much, that much better. So it includes, uh, it's a couple of pages. I'm going to go through just some of the information that is included in it. And again, uh, just like the, uh, buy with roost brochure, you can download this very, very simple black and white PDF and the show notes.

So in this buyer information sheet, and in a perfect world, your, your agent would get you this, you know, a few days or a couple of days prior to, you know, whatever meeting that you have scheduled. Um, so, you know, if you get this on a Monday and you're, and you're actually meeting at the agent's office or at a Starbucks or whatever on Wednesday or Thursday, that gives you a little bit of time to think about this and, and, and, uh, fill it out as best you can.

But it goes without saying, but we need a little personal information, right? We need your name, we need your address, we need your phone number and email address, right? You know, anytime that we sit down with somebody, our expectation is that, you know, we're going into this expecting that we're going to form, uh, that we're going to, we're going to, um, connect and we're going to bond and, and, and potentially, you know, form a long term relationship.

So we need some personal stuff, but we also hope that you think through, you know, where do you want to be? You know what part of town do you want to be in? Is there a certain neighborhood you want? What kind of property? Is it a single family? Is it a condo? Is it a townhouse? How many bedrooms, baths, amenities?

You know, are you looking for something that you can move in today? Or are you looking for something that's going to need a little bit of work? You know, is there a school district? It's, you know, certain proximity to parks, shopping, you know, restaurants, dining, whatever. What's important to you? And then we need to hear from you.

You know, what is your What is your price range? What is your financing situation? You know, we can't, we can't help you if we don't know what your financial situation is. And I understand that we do meet quite a few people who don't exactly know what their buying power situation is or how much money, you know, what kind of loan they're approved for and so forth.

But we still need you to tell us what, what you feel comfortable with, what you feel good about. So we need to know what's your price range. How much down payment do you have set aside? If any, you know, have you spoken to a lender yet? You know, do you, have you gone so far as to get a pre qualification letter?

And, and again, what's your current living situation? Do you currently own a home? You know, are you renting a home? If you're renting a home, are we going to need to help you break a lease or, you know, are you with roommates? You know, all those things help us. Not just, it's not just about finding the perfect house.

It's about making sure that we can get you out of your current situation, you know, cleanly, neatly and so forth and get you in to the next situation. You know, if you have a house to sell. You know, obviously, selfishly, your agent's going to want to know about that, too, because it's in their interest and it's in your interest that if this is about selling one house and moving into another, you know, that that process is Always easier if you're working with the same real estate professional on on the sale of your current house and your future house.

But if you have a house to sell, what do you think that, what do you think it's worth? What's the market value? How much do you owe on it? And so forth. You know, we need to know about your employment and your income stability. Did you just take this job? How long have you been in this position? Do you anticipate changing jobs?

Because all those can impact your financing, which in turn impacts. Whether or not we're going to be able to get you into a new house in the timeframe that you're looking for, are there any co buyers or are there any co signers? Are you getting help from, you know, family members, you know, with down payment assistance and so forth?

And then, you know, we, we still get into a little bit, you know, deeper and please bear in mind when we sit down with you, you know, and this isn't a hard sell for us, but in the process of just having this conversation, With you, we are in effect acting as a, as an agent on your behalf. And while nothing has been formalized yet, we, we, we conduct ourselves as if we already have a fiduciary duty to be looking out for your best interests.

So some people may take this as well. That's a, that's a little intrusive, but it's, it's really not, you know, buying a house is, does get into a lot of personal finance stuff. It gets into a lot of. You know, feelings, Laci, you know, how I feel about feelings. So, 

Laci LeBlanc: yeah, and, and your priorities are, I mean, I don't know, I look at, I look at like my finances when I was buying a house on paper and how misaligned, if you just looked at my financial information, how misaligned that was with my goals as a person, um, because we wanted.

To purchase a home well below our means, um, because we have other priorities in our life. We love to travel. Um, we love to, um, you know, we spend a lot, we spend a significant portion of our time volunteering and doing kind of community work. So, you know, we're not working 60 hours a week, even though this is prime, prime time in our lives, probably to be doing that.

Um, so when you see something on paper, It just doesn't always add up and it's not always what you think, right? So we were overqualified to purchase the home that we purchased, but it ended up being the perfect place for us, uh, because it was. Um, so I think that, you know, when people see all of these questions, you're right, it, it feels invasive, um, and feelings wise, it feels like maybe you're being judged and maybe your, your agent or your, your real estate professional is using that information to see how qualified a candidate you are.

So making it clear that, You're looking at it to see what their goals are and to better get to know the person and align with what they're looking for is really, really important because it's not, you're not looking at it just to see, oh, well, they can afford this and then do the math and my commission would be this and is it worth my time or not?

