 We are live you guys. This is another week of the Realty Success Hub and I am super excited to join you today. I'm Angela Brown and I'm from the cleaning side of the move-in move-out cleans of the cleaning industry that realtors are so fond of when either there's a seller or a buyer and a home transaction has to take place. So I'm super excited that I'm going to be part of this because I've spent my entire career trying to figure out how do we please the realtors and the homeowners and the home buyers and the banks and the other realtor and all those things. And so I just am super excited that I'm going to be part of this and today we're going to be talking about some of the fears that homeowners have when they go to sell their home. And with me today I have Brooke Bryant who's a realtor and I also have Erin Brown who's a realtor as well. Brooke is in Charlotte, North Carolina and Erin is in San Antonio, Texas. So Brooke I'll let you get started introduce us if you will share a little bit about who you are and how you got in the realty space and then we'll bounce over to Erin. So hey everybody so great to be back. Brooke Bryant I'm with Bryant Realty in Charlotte, North Carolina started in the real estate industry about 11 years ago as a second career. My husband's been in real estate land development and wanted to add another pillar to his business so we do home sales now and it's fun and exciting and a lot of clients do have beers and it's our job to try and help everyone through those. Brooke Bryant Well thank you for that and Erin how about you? Erin Brown Yes based out of San Antonio, Texas full-time realtor and absolutely love it but in the business going on 14 years now. So it's exciting times and an exciting market. Brooke Bryant Yeah well in any market I hate to say this but there are fears like oh no what am I what am I gonna do about this and then we have to say what is the this. So today I've got a couple of things that I want to ask you guys and either of you can answer or both of you can answer I will let whoever feels you know inclined to jump in and share with us the information but we talked a little bit last week about some of the fears that people have and we were able to get some of those resolved over the week we had a lot of questions and comments come in about some of the other things that we're talking about but the the big concern about what we have is when you're selling your home what does that look like and I'll make us small on the screen here so that we can see we can see here but there are there are fears that range from not being able to have your home ready in time to not being able to get what you're hoping for your home and so our first concern of picking up kind of where we left off last week is what happens if you price the house wrong or fear that you will price the house wrong how how do we resolve that either as a realtor or if you're you're you're selling the house by yourself so I'll jump in on that your realtor is going to help you price the home based on recent sales in your area with comparable homes and use a competitive a comparative market analysis to do that so they'll see homes with same amount of bedrooms same square footage one story two story as close as they can find to your home within the closest proximity in the closest sale date to help put a value on your home and then also to judge the market if there are homes in your neighborhood that are getting multiple offers within a day two days a week then that's going to help your realtor help you decide how to price your home and then the fear about pricing if your buyer isn't paying cash and they're getting a loan there's going to be an appraisal so that determines what the bank is going to loan the buyer for your home so that that's where there the sticking point is what the appraisal comes back to be and this crazy market we've seen buyers have been paying above ask price or above appraisal price and just paying that difference with cash what if you don't have the cash then you can't do that then you miss out that's been a big I work with a lot of first-time home buyers and you'll hear about that frustration charlotte north carolina it still continues to deal with that our inventory levels are getting better but I'm working with a buyer and they fall in love with the house we put an offer in it's got multiple offers if they can't come above and pay cash for that difference they're going to lose out on that house and hopefully the next one that comes along they'll be able to be competitive I've got a buddy of mine the bought a house during the the boost of the I don't know what you call it the craze or whatever of like last year and they put in $50,000 over asking price on their house and they were still turned down because somebody outbid them on that yeah yeah so there's what realtors refer to is the highest and best offer and that doesn't necessarily mean who's paying the most but whose offer has the least contingency so if if I'm offering you 100,000 for your house and Aaron's offering you 110 but I'm paying cash and he has to get a loan mine's for less money but I'm paying cash you don't have to worry about financing falling through so the seller could consider that to be a better offer and when you say contingencies what what are you talking about there is that like hey I will give you less money upfront but then I don't require you to replace the foundation of the home and fix the broken driveway and all that stuff if you agree to forgo um any repairs if you forgo an appraisal so regardless of what the home appraise for you're going to pay the agreed upon price um so you're bringing cash to the sale those are some of the contingencies are there any contingencies at all