The Walters Agency Podcast

Bill Grady with RE/MAX: How Insurance Shapes Your Mortgage Payment In Tennessee’s Real Estate

• Timothy Walters • Episode 20

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A Real Estate Agents Perspective on Insurance: Meet Bill Grady with RE/MAX

Buying a home should feel exciting, not chaotic. We sat down with Nashville-area real estate broker Bill Grady to unpack the overlooked force that can make or break your closing: homeowners' insurance. From the first walkthrough to the clear-to-close letter, we trace how premiums, deductibles, and roof conditions ripple through your monthly payment and your underwriting timeline.

We dig into PITI and show why focusing only on price and rate misses the point. Insurance can shift affordability fast, especially in a wind-prone market like Middle Tennessee. Bill shares a practical inspection lens—PREACH: plumbing, roofing, electrical, AC, heat, plus foundation and water—to keep attention on the systems that drive big repair bills and insurance outcomes. You’ll hear how roof age, electrical panels, prior losses, and water intrusion affect quotes, carrier eligibility, and negotiation leverage, and why a $25,000 to $30,000 roof is not a theoretical number in this region.

Timing matters just as much as math. We break down how last-minute insurance shopping leads to lender delays, why deductibles are rising, and how to align loan requirements with what carriers actually offer. You’ll learn simple, proactive steps: request quotes early on serious homes, share key inspection findings with your agent, document updates for credits, and choose deductibles that match your risk tolerance and your lender’s guardrails. For sellers, we cover how pre-list clarity on roof age and system updates widens your buyer pool and smooths underwriting.

If you want fewer surprises, lower stress, and a payment that truly fits, this conversation is your blueprint. Subscribe for more practical guidance at the intersection of real estate and risk, share this episode with a friend who’s house-hunting, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

To learn more about The Walters Agency visit:
https://www.brightway.com/agencies/tn/knoxville/0237/team
The Walters Agency
7009 Asheville Hwy
Knoxville, TN 37924
423-417-2070

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Walters Agency Podcast, where insurance meets peace of mind. Hosted by licensed insurance agent and owner Timothy Walters, we're here to help families, homeowners, and small business owners throughout East Tennessee protect what matters most. Our mission? Creating win-win-win solutions for insurance. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01:

When buying or selling a home, insurance plays a bigger role than most people realize. Hear it today from the front lines. Welcome back, everyone. Skip Moni co-host slash producer back in the studio with Timothy Walters of the Walters Agency and a special guest, Bill Grady, a real estate agent with Remax. Tim, Bill, how's it going?

SPEAKER_03:

Doing well.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, good. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Well, we're glad to have you. And I know uh Tim was telling me how excited he was. Uh we've we've tried to get you on the show a few times and just hadn't been able to work the schedules out. But we're thankful you're able to make it today. And uh Tim, I know you've got some some thoughts in mind and things you'd like to throw out on the table. So I'll just hand it over to you.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah, no, Skip. Uh yeah, Bill's a Bill's a busy guy. Uh, you know, he's he's hard to he's hard to schedule sometimes, but so we got him today. Um, and and I think I I told y'all before, uh, you know, I've known him my whole life. He's my cousin, uh extremely good, competent man. Uh I'm I'm telling he can tell you about his history, but uh impressive dude. So really glad to have him on. Um and just want to go through a couple of things with him. Uh only a little bit of it's actually insurance related necessarily. Um, but uh, you know, the Tennessee home market right now is incredibly hot. Uh it looks like it's gonna continue to be hot uh in uh certain areas for the foreseeable future. And uh Bill is over near Nashville, which is the hottest uh area, I think. Um so he's got a lot of insight that he can provide to people who are buying and selling uh real estate. So again, glad to have him on. Just gonna ask him a couple of questions, let him do most of the talking here, um, uh even though we all know I could go all day. But uh anyway, uh Bill. So first off, I'm gonna ask you the insurance question. How do you advise people uh on insurance when they're coming to you to buy or sell real estate?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, homeowners insurance is very important. It it forms part of the anticipated total payment. So we refer to this in the business as P I T I, so principal interest, taxes, and insurance. And so that's where our two roads often meet, Tim. And that insurance component can make a significant difference in a monthly payment. I tend to advise my buyer clients on the front end to really focus on the payment, whether that's affordable and not necessarily the price of the home. And insurance is one component of that. So I encourage my buyers to reach out to folks like you early and often to start getting an idea of what premiums are going to look like. You know, for example, if a roof is a particular age, is that gonna create a significant difference in premium? So it is it is an extremely important part of the calculus when you're advising a buyer client.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. Yeah, you're you're exactly right. And I appreciate realtors like you who advise people on the front end about that because a lot of times in my experience, like people wait until the end of the process to look at the insurance, and they've got everything else balanced out, and maybe for whatever reason, maybe an issue with the house, maybe uh again, credit. There's a lot of things that go into insurance premiums uh or even availability uh that can cause there to be potentially issues with the final closing of the house. Uh so knowing that closer to the front end is definitely to the advantage of the buyer or the sellers.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you guys, since we've got both a real estate agent and an insurance agent uh on the show, how do you guys work together? How do insurance and real estate professionals collaborate to ensure a smooth closing?