That's not the point of this, collecting all this information. It's really to get to know the person and make sure that you're, you're keeping their best interests at heart. And that's, I don't think that that's something people assume. 

Chris McAllister: I think what you said is very, very powerful, and that's why it's so important as a buyer that you come in ready to tell your story, right?

You know, that is a unique story. You know, it's it's not the norm that people are coming in with with absolute black and white personal goals that this is something that we believe in as a family. We are going to live below our means, and we want to buy a house that supports us and our family and our and our short and long term goals.

And the fact is, if you don't come in as a buyer, Ready and willing to tell that story or, or make that clear. And you don't have to justify why, but you do have to sometimes make clear that, you know, I'm pretty confident that, you know, I'm going to be fine on the mortgage. I understand that I need to get pre qualified, but I want you to understand that our goal is, is X.

And, and again, your description of what you guys wanted to do when you're bought your house is, is pretty good. different than anybody else's. And what I just want to stress with the folks listening is the whole idea behind this buyer information sheet is not just to help the real estate agent. It's to help you articulate your story and what you really want out of this.

Um, I'm going to say what you want out of this relationship with your buyer agent, but it's also what you want out of What, what outcomes you want in the actual transaction of, you know, finding and closing on the whole.

So that's 

Laci LeBlanc: why you're in the shelter business. 

Chris McAllister: That's why we're in a shelter. So, uh, you know, I, I'm not real great at role playing, but let's just see if we can kind of go through what a typical buyer meeting looks like. And, uh, you play the buyer and I'll play the, the, uh, real estate, uh, agent. Is that okay with you?

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, that sounds great. Oh. I've never had this conversation, um, with anybody except for Nana. So this will be great for me too. 

Chris McAllister: Well, so again, you may have already met your real estate agent. Maybe they were referred to you. Maybe they're a family member. Maybe you actually called them to have them show you a house that, that they had listed.

And, um, even though, you know, they had you sign an agency form and, uh, and a, uh, you know, a buyer representation form, um, You know, it wasn't a long term relationship that either one of you chose to establish, right? So this, uh, this is an opportunity to sit down face to face and really, really, really get to know each other.

And sadly, you know, not enough agents do this, but I always had a personal rule that other than showing a house that I had listed, because I have a duty to my seller. I flat out wouldn't put anybody in my car or go out and show houses to anybody who wouldn't. Take the time to give me 45 minutes to an hour, uh, one on one to, to just try to figure out whether or not I could help them or not.

So this is critical for the buyer. It's absolutely critical for the agent. And I can tell you the best, the best, uh, buyers agents among us conduct themselves in this fashion. So, Laci, I just want you to know my goal today is to make sure I absolutely understand your goals, your needs, your timeline, and I just want to start with a couple of key questions.

So, what is the most important thing to you about this movie? 

Laci LeBlanc: For me and my family, we need space. We are cramped and we just need enough room for everybody to have their own space and to be able to display their own collections as we all have them, um, you know, but But not outside. We want to keep it in budget.

We want to keep it well within our means, but we just need more space. 

Chris McAllister: Perfect. What concerns do you have about buying a home? 

Laci LeBlanc: I am anxious. All the time. And I am scared of every aspect of purchasing a home. I have panic attacks every time I apply for a new credit card or go to get a car loan, even though there's no reason my credit is fine.

My income is great. Like it's, it's all good. So my biggest concern is that I don't fully understand the process of buying a home because I haven't done it enough to know it by heart. And so that gives me a lot of anxiety. 

Chris McAllister: Well, I understand you guys are looking for some more space, but is there any other reason why now is the right time for you to be making this move or deciding to move forward on this?

Why now? 

Laci LeBlanc: Now, because I anticipate it's going to take a long time for us to find the home that works for us. So we want to start, uh, start now in anticipation of that. We're not in a rush, um, but, You know, we don't want to get to a point where we're really just, we've completely outgrown our home and, uh, we're stressed out while we're trying to find it, find a new space.

Chris McAllister: Perfect. Perfect. That really helps me a lot. Is there a, how do you like to communicate? Is there a preferred method of communication? Do you like phone calls? Do you prefer emails? Do you, do you do text messages? What, what's the best way for us to communicate it, that we decide to work together? 

Laci LeBlanc: A text before a call would be great.

Chris McAllister: Very good. Very specific. Thank you. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah. Who knows if you're going to be able to get a hold of me. Actually, I prefer not communicating, but I realize that that's really imperative to this whole process. 

Chris McAllister: Well, we promise not to call you just for the sake of calling. We'll try to make sure that we only have something pertinent to report.

How's that? 

Laci LeBlanc: Sounds good. 

