Real estate marketing advice: Reason number 4 why sellers need to perform property inspections before marketing.
Before a seller places a property on the market they need to have all property inspections performed before they self market or list for sale thru a Realtor.
The reasons that performing these inspections before you seek a buyer are so important include:
- Establishment of price
- Learning the exact nature of the property
- Misrepresentations
- Avoiding price renegotiations
- Error and omissions insurance coverage
- Maintain arms length negotiations
Reason #4 is perhaps the most important reason of them all.
Typical Realtor involved real estate transactions are handled in just the complete opposite way of what I am instructing the seller to now do. The way Realtors usually handle the inspection issue is to negotiate the terms of the transaction first and included the home inspection as a contingency that is performed by the buyers after the sales agreements are signed. This is a worry about the offer first and the inspections second mentality.
What is so wrong and dangerous with this format is that the seller’s realtor has now given the buyer the perfect opportunity to have a second bite at the price apple. The seller has been mislead into a comfort zone by believing that the transaction was completely negotiated when in fact it remains only partially negotiated. After the buyers have performed the inspections it now becomes a perfect time for the buyer to renegotiate the price based on this new information generated by the inspection. This leaves the door wide open for a second round of negotiations. The price a buyer is willing to pay will never go up after inspections.
Why Realtors choose to place their sellers in this no win predicament is completely unfathomable.
The best and only way inspections should be performed is well before the property is placed on the market. The few hundred dollars it will cost the seller is money well spent in order to insulate the seller from further price reductions.
At some point in the sales process it will become inevitable these reports are performed.
It is entirely in the SELLER’S BEST INTEREST to maintain this control and have these inspections performed at their own expense. In the long run it will always save the seller time, aggravation and money.
By performing home inspection before a property in placed up for sale, sellers avoid falling into the price renegotiation trap. Informing a buyer as to the exact condition of a property before they make an offer remove one of the two most frequent sales contingencies and can save a seller quite a substantial amount of money.
James Joseph