and I ask this just a personal greed but is there are there any contingencies where they say oh don't worry about bringing in a professional cleaner and the house can just be as is and we won't clean it at all we'll just clean it ourselves does that ever happen more often than not we see a request for a professional claim so they still want the house clean no matter what the contingencies are yeah because that's a pretty I mean that's not thousands of dollars that's that's um an affordable and it's not really contingency I mean you're not going to lose a deal over um a professional clean but it's it's it's it's an easy contingency or an easy negotiation point to make that yeah yeah you've been great you paid us above ask price you didn't have to get along of course we'll have the house professionally clean for you so it's a it's an affordable way to um to instill some goodwill got it if if that does become a sticking point oftentimes realtors will jump in and help out with that yeah and when you say realtors jump in what what does that look like comes out of our pocket okay so then back to the greed question which is the house cleaning end of things um if I'm a house cleaner and let's say a realtor has jumped in and they're going to pay that out of their pocket what is the communication to the house cleaning company that hey the realtor has jumped in we're paying for this out of our own pocket versus the buyer is paying for it or the seller is paying for it because that's one of the biggest confusions that we have is who's actually paying my my fee here because if a cleaning company comes in and they give you a quote of let's say $1100 for the cleaning that's the move in move out clean make sure everything is spick and span and then they get in and they find that there's I don't know some kind of a pest infestation or they find that there's something else that is going to take extra time or it's going to require an extra service and they have to charge more money who do they go back to for the money so how has that communicated from the realtor's perspective and in a perfect world what what do you wish would happen as as realtors we typically negotiate with companies on bulk discounts and fixed prices so whether it's a moving company or a cleaning company whoever that ends up being we try to get a fixed price per square footage on the clean for bulk basically in other words every transaction I do I'm going to hire your company to do a professional cleaning I need a fixed price for x amount of spare footage and then as those homes move in square footage I know more and less what I'm paying for and when I ask for a professional clean it's going to include your list of what you're willing to do with those upgrades right if we need a deep cleaning on the fridge or the oven or something it's going to be an extra 75 or 175 bucks whatever that is at least I know going into it as a realtor kind of what that expectation isn't more or less I know what those cleans are going to cost so I can factor that into you know what I'm offering a client on any given deal and when you're talking to a customer or a client do you factor that price into them say hey this is going to cost you $1,100 and I just throw that number out that's not a magic number or anything but do you factor that in and give them kind of a ballpark range as to what they're expecting when the house goes on the market you know I think realtors might might do it differently what I do is I have a list of third party providers that offer things like cleaning services pressure washing those kinds of things here's their average pricing and if you would like any of these services you're welcome to call them get them set up and then if it comes into a transaction where it's like a make or break on a home where somebody's willing to walk away from a deal a great example of that is home warranties I usually offer my clients home warranties if they work with me those usually run about five to six hundred dollars here in San Antonio and so I know going into every transaction that I have six hundred dollars set aside for a home warranty to bless my client with and so I've already got those costs set aside and then I offer those third party cleaning services for the home this is what these companies charge and you're welcome to call them or use whoever you'd like and that usually seems to work pretty well if I get in a situation where like there's a home that's really dirty or it was left in terrible condition I will often offer that as a as a nice gift you know in the process of hey I'll go ahead and cover that cost for you the only thing is here in Texas and it might be different other places if we do that with a client any cost that we give a client for a service has to be disclosed and we disclose that to the title company and let them know hey we're paying X amount on this transaction for X said service and is that it's the same in North Carolina we have a professional services disclosure that we provide our clients these are these are disclosures that I'm going to help you obtain or services I'm going to help you obtain but they sign off on it and then if as a realtor I pay for a service such as that for my client they'll put it on the closing disclosure as a as a realtor credit so how from a cleaning perspective how does a cleaning company get on your list of preferred vendors or preferred service providers at least for the way I run an operate business it's I basically test you and see if you offer a great service and if we've had any complaints once you've worked with three clients you get added to my lender my vendor list and then it's based on client feedback on your service and if I use you and you work well then I'll also offer