Chris McAllister: All right, so before we get going any further, I mentioned the buyer representation agreement earlier, but please understand that before we start viewing homes, we will have to come to terms and have us both sign a buyer representation agreement. Now, this agreement. It's there to formalize our relationship, and it also ensures that I'll be working exclusively on your behalf throughout the entire process.

It's going to spell out the exact services I provide, you know, how long we plan to work together, and it's also going to talk about how I'm going to be compensated. I mean, at the end of the day, it's, it's, it's how you're going to pay me. So when 

Laci LeBlanc: you're talking about how, how I pay you, how much am I going to pay you?

Chris McAllister: Exactly, exactly. So we're going to talk about that. So it's important to know that as your buyer agent, I am compensated only when your transaction closes, right? Under the new compensation structure that we talked about, uh, as a side note in our last, uh, episode, our very first episode for all things, real estate, you Laci have a lot more control.

Over how I get paid, then you might have thought you did, you know, a year or two ago, you know, you can negotiate the commission that you're going to pay directly with me and by the hopefully at the end of this meeting, we're going to agree on a fair structure that reflects the services I provide. So, you know, I don't know what typically the percentages are in your market.

But, you know, we, we are a full service brokerage, but I also believe that we add, you know, much greater value than the competition. But again, this isn't about me. This is about you. And I also want you to know that typically. My condition, my commission, the commission that you're going to pay my brokerage can be rolled into your closing costs, and I'm going to work hard to negotiate with the seller to make sure that they cover these fees as part of the, of the purchase agreement that we, we write up and negotiate.

Does that, does that make sense? 

Laci LeBlanc: It does. So we won't discuss, and this is, Me role playing, but also me podcast co hosting, and we won't discuss specifics or we will discuss specifics at this time, as part of the buyer representation, depending 

Chris McAllister: on the market, typically a buyer agent fee in the past has, has averaged two and a half to 3%.

Um, based on NAR stats from across the country, um, The difference was in the past, that, that was something that the seller typically. Uh, took care of paying, but the way things were structured, the buyer didn't really understand or it wasn't disclosed to the buyer what those dollars or percentages really were.

And, and because of that, they truly didn't know at the end of the day, how much commission, whether on the buy side or the list side, you know, was, was influencing the price of their house. So these days we make it very, very clear that, um, buyers are actually hiring their buyer agent. Buyers are responsible for paying their buyer agent.

It's no different than sellers hire and pay their listing agent. And the difference is obviously the sellers tend to do that out of their proceeds, uh, because they have equity in the house. Whereas the buyers, you know, theoretically would have to come out of pocket for this, but practically in the couple of three months that this has been going on, that really hasn't happened.

We have found that most sellers are happy to entertain covering a buyer agent commission, and they just look at it as another. Um, request from a buyer just as they would seller paid closing costs and prepaids and so forth. So I just want you to know that the buyer representation agreement says exactly what you can expect from from me and hold me accountable for, but it also includes what those services cost and your agreement to make sure that that myself and the brokerage gets paid.

And again, we're going to work super hard to get the seller to pay for it, quite frankly, just like they always used to. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, I think that's reasonable. That sounds reasonable to me as a buyer. Um, because, you know, we don't have any of the details of the actual home that we're purchasing yet. Um, so at this stage of the relationship, that's, that's a meaningful, um, explanation to me.

Chris McAllister: Now that we've gotten through the buzzkill, right. Let's, let's, uh, let's, let's skip to the. So I want to talk a little bit about how we go about helping you find your perfect home. So I want you to know that you're a real estate professional. They can show they can sell you any home listed by any firm or any agents.

And they can also help you with homes listed by owners directly. You know, when you do sign a buyer agency agreement, your real estate professional is getting paid regardless, basically. And, but it's going to make it a lot easier for you. If you ask your buyer agent to approach a for sale by owner and see if they're interested in, um, working with.

Me as your agent and potentially or covering those costs just because they say no That they aren't interested in paying another realtor. That doesn't mean that we can't present an offer to them. That makes sense That takes care of your obligation to me As well as getting you the house you want at the price you want to pay, terms that work for you.

So again, we can show you, sell you, any home listed, any home not listed, we'll, we'll make a concerted effort to take care of you in that regard as well. But what I don't want you to think is that we're only interested in selling houses that are listed by our firm. The beauty of the multiple listing services, you know, we, we, we show you, sell you houses regardless of who has it listed or potentially who doesn't have it listed.

So most buyers start by looking at homes online, right? Most people start with Zillow or realtor. com. I mean, those are fun, right? You know, these days when you sign in, you do get a lot of emails, you do get a lot of calls, but you know, that's the fun place to start. Um, if you haven't already started to work with a brokerage, um, Um, you, or you maybe work, if you started working with the brokerage, maybe you're using the search, um, widgets on their site.

