From Clueless to Closing: How Agents Should Guide Their Clients

The real estate transaction process breaks down when agents fail to prepare their clients properly, especially regarding inspection expectations and appropriate repair requests.

• Frustration with agents who don't explain inspection processes to clients, especially those from different cultures
• Language barriers require extra effort from agents to ensure understanding of complex real estate procedures
• First-time or international buyers need clear guidance about what repair requests are reasonable
• Some agents failing to communicate critical contract deadlines to clients
• Out-of-area agents attempting to work in unfamiliar markets without proper research
• Ethics concerns when agents schedule inspections without client input
• Inappropriate agent influence over health and safety testing decisions
• Importance of letting clients choose their own inspection services

If you're interested in our class "How to Get to Close with Every Client," please give us a call. Though not currently CE-credited, we plan to have it certified this winter.

Transcript

Podcast Introduction

Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to the Standing Out in Ohio podcast, where we discuss topics, upcoming events, news and predictions with real estate professionals and entrepreneurs. Listen and learn what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain advantages over the competition and gain market share. Subscribe for the latest news and discussion on what it takes to stand out from the crowd. Now here's your host, jim.

Speaker 2 0:30

Habitation investigation is the way to go for a home inspection in Ohio. Trusted licensed home inspectors for your needs from radon to mold to warranties For a great home inspection, you really can't go wrong. Visit HomeInspectionsInOhiocom.

Speaker 3 0:57

Hey, welcome to the Standing Out Loud Podcast. This is Jim, and with me, of course, is Laura, the office goddess.

Unprepared Buyers Request Everything Fixed

Speaker 4 1:02

Hello everyone. All right, so what do you want to talk about? I don't know. There's been a bunch of stuff happen this week and last week.

Speaker 2 1:11

Which one do you want to?

Speaker 3 1:11

pick. Well, you spent an hour or hour and a half talking to somebody because their agent the agent requested you to do that.

Speaker 4 1:21

Oh, that was an hour.

Speaker 3 1:21

Because that was an hour, because the buyer wanted to request everything to be fixed. So I think that's a good one, because that one we could probably put a link to this episode in the report system, which I'm thinking, if the buyers actually read the whole report and then they click on that link, they go, oh, that's what I should and shouldn't ask for. But this is something that agents should have a discussion with their buyers long before, or at least a day before they get the report, before they even have the home inspection done.

Speaker 4 1:58

Part of me wonders how much of that was a language barrier. English was not her first language and we had to do a zoom so that we could translate. It was a translation in the zoom from me to her yes, she was able to speak enough. I could understand her.

Speaker 3 2:15

Yeah, but you were, you were your.

Speaker 3 2:17

Your words were not being translated to another language my words were being translated into arabic then for her okay yeah, and I'm still thinking there's no excuse, because if you can just do a translation through, my words were being translated into Arabic, then for her, okay, I'm still thinking there's no excuse, because if you can just do a translation through Zoom, right, yep, the agent can do a translation to let them know. Hey, this is what's appropriate to ask for. And this lady didn't even know. She didn't know the sequence of what was even going on. It seemed like when I talked to her and I met her at the home inspection.

Language Barriers in Real Estate

Speaker 4 2:48

And it's not just that, but if you've got somebody that's coming in from another country, it's coming in from another country. Wouldn't you imagine that they have absolutely no concept of our system and how that works and that you would have to be very clear and heck, maybe even have like printed stuff for them? This is what a home inspection is. This is what an appraisal is. This is the timeline. This is how things flow. This is when things need to be done. You know, like once you sign your contract, like everything automatically gets filled into like an excel spreadsheet and it populates that and you print it off and give it to the client and make your life easy.

Speaker 3 3:27

There couldn't have been any of that because this woman was so clueless and this is not the first time we've had to no I guess, I guess walk the buyers off the cliff of asking for every little item because they're not told what is appropriate, what's not, and we even have that in our report right so if you're a real estate agent and you or a home buyer, doesn't matter if you have never seen one of our homeless profession reports. The very first thing in the report is basically don't blow your deal over little things and it's not appropriate to ask for minor home maintenance things.

Speaker 4 4:05

Well, but here is another question then, though. So I like doing stuff, I like maintenance, I like repairing things. I like doing stuff, I like maintenance, I like repairing things, I like working outside. So what's easy for me if you've got somebody coming from another country that doesn't know what a furnace is or what a filter is, or what?

Speaker 3 4:29

It's now a third world country. They know what a furnace is.

Speaker 4 4:33

I don't know, do they actually have them there? I don't know what their heating systems are. Like we have a masonry heater that's common in Europe, not furnaces.

Speaker 3 4:42

So I'm just saying I don't know, but I can still, even if I all right, we have a masonry here with a very different type of fireplace, I can still look at it and know it's a fireplace of some type some design. So I think that example that we're talking about.

Speaker 4 5:01

That was a total failure.

Appropriate Repair Requests After Inspection

Speaker 3 5:01

I was trying to be nice well, you can be nice, but this is a total failure of whoever that real estate agent is to set appropriate limits with the, the buyer. Now, if it's a brand new house, yes, I would expect everything to be a lot more perfect. And maybe on a brand new build okay, they didn't paint that wall perfectly. I might ask them to touch that up. It's a brand new build I'm just now moved.

Speaker 3 5:30

I'm the first person buying this place. If the house is like 50 60 years old, you should not expect perfection in anything cosmetic, right. So she was just. She was just not prepped and ended up. The agent had took up an hour of your time helping this lady that she should have been helping in the first place and no commission and you.

Speaker 4 5:55

And no commission and you got no commission.