your services to the brokerage I'm with and once you get put on the brokerage list then you've got multiple agents using that same service for the same more or less same pricing and again like for cleaning that's based on square footage okay so another question from the state of greed and cleaning what would a house cleaning company have to do to be qualified to be on your vendor list you say if they work out and what is what exactly does that mean if I show up on time and I do a good job is that good enough or is there a certain criteria or a checklist that you use that qualifies me or separates let's say the cream from the crop in my experience what it really ends up being is the quality of work that you do in the communication you have okay not only do I get feedback myself but my clients are going to give me feedback and if they go to move in and they're like hey this room was never clean this wasn't touched etc great example of that I had a transaction where we had a professional cleaning company come in and clean the home and up on move in the client came in and said hey we don't feel like they did a good job there's dead flies in the windowsills there's dust all over all of the fans on all of the lights we can see cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and I was like there's no way so I drove out to the home and sure enough across the board all of those things were there and so they did they did clean they just didn't do a very thorough job and so we ended up having them come back out we had to pay another service fee and they did those things but it was the last time we used that company now are there do you do any pre checks because I know a lot of house cleaning companies have a satisfaction guarantee where if you have to call them to come back and re-clean there's not a service fee it is it is part of what they promised you the first time and they should stand good for that do do you look at that it's been pretty hard to find professional cleaners and so it's pretty hit and miss and it's hard to find a company that's really on it we usually try to look for google reviews and see if they have any clients that we could call past clients it has been my experience here local that oftentimes when I call it's usually an aunt uncle brother of the cleaning company and I'm not getting true feedback either way on that and so it's it's kind of testing that company out and seeing how they do the first two or three times before they'll be added to a vendor list gotcha that is really enlightening thank you for that and I'll throw this in most brokerage offices have team meetings once a week and if you establish a relationship with a realtor I've seen it that a lot of these vendors will sponsor those team meetings they'll bring coffee donuts snacks lunch whatever for that meeting give a presentation about the services that they offer and that's a great way for a professional cleaning company or other types of vendors to get in with those realtors make those relationships get their foot in the door and if you come with that opportunity then you're going to do a really good job to try and keep the business of all those realtors and that office and getting all of their business and I love that answer yeah that would help you get on a on a preferred vendor list with not just me but um XYZ realty recommends you know and you and you can even get on their website as a superb service how how is a cleaning company do I get an invite to that weekly meeting you I'm sorry go ahead no go ahead Aaron I was just gonna say you can either go through the realtor and they would go through the broker or go direct to the broker I will tell you that those presentations are usually about five minutes long with two to three minutes of questions afterwards they're usually pitched right before the team meeting and everything's runs on a pretty tight schedule for those meetings because you've got you know 50 100 people sitting in a room and so it's one of those things where that you come in you pitch it very very quickly ask a couple of questions and then you know so you're not you're not talking about a 30 minute presentation or anything just the services offer and have good have good referrals to provide so because it is a quick presentation so you have good materials to leave behind for them to to to prove your work to show the services that you offer but it's just you know getting that foot in the door and they're they're companies that I used to this day that I met through those meetings years ago and we've done lots of business together so quick sidebar we've done a lot of meetings like that my company personally and a lot of homeowners association meetings where it's a home owners meeting with a whole bunch of people who have homes that could also hire you and one of the things that I did it was kind of rogue it was like a side thing that it doesn't have anything to do with fears I'm just taking a quick sidebar but what I would do is I would go to the area there in every city there's like a little place where you buy souvenirs and I buy a charlotte mug because that's the city that I live in and I would fill full chocolates and I would wrap it in cellophane and then I would stand at the door and I had a little basket and I would ask for people to give me their business card so that I could give them the door prize like we're going to have a drawing for a door prize and I always I assigned myself at every HOA meeting or the realtor meetings or wherever we did like the BNI meetings or any any meetings that I went to chamber of commerce or what have you that I was hey I've got the door prize for today people like oh we have a door prize committee I didn't know about that and then I would stand