Like for instance, we have, you know, really pretty cool search, uh, uh, widgets or subsites on our site that are linked directly to the MLS. Um, but they're not linked to Zillow or real geeks. We actually, um, get ours done by a third party company called real geeks. So the thing to understand is all of the.

All of the real estate portals, whether it's the big guys like Zillow or realtor. com or ones that are connected to the big franchises, like. Remax or a Caldwell banker, EXP and so forth. They all get information from the same place, which is the local multiple listing service. So even if you're looking at working with a boutique agency with one or two agents or, or a giant, uh, legacy brokerage, or you're just looking at, you know, browsing Zillow or realtor.

com. That information is all coming from the same place and the beauty of the fun part is, you know, during our initial meeting, we're going to log into the MLS together. We're going to share the screen on my computer and we're going to physically put in. We're going to enter your home criteria as you're sitting there.

We're going to set up a custom search. For everything that you want in the house, and we're going to get that saved. And then we're going to make sure that we set the button on the MLS site so that you get an email alert. Immediately, any new listing hits the market that meets that criteria. So that is a nice thing because it's, we could actually make sure that you're notified immediately, quite frankly, very, very quickly.

Um, when something goes on the market that might fit and in most of the country right now, there's still multiple offers happening on houses. We had a little bit of slowdown during the election, but you know, there still aren't enough houses for sale to satisfy all the buyers that are currently interested.

So, You know, being early in the process matters. And the fact is the difference between, you know, getting an email that your perfect house at the market at 10 o'clock in the morning versus not realizing that that house actually hit the market until the next morning. You know, that, that, that actually is a huge advantage for you.

And, and it quite frankly, it helps me help you. 

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, that sounds great because one of my biggest fears is being inundated with homes that do not fit my very specific criteria. I just don't have the mental capacity to, uh, to, to wade through all of that. So honestly, setting up this MLS, um, Account and getting a custom search and having these notifications is well worth probably your commission because it just tells me that you're interested in showing me what I'm interested in, not what is going to, you know, what, not what you want me to be interested in.

We'll 

Chris McAllister: put the criteria in, and almost everybody comes to one of these meetings with, you know, a list of houses they saw online that look really cool and they think they want to see. And it's always interesting that when we actually put that information in, many times those specific houses don't come up.

For whatever reason, now it doesn't mean that, you know, we're not going to go out and take a look at them if, if, if it's still something that you feel strongly about, but it is interesting that when you really dig deep and start to think about the criteria that you truly want in the house and set your search up that way, it does narrow it down and there are times when, you know, initially we might make the criteria a little bit too narrow and nothing's coming up and, you know, we have to kind of open up.

That that criteria, and I will tell you, you know, um, buying a house at the end of the day for most people does become a process of elimination, right? You cast a wide net, or you cast a narrow net that gets wider and wider, and then you start to see what's actually available in the market. You know what's available in your price range.

You start to make some decisions and, uh, you know, it does become a process of elimination and a series of of compromises, but that's just part of the process. So once we've set you up in the MOS, it's really time to start narrowing down the options. So again, it's a process of elimination. You might look at over a hundred listings online, right?

And, and narrow it down to just a few that you want to see in person. So what's your agent's going to do? What we would do is we'll schedule the showings for the homes that make the cut or anything that you want to see. And, and there's two things here, two things I want you not to worry about, Laci. The first one is don't worry if the first house we look at isn't the one for you.

But I also don't want you to worry if the first house we look at is the one for you. The difference between now and, you know, even just a few years ago, even, you know, before COVID is that the information online is so good. Right? And the pictures are so much better and there's videos and so forth. And you can always tell if a listing agent really took the care that the home deserved, right?

You can almost, and what's sad is, and I'm afraid it's true more often than not, If you see a listing that just doesn't pop, if it truly looks like it was an amateur that took the pictures on an old cell phone and so forth, it's either not going to do, it's not going to do justice to the house, but it's also not going to get you excited about going to look at the house.

Now, that might be a situation where your realtor says, yeah, I know this one doesn't really present well online, but I think we should go take a look. By the same token, those realtors and those homes that clearly have been cared for. Staged and cleaned up to sell again. Almost every time a house looks, you know, hot like that online, it's going to feel just like that when you walk in.

So don't forget you've already narrowed down the search because you've already been online. You've looked at a ton of stuff. Obviously this is the fun part. So, don't be too scared if, you know, you only end up looking, you may end up looking at a lot of houses, you may end up looking at two or three houses before you settle on one that you decide to make an offer on.

Laci LeBlanc: That sounds like a dream. Um, the not worrying part and the first house being the one part. Uh, both of them sound, sound great. Um, yeah, no, I think that that's, That's important to talk about because depending on who you are, right, the, your idea of what The home search looks like feels like actually is, can be different.