SPEAKER_03:

As far as collaboration goes, uh again, you know, to be perfectly frank and honest, you know, usually we get uh people coming to us at the end of the process. So a lot of times, unless we're seeking out information on the home, we don't necessarily talk to a lot of realtors unless they're like Bill, unless they're like starting their clients out at the front end and advising them to reach out to us, in which case we we do tend to have a little bit more communication with realtors. Um which is again, I really appreciate that. It makes things so much easier and more effective uh uh for the clients on our end. But the majority of the time we're getting things at the end of it. Um again, which it works out. Like we we can take care of business, but you know, again, thank thank God there's people who like will actually get folks to us at the front of the process rather than the end of the process. Uh especially for uh homes that maybe are older or something like that, where there might be some underwriting issues. Um, but you know, as far as like where we come from, it's actually fairly rare for us to have direct communication with realtors unless there's something that we're trying to find out about.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, from from my perspective, um the main communication comes from me reaching out to somebody like Tim. And of course I've done this with Tim specifically. It's like, Tim, can you tell me what are the issues going on with roofs right now? Because that's one thing that's changed even since Tim's gotten into business as I understand it. And so that is very helpful for me when I'm advising my clients because I can preview some of these issues. I can't exactly provide the same kind of advice Tim does, but I can certainly make sure that my clients are thinking about various factors before they decide to make an offer.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, Bill, uh I really appreciate you kind of putting your your five cents or well, we don't have pennies anymore. So what uh$10 bill and on uh the the whole insurance thing. But the other questions I really wanted to ask you was first off, uh let you introduce yourself um to the people who are watching this. Uh, you know, talk about you know what got you into real estate. Um I know you've already won multi several awards uh with REMAX, which is impressive. Um so you're good at what you do. Uh I know you you're always improving yourself, uh, which is you know commendable. Um so just you know, talk a little bit, introduce yourself, uh, maybe talk a little bit about things that you think people should know about the real estate process. And uh again, give your give your contact information because we want people to call you.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, thank you, Tim. And feel free to interject if I if I go too long here. But um, like you said, I am a real estate, I'm actually a real estate broker. About a quarter of all licensed real estate agents in the state of Tennessee are actually brokers, so that means that we have gone through additional training. We have been real estate agents for a specified number of years, and we've taken additional testing. Um now I don't own my own agency. Um I work for a REMAX affiliate here in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, so which is in the Nashville suburbs on the east side of Nashville, for those that aren't familiar with the area. I am an attorney by training. I practice law full-time for 13 years and uh was last working as a federal prosecutor. And I I found after several years of working on the criminal law side of things that I was kind of becoming disillusioned. It's uh it's it's very difficult to look at some of the things I've had to look at and hear some of the things I've had to hear. And over time I just started to not really enjoy what I was doing. And I met somebody that I grew up with who had started real estate as a second career himself and got my interest peaked. And I actually thought about it for a full year, saved money, studied for the test, and decided to pull the trigger and jump in both feet first full-time. And so that was about five years ago. And like you said, since that time I've been able to build a business in the Middle Tennessee area. Of course, I can sell real estate in the entire state of Tennessee. That's what I'm licensed for, but I primarily focus on middle Tennessee. So, for example, as far east as about Putnam County, uh, and then as far west as, say, like Dixon County, and then north and south from there. So you asked me to talk about some common things that pop up that I would like people to know about. Uh, so I'd like to start out with the inspections because that actually kind of dovetails into you know the normal subject of this podcast, and that is insurance. So inspections can be kind of the long pole in the tent, if you will, or the stick in the mud for a lot of people, especially first-time buyers. And that's because first-time buyers um or people that haven't bought a home in a while have um they have a perspective that's not quite on par with reality, and that's understandable. They've never done it before. They don't do it every day like we do. So a lot of times they have an outsize expectation of the condition of what we call a resale home or a used home. We don't use that term like used cars, but a resale home. So what I try to do on the front end is focus on the big ticket items. And so there's an acronym that I focused on, and that's preach. So plumbing, roofing, electrical, uh, AC, heat, and then I add foundation and water. Um, and so those are the main um big ticket items, as I'm sure you would agree, Tim, especially, you know, roofs, things like that. Anything that can allow the house to be invaded with water in any circumstances is going to equate to a large bill. And so that's what I focus people on instead of the little nitpicky things like, you know, is there a scratch in the wall or is there, you know, a counter that's loose or something like that? Um, I try to focus people on that because those are the little things that a buyer's probably gonna want to fix themselves that an owner's probably not gonna do up to the same standard. But we certainly don't want to get, especially first-time buyers, into a home where they're gonna be immediately faced with, say, uh$25,000 or$30,000 roof bill, which is about what it costs to roof a house in the Middle Tennessee area that's around 3,000 square feet up to about 3,500 square feet.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, 100%. It is we've talked about this in the past, Bill, is uh the questions we ask are very similar in a lot of cases. And the whole$25,000,$30,000 roof thing is no joke in Middle Tennessee. A lot of our carriers have gone to uh higher minimum deductibles, actually, uh, which uh not so much realtors, but a lot of lenders have been kicking back on this on because historically they've required uh lower deductibles. But we're we're slowly acclimating them to the new market. It's uh it's a challenge. Uh but yeah, the the roof thing is is a big deal for sure, especially in Middle Tennessee because of the wind damage uh factors.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and that's like why I mentioned earlier that I I focus on getting people to reach out to real estate uh real or excuse me, um insurance brokers early, and that is simply because they don't want to be uh surprised. Like Tim was saying, it's in danger of you know pre preventing a closing. I've had examples where despite both me and the lender, you know, bugging the the heck out of my clients to get their homeowners insurance in place, they have waited up until literally the last couple of days before closing. And the the lenders are not gonna give you a clear-to-close letter and allow that home to close. So it's it's very important because that cost factor can significantly reflect their you know, the ability of that lender to underwrite that loan.