there at the door and I would collect the business cards and as people would give me a business card I would give them one of mine as well and say hey let me just give you one of mine because you never know then I would stand up and of course they say okay it's time for the door prize they would stand up even if I wasn't part of the presentation and I would stand up and I would say because they would announce me like hey she's going to give a door prize tell us who you are and what this prize is I would get up and say hey I'm Angela this is my cleaning company I'm the preferred cleaner for this particular area and the door prize winner is and then I would pull out a name and I would give them the coffee mug well everybody that went home had my business card because we swapped it in that exchange and then also they would see me at that meeting so obviously she said she was the preferred cleaner of this company right and so that was kind of like my little in and it cost me whatever the expense of the little mug which was usually you can buy them at the dollar store or something I mean they're not very expensive and then the chocolates that go inside you're talking under five bucks for that presentation in front of the group and if you're the person at the front of the group you carry authority and so that was a little tiny sidebar of how we would get ourselves then in front of the I don't know whoever it was that had to me love them super savvy very savvy well thank you all right speaking of which it is possible and this goes back to another one of the fairs that we have is sometimes there are big projects like a cleaning company will go in for for several cleanings and the I don't know the homeowner for whatever reason does not pay and so what happens is we have an incident where there's a lien against the property and the lien against the property is held until the cell of the home what happens if you are afraid that you have liens against your property that have not been satisfied and you have to resolve those before the cell of your home goes through well in the due diligence process once a home goes under contract it will be just covered if there are liens against the property even if you weren't aware of them there could be liens against the property before you became the owner of it that weren't ever cleared up whenever satisfied so those are going to be discovered by the closing attorney in North Carolina we all our closings go through attorneys and the lien can be satisfied with the proceeds at closing you can negotiate with the lien holder to pay off the lien pay a portion of the lien to satisfy it North Carolina I think our statute of limitations for a lien is 10 years but then the lien holder can request to extend that but knowledge is power so you need to know if there are liens is it possible like let's say that I had liens on my house and I was going to try to sell my house is it possible that in the buying of the home that the new buyer would help pay for some of that it is possible depending on your market depending on your location you can ask the buyer to pay for some or all of your lien yeah and you know in markets where there's very low inventory in a very competitive buying situation then that is something that you can negotiate almost everything in real estate is negotiable it's all about the realtor getting with third parties and trying to figure out the best solution for the parties involved yeah so don't not sell your home because you have fears because some of them can still be resolved even if you don't have experience or a background about how they might be resolved right right yeah and again knowledge is power you need to know and to work to resolve that issue at some point if you can't right now then work to resolve it at some point in the future and you could talk with the lien holder and see if you can negotiate it down you know they might rather have a portion of what you owe them in lieu of getting nothing for the foreseeable future so yeah just just find out what you owe and and work towards solutions to resolve it I love that one of the the fears that we have is home inspection revealing problems I know for example I'm not in the market to sell my home right now but that is one of the fears that I have right now and I know that because some of the the tile floors in our house they haven't cracked but like the the um I don't know what you call it but like the the grout has cracked and it has become crumbly and so when you walk on that part of the floor like it kind of like squeaks like it didn't before and I think maybe like the foundation has settled a little bit and I'm thinking that like on a what do you call it an inspection or something they're going to find out that like my house is like three inches lower or something that other you know like and then I'm going to have to pay a whole bunch of money how do you overcome the fear of that I'm happy to speak to that for a minute we basically every home we recommended our clients give an inspection report and the job of the inspector is to try to find any deficiencies with the home and so there's usually a laundry list of minor deficiencies it really when it comes to real estate what makes or breaks a real estate transaction is what we call the major five and those major five are the things that would really affect the house long term and you know those things would be the foundation in the roof the mechanicals of the house plumbing and electrical and so anything outside of that realm is usually pretty easily fixed in terms of some sort of negotiation whether it's something in lieu of or etc so things like you know grout unless it is a foundation issue and that's what it comes up to be those