So some people have it in their minds that, gosh, I'm in, I'm in for, you know, months and months of going and looking at houses and because that's what happened last time they bought a house or, you know, then there are people who are like, oh, well, I just want to find the one house I want. Go look at it and buy it.

That's their expectation. And things change so quickly, so frequently. Um, and for many people it's been, they've never bought a house or, and they just have this idea from movies or whatever they've come up 

Chris McAllister: with. They have is when mom and dad bought a house 20 years ago. 

Laci LeBlanc: Exactly. Exactly. My parents haven't bought a house since they bought a house.

My. Grandfather built, you know, like 30 or 40 years ago. So when it's time for them to downsize that, you know, because we're in real estate as a, as a family, I don't think it'll be such a surprise to them, but I do think that they'll expect their expectations will be wrong in a lot of ways. Um, so, so establishing those expectations and really addressing both sides of every kind of issue is, is so helpful.

Um, and it really. It drives home why you need a professional real estate agent, because, you know, I love Nana, but she didn't, we didn't have these conversations. We just kind of jumped in and I knew she had my best interest at heart. We kind of talked about things as they came up, but for me as a, as an anxious person, it, it might've been helpful to sit down and have the talk about expectations and know that, oh, if it takes a few extra days on this part of the process, then that doesn't mean.

Something that is happening, or if you find the house of your dreams and, you know, the inspection comes back with X, Y, Z, then that doesn't mean you can't get the house, uh, you know, so setting those expectations all the way through the process, um, is really helpful for, for me and probably many others. 

Chris McAllister: So in keeping with the up and down nature of, wow, that's great fun.

And, and, and I'm excited to, oh my God, we got to talk about money again. Right. So we're going to talk about lending now. So we started off the meeting with dreams, right? You know, what do you want out of this house? And then we had to talk about money, the buyer representation agreement, and then we got excited again, right?

Helping you find your perfect home and going out and looking at houses. But now we've got to get pre approved for a mortgage. And the fact is before you start touring homes or getting too excited, it's absolutely essential that you get pre approved or more, more, more specifically pre qualified for a mortgage.

Cause remember, a pre qualification means based on the information you give the lender, Um, they can ascertain what your buying power might be. Getting pre approved for a mortgage means that they're running a credit check and there's a title work, title work's being done on the house and that, uh, that a mortgage is approved for closing.

So, you've got to get pre qualified before you get too excited whether, uh, You know, it's looking online on your phone or at home when you're on your desktop and actually going out and look at houses getting pretty qualified for a mortgage show sellers that you're a serious buyer and that you're focused on.

It also allows us to focus on homes that fit within your budget, right? If you don't know what your budget truly is, fortunately, Laci, you guys did know, and you were confident that that budget that well within your ability to buy, but if you don't know what your budget is, you don't know what to look at.

And, uh, you know, any great buyer agent works with. usually a handful of great lending professionals. They can refer you, they can connect you with these people and, and that they trust to get you through the process. Um, also if you already have a relationship with a lender, you know, we're happy to work with them as well.

Um, but also bear in mind, different lenders specialize in different types of homes and different types of buyers. Some are specialists in working with first time buyers and FHA buyers or VA buyers. Others build their business with clients and move up buyers almost exclusively. Right. They don't work with first time buyers.

Some work, you know, specialize working with empty nesters who, you know, the kids are grown, they're out of the house and they're thinking about downsizing to a forever home. And of course there's lenders who, um, you know, specialize in investment properties, but that's a whole nother podcast. So we want to help you get through that process.

We want to coach you through the process, but we also want to get you. Connected with somebody who, uh, sees the world as we do and is, and has your best interests and your unique interests at heart. So the next thing is also about money, but I want to talk a little bit about making an offer and what you can expect when we do find that, that, that house that you really like, and you can see yourself living in.

So when you find a home you love, it's time to make an offer. And I just want to keep in mind that. It's the market that determines what the home you're looking at is worth. So what we do is, you know, we're going to know pretty quick, you know, based on your agent's experience, if a home is fairly priced or not, but a great agent is going to show you comparable sales data in the neighborhood and, and basically show you what the price range is for a house.

That's a similar to the property that you're looking at, as it possibly can be, they're not going to do a full blown appraisal. You know, we're not licensed for that. We don't have the same tools for that, but we can definitely let you know that, you know, if the price range, if this house is listed at 375, 000, and we can show you.

Comparable sales over the past 12 months in the neighborhood that show that some houses have sold for 350 and some have sold for as much as 400, you know, and we can see by the pictures that the one that sold for 400 was in fabulous shape and the one that sold at 350 needed new carpet, etc. We can give you a comfort level early on as to whether or not that homes list price is priced competitively, or not.