Speaker 3 5:57

You got no bonus for that. The agent wasn't even there on that Zoom call to know what was said. No, if you're a real estate agent, do not be an absent agent. That does not earn you referrals.

Agents Failing on Communication

Speaker 4 6:14

Can I tell you, this week alone actually today and yesterday I've had three of our clients complain about their agents that they didn't communicate deadlines. One of our clients didn't know that there was a time frame on the home inspection period and that he needed to decide stuff before it expired. Hadn't been told that um that's amazing, because I just saying I, I'm not arguing.

Speaker 4 6:44

Then I had another woman this morning tell me that her agent is trying to get a house for her in columbus, but she's not from the columbus area, don't remember where she's from it it's. It's not from the Columbus area, don't remember where she's from. It's not anywhere near Columbus. And so she was totally clueless about the Columbus market and about everything and subsequently she couldn't help her client because she didn't know what she needed to know to work in this market. I mean, as sad as it is to say, each market is its own niche and you either know what you're doing or you don't. Like I really do need to write the the city agent and the country agent, you know, like that book that we used to read country mouth city mouth.

Speaker 4 7:23

I need to do that because there is a huge difference with where you come from and what you need to know, and I I don't. I think that somebody thinks, oh, we can just walk on into columbus, it's not problem, I can just do this. No, honey, you can't.

Speaker 3 7:39

No, there should be a lot of similarities. However, you need to recognize the differences and do some research on that. But does this seem like there's a trend, and that's what I'm wondering. Is there a trend that we're noticing or not? Maybe it's just me that agents are not meeting the expectations of the buyers, or at least they're not helping them as much as they probably should be. Or is it just we've had this influx of that this last week or so?

Speaker 4 8:08

Well, you know what? Let's revisit that in a month, because right now I would say yes. Like the past two weeks, I've had a lot more complaints. I've had people call and want us to do second inspections because their agent picked one Inspector, scheduled it and they had no say in it, according to what I was told. So don't know what the truth is there, but why would you pay for a second inspection if you already had one?

Speaker 1 8:34

If you weren't happy with it.

Speaker 4 8:36

Yeah, this past week. Well, past couple weeks yes.

Speaker 3 8:40

So somebody had a, a buyer had a home inspection done. Your home inspection company was chosen by the agent.

Speaker 4 8:48

And scheduled by the agent.

Speaker 3 8:50

And the and, so then the buyer's like I didn't have any choice with that.

Speaker 4 8:56

And actually that there's one, now that I'm thinking of that's like an ethics violation. They were able to cancel that inspection with that other company.

Speaker 3 9:03

I do remember that, yes.

Speaker 4 9:04

They were able to cancel the inspection with that company and they just stayed with us and their agent was hotter than heck.

Speaker 3 9:11

Yeah. So yeah, which is curious, why? Why? If you're an agent, all right, I understand you may have your favorite inspectors, favorite inspection companies. It's your client's decision on who they decide to use.

Speaker 4 9:24

They are paying for it.

Speaker 3 9:26

And all the services that they decide to get. I remember a couple of years ago there was an agent that goes, no, they don't need that, and they basically, on site, talk to the client out of having radon, out of having mold, oh you don't need radon, radon's fake.

Speaker 4 9:46

Well, what's going to happen 20 years from now when that client realizes they've got lung cancer because they smoked and they're eight times more likely to get cancer if they have radon in the house and they never tested it? Is that agent going to be paying for all of their medical bills and their hospital stay and their cancer treatments should be I mean I had one buyer email.

Speaker 3 10:07

No, he called us. Yeah, I think he called us or emailed us very next day after. His agent was really rude about telling out how we should do testing that way and this guy as an agent? He should stay completely out of how radon testing is done unless he's a licensed um what? Radon technician or mitigating? He's just like he wasn't yeah, well, his buyer apologized for his agent baby. Well, that agent is no longer with that agency. In fact, as far as I know, I've heard his name.

Speaker 4 10:36

However, he's and that his broker, his broker dropped him, like his well, and his broker's no longer brokering either.

Speaker 3 10:44

They got to drop like bags of dirt because they're doing what they shouldn't.

Preparing Clients and Appropriate Resources

Speaker 4 10:48

Well, and the phrase that they use was well. Well, that was the. That was his fault, because he didn't teach them what they needed to ask for. No, that's not your job to teach them. Do they have somebody that has a health concern? Do they have somebody that's prone to cancer? Do they have a kid that has a mold allergy? You don't know any of this stuff, and if you let somebody walk in and they don't get the appropriate tests that they need to be able to to know that they're going to be healthy in that house, they're coming back on the agent yep, they should.

Speaker 3 11:20

They should, you will lose. So, as an agent, you need to prep your client as what a home inspection is, what's appropriate to ask for, but do not tell them what services or additional inspection they should have, because that's that's their decision right now.

Speaker 4 11:36

You know what we could do. I have a uh a sheet okay, that has different services on it and when you should request those services. Do you want to add that as a link to this podcast?

Speaker 3 11:48

I'll put that in the show notes for this one, but I think that's about it for this one. Besides, the battery on this recorder is about out, so we need to cut this one quick, but anyway, I think this is valuable, though you need to make sure your client knows what's going on and you actually prep them as what is appropriate to request and timelines and if you need some help with that, we actually offer a class.

Speaker 4 12:11

It's not for ce I although I am going to try and get it set up for CE this winter but it's basically how to get to close with every client and if that's something that you're interested in, please give us a call, let us know and we'll schedule a class for you.

Speaker 3 12:28

Yep, all right, all right, bye-bye, bye.