issues would be easily addressed and resolved typically if it's a major five that's usually where insurance gets involved we're dealing with several of those right now where you know hell damage to a roof yeah it's a big deal roof needs to be replaced so insurance is stepping in to replace those things and so they're usually pretty easily workable situations and solutions when it comes to most minor things and they'll be in most reports there's about 30 pages of those doors not closing quite tightly you know light switches that don't work etc etc and again knowledge is power so you can have a pre-inspection done before you list your home so that you know what efficiencies are there what defects are there so you know what you're facing before you put the home on the market and get into a situation where you're negotiating repairs with a buyer you can know that going in that will help you determine what you are prepared to fix what you're able to fix what insurance will fix before it goes under contract and then those things can make the deal fall apart you know if it's something that you can take of take care of before you put the home on the market that might be a little more peace of mind for for the seller and take away that fear that before before I put my home in the market I knew exactly what I was dealing with I know that when we bought the house that we're in right now we actually owned another home and we hired the I guess it was on the closing or something and the inspector came through and one of the things that he found that I did not see coming was in the shower where you go to turn the shower knob on and off the whole hardware had become loose from the wall and it was kind of like teetering in the wall he said that's not going to hold up to inspection and we said well I mean like the shower is already built around it how do you and he said you're going to have to go in through the back of the wall and you're going to have to tighten all of that hardware because somebody could pull it off and then it becomes you know a plumbing issue and it's not going to pass inspection you have to pay for it and because we were building the new home I immediately called the inspector and I said will you go take a look at the new home and make sure that as they're building the new home that that issue is resolved in the new home so that when I go to sell that home I don't have to pay for all of this expense again can we catch it right now in the early phases and he went over to that home and he said oh my goodness this is not set up correctly either and so we were able to right before we had purchased the home and before we closed I don't know if we closed on it or they were still building it or whatever I think we hadn't finalized all the paperwork on it but what had happened then as we were able to include that in our requests of you know maintenance and repairs and all that stuff within our window of purchasing the home they came in and they fixed all that bolted everything down and locked it down with two by fours or however they do it so that it wouldn't ever come out of the wall because I was like I don't want to have to pay for this expense twice on two and the guy came out he's like yeah this is this is bad and so they were able to fix that so now if I sell my home that's one thing I don't have to worry about so that fair was was fixed before I I even got there yeah smart so some of the repairs can be costly and this is one of the the fears that I think many people have when they're talking about like cracked foundations or you're talking about water damage or something like that are there any structural damages or structural issues that people should know about and prevent in advance or is there a way to overcome this like you said most things are negotiable can you can you negotiate something away of a costly repair that's that's part of a I don't know something that could stop a sale yeah so if if you're under contract on a home and the inspection process you learn that there is a defect in the home that is costly and the seller doesn't have the money to make the repair then you can negotiate that in the sale price so we were under contract for 500,000 this repair is going to cost 75,000 so we're going to adjust the price by all of it we'll meet in the middle you'll negotiate that out so yeah that cannot that can be adjusted in the sales price if there's if there's room for that also to kind of come up with that price what we usually do is we'll get two or three contractors out to give us a quote so let's say it's a foundation we'll get two or three foundation companies out as quickly as possible give us a quote take that average and now both parties know what a fair market value for that repair would be so that neither party feels like they're being taken advantage of two or three companies have said it's more or less gonna cost x and then we have something to negotiate with and we can come to an agreement where everybody feels good about it and very often the buyer will prefer that because then the repairs are done kind of under their watch and they can monitor it and it's not just hey the seller did some quick fix and then we're going to find out a few years down the road that the repair wasn't done in the manner that I would have had it done had I owned the home at that time there's only sorry the one the one area where we see a lot of discrepancy here is on fix and flips and so they're looking for a particular profit margin on a fix and flip and oftentimes they've got the cheapest contractors and materials on a fix and flip and so that's a little different scenario but in most other scenarios that would be pretty typical what we just talked about in the house that we live