And it's not our decision to make that call. We're going to give you the data, but it's your decision. And why is that important? Because if you, if there's a house that clearly is priced competitively, you have to assume that that house is going to have multiple offers. So that's going to influence what kind of offer you're going to make, right?

If you've got a house that is clearly priced well, or, you know, let's even say to make it a little bit easier for this example, a little bit below what, what it's really worth one, there's probably going to be multiple offers to, if you're in a situation where, um, it's clear that the seller isn't So if you're offering a blanket, um, offer of compensation to buyer agents, then you've got to make sure that your offer is written such that you get the, you get whatever seller concessions built into that offer that you need to get, right?

So if you need some lender closing costs and prepaids, if you need, um, you know, to get your, um, buyer representation costs covered and so forth, your agent's going to write that into the offer. But let's say that that house is probably worth 385. And it's listed at three 75 and you need about, you know, 10, 15, 000 in, in help right from that seller.

Then the right play in this situation is, is that you make an offer above what they're asking because your orientation has to be that first of all, you've got to get. You've got to get the house that you want at the price you want to pay that works for you. But that is only going to happen if you understand that you've got to get the seller what they want as well, or more importantly, what they need, or being able to cover the mortgage that they have to pay off to release that home.

You know, making an offer isn't just a knee jerk reaction to offer list. It's not a knee jerk reaction to offer more, but it's certainly not a knee jerk or an invitation to offer less just because, you know, I don't pay full price for anything. That's, that's really how people lose more houses than any other method.

And I have to be honest with you, we support whatever our buyers want to do, but they usually only make that call once, right? And when they lose out on that house, you know, we tend not to make the same mistake. And I also have to be honest with you, Laci, sometimes it's not so much the buyers that they're feeling pressured from.

Family members, oftentimes, you know, people, God love them that haven't bought a house in 30 years. And it was standard practice that, uh, you know, you, you low balled an offer and you negotiated and so forth. These days, there's so much great information available to anybody, you know, with the click of the mouse or a swipe of the screen that, that, that, that game just isn't played anymore.

And if you try to play it. You know, there's a 90 percent chance that it's not going to go your way. So anyway, yeah, 

Laci LeBlanc: that's exactly what I was going to say. This is a scenario where having a professional in your corner, like finding the balance between someone who wants to. Like my dad wants the best for me, but he is a, I don't pay full price for anything kind of guy.

Right. But also having a professional in your corner, um, who knows what the market is doing right now, who knows what the neighborhood standard is and whether this home has been kept up, um, to that standard is below that standard or above that standard. Because. In the end, this is, even if you're not an investor, this is the biggest investment, many, many people make in their entire lives is purchasing their home.

And so you want to make sure that you're not overpaying, um, or that, you know, obviously for the seller's sake, you're not underpaying, but this is just one of those parts of the process where. Having someone who has your best interests at heart is great, but you also need that professional opinion, um, on this, because there's just no way unless you're doing this every day that you are fully informed, especially in certain locations, right?

You guys work in kind of niche markets. And so, you know, everything there is to know about certain neighborhoods. And, and so you're just the best people, real estate professionals are just the best people to advise you in, in these situations. 

Chris McAllister: So here's the next thing that we need to discuss in this buyer meeting and it's about contingencies and inspections that are included in your purchase offer.

So your purchase offer is likely to include three main contingencies or three main possibilities for contingencies. And the first standard one is a financing contingency. And what this means is if your loan doesn't go through, you're not going to be obligated to complete the purchase. Right. That sounds pretty, uh, cut and dry, but quite frankly, if that contingency wasn't in the contract, um, and you didn't get the loan, you thought you were going to get, you would still have a legal obligation or, uh, technically to buy that house and, and, uh, you know, not that anybody would force, could force you to do something that you didn't have the funds to do.

It can still cause you. grief, and it can also put your earnest money if your offer includes earnest money at risk. The second contingency we see all the time is the contingency of the sale of the of your current home. Um, contingency. So if you need to sell your current home and pay off that mortgage, Before you can qualify for the new mortgage for the new home, then that has to be included in the purchase offer as a contingency, right?

We don't want you to get into a situation where you've committed to buying a house. You, you've got a pre approval letter and so forth, but that there, there was no provision for the fact that yes, we, we are, we've got a pre qualification and even a pre approval letter. But if we don't sell the house we currently own and harvest that equity to make the down payment, we're not going anywhere.

So first financing contingency, second sale of home contingency. And here's the one that I think is the most important and the one that we get the most questions about in a purchase contract. And that is the inspection contingency. So the inspection contingency allows you to have the property inspected And potentially allows you to negotiate any repairs that need to be done with the seller.