SPEAKER_03:

Right. Yeah, they're not gonna underwrite anything that doesn't have the the risk insured. So yeah, they're I don't blame them. I wouldn't either.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, uh Bill, Tim, uh I we really appreciate you uh being here today and taking time out of your uh crazy real estate schedule in Middle Tennessee. Uh, but we appreciate your perspective. Uh Tim, anything else you want to throw in there?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, just Bill, if you don't mind, uh just you know, give your agency information. If you uh you know have a good contact information, throw it out there for people. Uh and again, I recommend this guy. Uh, if I lived in Middle Tennessee, I'd I'd sell my house uh with him or buy a house from him. So whatever that's worth, you know. Do I look like a trustworthy guy? But yeah, just give us your uh contact information, Bill.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, thanks, Tim. I appreciate that. Uh, and thanks again to both of you for having me on today. So uh Bill Grady with REMAX Exceptional Properties. Like I said earlier, we're in the Mount Juliet area, but I service basically Greater Nashville, as we uh would say here. Uh my phone number is 615-450-8128, office number 615-7540200. So feel free to reach out uh if you have any questions about buyers buying or selling in the Greater Nashville area. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you again. Uh, we really appreciate uh again, Bill, your perspective on uh real estate in general, but also uh uh you know sharing your story and uh you know uh giving us your thoughts on insurance. That's it's a great reminder of how connected uh your industries are. So thank you for that. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03:

Thanks, Kip.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a wrap on this episode of the Walters Agency Podcast. Ready to find the right coverage for your home, business, or family? Call or text 423-417-2070 for a free 20 minute consultation. Until next time, stay covered, stay protected, and keep winning with the Walters Agency.