in right now all of a sudden one day in the bedroom I'm kind of telling on myself here but the ceiling started to fall apart and then the plaster started falling and I'm like this is a new house what's happening here and it seemed to be a leak in the roof but I couldn't I couldn't find the leak because there's no water up there so I'm like either it's coming in from the roof or something so I had a roofing company come out and they're like oh yeah this is going to cost you like thousands of dollars and it was an astronomical fee like you're going to have to rip off the whole roof and replace it and it wasn't done right and all this other stuff I was like well I mean like I'm not seeing wear and tear on any other parts of the roof it's just like this one spot so then I had a second roofing company come out and give me a quote and they weren't as much as the first but the price was so different that I was like I don't want to go with either one of them because is it all this money or is it like this much money what's the difference and why is the price so different so I've got a brother that's in the roofing business and uh he came to visit and I said hey I hate to do this to you but while you're here you know is there any chance that that I could run this by you and you tell me what and he said oh I'm going to climb up on your roof I'm going to take a look and he came back down off my roof and he said you have one little tiny thing where instead of the shingle going over the top it's like this and the the water's dripping right down in here and it's caused this little water damage and it's literally two shingles that need to be replaced and they need to hammer down that little thing he said I don't have any of my tools with me or I would do it right now but he said you ask somebody to come replace two shingles they shouldn't charge you more than $250 it can be done in less than a half hour and I said are you serious he said I'm 100 serious so I called I called a different company and I said hey listen it's two shingles I've got the spare shingles in my garage like from one we bought the house so that it matches I said it's one little thing that's come up and he said how do you know and I said I had two people come out and look at it there were different cleaning or different roofing companies and then my brother who's been in the roofing business for years climbed up on my roof and took a look and the guy gets up on the roof he goes that's exactly what it is it's that one little thing and he repaired it with the shingles that I had and he said I'm only going to charge my service fee he said it took less than five minutes to do boom boom boom we're done and I was like oh my goodness I could have paid like all the money and I replaced like my whole roof and they could have done a full tear off and got my insurance company involved and all that stuff and it was literally just getting the right person on the roof to give me an honest answer you know that you're fortunate that you did that I think a lot of people get get taken advantage of I had a client who had somebody after a recent hailstorm a company went through their neighborhood knocking on doors said we'll give you a free roof inspection they did they put a roof on for her said her insurance would pay for it her insurance did not they charged her put a lien on her house it was a whole it was it was awful so yeah they're sadly their company's out there that will take advantage of you so like Erin said get multiple estimates have multiple contractors come out and look at your job and and yeah if it's crazy high crazy low yeah that's a little that's a little scary but try and give yourself as much information as you can but when we're talking about home inspections and having them take a look at your home I've got a question about termites is that is that a big thing or can that kind of like be passed off to the next homeowner or is that going to stop a sale well and if you have a if you have a termite bond you can transfer that from the seller to the buyer termites are a big issue here in North Carolina I'm not sure if they are in in San Antonio they're a big issue here as well yeah so yeah it's a it's a big concern right now I have a transaction going on and it's a VA loan a Veterans Administration loan and they require termite inspection a lot of lenders don't require it's like $85 hunt to $100 here it's so worth it to do and it's it their wood destroying insects they can absolutely demolish you know if you're on a crawl space underneath your home if you don't have a good vapor barrier down there you can do so much damage so yeah I have have a termite inspection done and and keep termite protection on your home because you just never as your home ages moisture gets under your home or around your home you just want to prevent that it's a very preventable issue and so it's it's also I mean it is a big deal but some people feel like it's the end of the world companies can come out and remediate it and treat them and depending on the amount of damage it can usually get repaired and fixed and oftentimes it's it's only affecting one area or they're only into the porch or something under one window seal so sometimes it's not as scary as it sounds you know when you think like oh termites have infested my house you know people get really scared and it's it's usually fairly treatable and what about on the inspection if your home shows up with something like radon or lead paint or something like that because I know a lot of homeowners are afraid that they're not going to be able to I'm going to have to redo my whole ceiling if it's a popcorn ceiling and it has asbestos in it or something like that what are how how is that dealt with as