So I always recommend that you have an inspection done. Um, and you know, I don't know the cost in your particular market, but I'd say these days it could be anywhere from 500 maybe to a thousand dollars if you're not just doing a whole house inspection. Maybe you've got whole house and termite and uh, well and septic and You know, maybe there's a fireplace inspection, whatever you can, you can spend some money on inspections.

And, uh, you know, I also need you need you to understand as a buyer that this is, this is something that you've got to work over the cash for at the time of the inspection directly to that inspector. So, you know, this is something that has to be paid at the time of service. It's not something you get back if it's a bad inspection, um, and so forth, but it's also.

pretty critical that, um, you know, you, you get these things done because what you're looking for, there are those items that adversely affect habitability. Right. You're looking for things that, that could hurt you or, um, uh, make the house hard to live in, or potentially cost you a lot of money, you know, fairly soon after you purchased the house.

So your, your inspector is going to give you a thorough report, but a great inspector is going to highlight only those issues. They're going to include everything, right? And in an older house, it can be a long list, right? Oh, trust 

Laci LeBlanc: me. I know. They're going 

Chris McAllister: to give you a thorough report, but a licensed property inspector is also going to highlight those issues that they see with the house that could substantially impact habitability.

So you're looking and they're looking for health and safety items that need to be addressed and any larger ticket items that could result in out of pocket costs in the near term after you buy the house. Right? So nobody wants to potentially, you know, do a home inspection, have the deal not go through and be out a lot of money.

On the other hand, the last thing you want to do is, you know, close on a house, move in and suddenly find out that the furnace has to be replaced that or because it's leaking carbon monoxide into the home. And I always like to give an example about a roof situation. You know, let's say that the inspector on the inspection report says, you know, the house is overall it's in great shape.

However, um, we suggest that, uh, you, you have a roofing contractor, uh, look at the roof because in our opinion, the roof is at the end of its useful life, right? So nobody wants to pay for a roof. Right? Well, maybe you do, right? If you knew the roof was going to need to be replaced going in, um, you know, maybe you're okay with that.

Maybe you expected it. But if not, this is when you have the opportunity to go back to the seller and say, we really want to buy your house. We love your house, but we just can't do it if, if, if you don't replace the roof. So what could happen? Well, one of, I guess one of three things, right? The seller could say, um, sure, happy to do it.

You know, we knew we had some hail damage. It just came as an opportune time. You know, we're going to talk to our insurance agent. You know, we, we, we think we can get this taken care of. No harm, no foul. Happy to do it. Right? That's best case scenario. The seller says, yep, we'll take care of the roof. No problem.

Second possibility is nope, we're not doing it. Okay. You're already, you already aren't paying me enough for this house. You, uh, it is what it is, you know, buy it, don't buy it. I don't care, but we're not putting another dime in this house. So the, the answer is no. The third option is that it becomes a negotiation, right?

And, you know, just hypothetically, Let's say the seller says, wow, I didn't even realize that. Let me get ahold of a roofing contractor. They get a roofing contractor and the roofing contractor comes out and says, yeah, the roof is, is older. No question. You know, maybe there's a couple of layers on there, but you know what?

I can certify this roof for another five years. If you do this, this, this, and this, right. And maybe this, this, this, and this is only going to cost the seller 2, 000 to 3, 000 versus 15, 000 to 20, 000 for a new roof and, and he's, he's going to do that for you or for the next buyer and be able to, to, you know, provide that roof certification from a licensed and bonded roofing contractor that this, this roof may look a little rough around the edges, but it's got another five years of life in it.

Right. So they can say yes, they can say no, or they, it can become a negotiation. And I, I just want to tell you how critical that contingency is because it empowers you as a buyer to make the decision that makes the most sense for you and your, I don't want to say, you could say anxiety or you could say risk tolerance, right?

But the fact is no houses are absolutely perfect. Even new construction isn't absolutely perfect when they do inspections on new builds. There's always issues as well. So. The point is, you have a contingency in your purchase contract that allows you to, to the possibility to uncover things that could cost you money or God forbid hurt you down the road.

Laci LeBlanc: Yeah, that was huge for us. Um, in the current house that we live in, we did the inspection, uh, and we, found out that the HVAC system was really, really old, um, and that it would probably need to be replaced. Uh, we bought it from an estate, so there was not going to be any more work done to it, but we were able to make the decision because we got such a great price on it that we would, um, because we qualified for some, it was our first home and we qualified for some down payment assistance, we would not put our entire down payment that we had planned to put, On the home, we would set some aside to cover that inevitability of having to replace that HVAC.

And lo and behold, it was about a month and a half after we moved in that we needed to do that, but you're right. It was just, um, risk tolerance. I was, I felt great about it once when it happened and what a relief, you know, we had already set that aside. 