a realtor knowing that there may be issues like that that come up well in North Carolina any home built before 1978 has the potential for lead paint and you have to disclose whether you know of any lead paint in the home or not for the most part it's all been painted over would replace that sort of thing but you do have to disclose it and you can test for the paint radon North Carolina there is a good bit of radon in North Carolina and the inspector can do it's not part of the regular home inspection but but it is an add-on for a couple hundred dollars they'll put radon machine in the home for a couple days they'll test the readings at different times and and like Aaron said with the termites it's something that can be it can be remediated pretty easily so nothing to be scared of but again just that's the purpose of the inspections is to discover any of these defects and address them yeah here in San Antonio we have a ton of asbestos and so that that's another thing as well to dress the same way yeah oh we've got a question that came in they said our home warranties a waste of money and what about replacing roofs near the end of the life instead of awaiting a problem home in its two decades old original roof i don't think it needs it but well i don't think home warranties are a waste of money um i've got a transaction right now where we found very few items on the inspection report but the home warranty company is addressing those for the seller i represent the buyer so those are being addressed by the home warranty company um so that's great for the seller and um and like Aaron said it's a great gift for realtors to to gift their client and as far as the roof goes really depends on the area i mean you can have a roof that's you know supposed to be a 25-year roof but there's very little material left on it just because the the climate's harsher there or something so um if you're look yeah that's i don't know that's just a situational thing if you're staying in the home um and you want to prevent any leaks and you've got the ability to replace the roof yeah don't necessarily go by the age assigned to the roof have have a roofing somebody that you trust go look and see how much life they say is left on it with the material that's left on the shingles yeah i would i would also say it depends on the type of roofing you do so depending on where you are in the in the country there's different types of roofing um asphalt roofing usually breaks down quicker than most other types um unless it's wood shake wood shake breaks down faster than than asphalt so if you have either wood shake or asphalt definitely have a roofing company come out and assess um you know if you've got aluminum or a tin roof you know you can get into you know how old that is and and if it's rusting out those types of things but most roofs you know last 20 to 30 years and if it's at the end of its life on an asphalt roof if you're looking up and you can see if it sparkles that basically means the material is gone and in what you're seeing there is fiberglass coming through and so it means the roof is pretty well shot and should be replaced and so so if that's the case then is it your home owner's insurance that covers that or is it a warranty cover a warranty that would cover that neither would cover that unless there's an act of god you know a health storm a wind storm something along those lines oh you're going to be paying for that out of pocket and so if you're looking to sell your home it's a good idea to go ahead and get a new roof on there that will probably come up either way unless you're willing to come down whatever the price of the roof is on the cell of your home because that's more than likely something that would be negotiated in on that cell because somebody's going to have to replace it if it's not you so back to the earlier question do you do that before you put your home on the market or do you wait until the inspector says ah your roof is shot and you need a new roof and yeah it's going to depend on how much money you have to work with what you're looking at as a return on your home and if it makes more sense to take that out of the purchase price for the sell price of your home when you're going to sell it or if you've got you know the 15-20 thousand dollars to replace it right now to do that no if you have a new roof on your home it will sell for more in the market right yeah then and and that's situational so well like Aaron said if you're in a position where you can go ahead and put the new roof on it's going to make your stand out if you're not then you're going to you're going to factor that into the pricing and when an appraiser comes out and they're looking at three homes that have sold in your neighborhood one just had a brand new roof and a brand new HVAC system and yours is original to the home that's going to factor in so if that's going to that's going to help dictate your price in the marketplace so does the appraiser come up with the price then or is the home inspector that tells you this needs to be replaced no the appraiser won't want to sign uh well they won't tell you how much it's going to cost you to replace it but your home inspector will tell you um this is the average lifespan of a roof with this material this is uh what you can expect from yours but this is the amount of material that's gone from your roof that's protecting your structure you might have three years left on it you might be at the very end of the life of your roof so the inspector is going to tell you how much where there is on it if it if it is imminent that it needs to be replaced the appraiser their job is to let the lender know what that home is worth so they're just going to factor that in that you know if