Chris McAllister: Even if you had the extra cash and you can afford it, you still don't need to go through that surprise, right?

At least this way, you knew what to expect and when it happened, you know, you didn't feel taken advantage of. It wasn't the end of the world, right? 

Laci LeBlanc: Absolutely. And it was, we, and we would have been okay. You know, we're, we're blessed in that way. We could have covered it, but to have those funds set aside and earmarked for that and not even have to dig into what we consider our savings or, um, and to, to not have the stress of it just immediately after we moved in, we're still, you know, Unloading boxes, you know, to just know that it was going to happen that's as an anxious person.

But I think as a general person, um, we would all prefer to have a little, like, if somebody could say, Oh, you're gonna, you know, get, if somebody is going to hit your car and in six months, you know, wouldn't we all set a little aside and make sure we were extra careful and like, wouldn't that benefit all of us?

Chris McAllister: So those are those are the high points of the home buying process and what you can expect from from your agent. And in turn, what your agent is going to expect from you throughout the process. So once we get past those inspection contingencies, and then we're focused on closing. So, you know, after all that's said and done, we move towards closing, which can take anywhere from, well, these days, you know, could be as few as maybe You know, three weeks.

I've seen some close in three weeks, but typically closing takes 35 30 to 45 days. And during this time, your lender is going to appraise the home. The title company is going to make sure the property can be legally transferred. The lender is going to make sure that all their ducks in a row. They're going to ask you a billion questions that you thought you had already answered, you know, between the time that Uh, the lender gets the file and the closing statement, but that's to be expected.

And the commitment that you should get from your, uh, buyer agent is that they're going to keep you updated throughout the entire process. And, uh, they're also going to make sure that, you know, if there are any, uh, repairs to be completed by the seller, they're going to make sure that, uh, that those are happening and that you get a chance to, to check on those before you actually get to the closing table.

So that's, uh, this took us about an hour, but we also had some sidebar conversations as well. But typically, you know, a meeting like this does take roughly an hour. Sometimes it can get a little bit more intense and so forth. And that's great too. But I have never had a situation where I wasn't. I'm appreciative of the buyer taking the time to to do this with me, and I can tell you that the buyers I've worked with also appreciated the meeting as well.

And it really does make the whole process a heck of a lot simpler. The other thing you know you shouldn't expect or I guess I'm just going to tell you what we do at Roost. You know, at Roost our commitment doesn't end at the closing, you know, we stay in touch, we answer any post sale questions, we ensure you're happy, you know, as best we possibly can with your home.

A large part of our business, the majority of our business comes from referrals from past clients. So we strive to provide the best service we possibly can because we need you to be confident, so confident in us that you are thrilled to, you know, Um, and he said, she's you know, she's gonna do this. And, you know, she's, she's a great person.

She just, she's a definitely a great person. And she, she's, she's a great daughter and a great mother. Um, but she's not gonna be a student in the future. I mean, 

Laci LeBlanc: she's, she's, she's gonna be, you know, she's not gonna be the job that she wanted or the, the, the, the child that she wanted. Is rarely talked about for my, I mean, again, I've mentioned it, what, three times already, but my family has been in the real estate business for a long time.

And I still had no idea as a first time home buyer, what to expect. So having this conversation, whether you bought a hundred homes or one home, you know, is beneficial to all parties involved. Um, it's really just expectation management. And I hope that it fills buyers. You know, one of the things that when we're writing.

Copy for websites or emails that you repeat over and over again, Chris is buy with confidence. That's a just, it's just a catchphrase that roost uses because you want your buyers to be able to buy with confidence. And there is no guarantee in this entire world that you could write that, that every home buyer would get into their home and never have a problem.

And everything would be rainbows and butterflies. But if you can buy with confidence, then, you know, I think that that's. That should be the goal of the, the relationship and this initial meeting is surely a great way to get off on the right foot. 

Chris McAllister: I appreciate that. So that's a look at what you can expect in your first meeting with a Roost agent.

As you can see, we take a comprehensive approach to helping you find the right home, from understanding your needs, that's the most important thing, to navigating inspections and getting to the closing table. If you're ready to get started on your home buying journey, visit us at buywithroost. com or give us a call.

We're here to help every step of the way. And please be sure to subscribe to the All Things Real Estate Podcast with Chris McAllister, so you don't miss future episodes. And please share these with anybody that you know that might be thinking about buying a home in the future, if you think it'll help them out.

In the future, we're going to continue to explore key topics like maximizing the value of your, of your home, navigating today's real estate market. There's just a broad Wealth of topics that we're going to be discussing in the weeks and months ahead. So thank you for listening. And until next time, I'm Chris McAllister, and this is the All Things Real Estate Podcast.