the home's got a brand new roof on it it's going to be worth more than the one that's got a 20 year roof on it so that'll help you with pricing it or deciding okay am I going to shell off the money for this or am I just going to reduce my uh my asking price by to offset that all right now if that's true and I believe you when you say that but then my next question is at what point do you draw the line because I know a roof is a great big part of the house the so are the shingles on the outside of or so so is it what do you call the the siding yes the siding on the house and so is the landscaping do you replace the shrubs and rip out the trees and put a new sod at what point do you say uh the windows are kind of old they're 20 years old I go with butter what do you call them solar energy efficient windows and all that stuff at what point do you draw the line and say the house is what it is I think that has a lot to do with the experience of your realtor if you choose to use one they're going to come in and assess your home as a whole and see what would give you the most amount of money for your market in terms of the things that you should fix and what would make sense and then also they're going to talk to you about your budget and how much you're wanting to get out of the home and that would determine if you're replacing shrubs and doing landscaping and replacing windows or if you're selling the home as is because because both are options and it's really going to depend on where the seller is at and the experience of your realtor wow okay cool that was a really great answer I want to talk for a second about legal disputes legal disputes is one of those things that keeps coming up from some of the fears that homeowners have that there could be legal disputes anything from details of the deal to price of the home the closing dates property boundary lines I mean it can get it can get nasty when it comes to some some people whose stories we've heard bickering and fighting over the boundary lines like oh no they took two and a half feet of my property and you know if they don't give it back or if the neighbor doesn't give it back I'm not buying the house and I mean crazy stuff where where do you draw the line as a realtor let the attorneys fight that out I mean it really that comes down to those are legal issues and there are in North Carolina we are cautioned at every turn to remind us we're not attorneys we can't write amendments to our contract we can't pretend to practice law so that's I'm fortunate that I am in a state that real estate closings are done by attorneys and so they can find those disputes surveys aren't one of the one of the most often one of the legal issues we very often see are the property boundaries and those you can discover through surveys and surveys aren't typically required depends on your lender that they might but typically a survey is not required so I recommend in almost every situation that my buyer has a survey done so that they can learn of those disputes and they can be settled prior to closing I know that when we bought the home that we're in right now be based on the last home that we that we had and the the things that came up when we bought that home I know that when we bought this home like I saved all the paperwork like just that and this was a new home that we had built but I saved like the blueprints of the house and I saved like the land surveys and I saved everything not to be neurotic of it but I was like you know what I don't want to pay to have all this done again if all this information is the same because like the square footage of the house is not going to change and the land the the lot of the land is not going to change I don't think right not unless you're adding on to it or building something no we didn't but I just wanted to make sure that like oh if I if you know if I don't have to go through this again for the next house let me go ahead and save all the documentation and you know all the warranties for all the appliances and I mean like I said neurotic but I just wanted to make sure I didn't now that's very thorough and that's going to be great when you do sell that's going to be great information for the new buyer to have there's a there's a and the neighborhood where I live open fiber is being installed the and a lot of neighbors are up in arms about that and don't they feel like you know we didn't want this it's on our property but now the developer it's up to the developer if they want to have an easement a utility easement and they negotiate that with you know if open fiber comes in and they want to install this this fiber and the developer says yeah you can do it you know then the homeowner really has no recourse for that so they a lot of people felt like oh they had a legal right to fight this and no you don't that was an easement that was that was made prior to you purchasing the home so speaking of things that you have to disclose uh Teresa has a question and she says excuse me had a large tree in my yard raised a patio concrete up some had the tree taken down and also removed the root that was causing the issue is this an issue that would need to be disclosed on the sale of the home I would recommend disclosing everything if you if you've done anything on your property I would disclose it especially if it was affecting the foundation or the patio there's no harm in disclosing it and people are at least people can trust you going into that situation they know you're not trying to hide anything would it be the make or break on a home of someone purchasing it or not probably not but I would say always disclose always disclose because yeah at least here in Texas for three years people can come back and see the homeowner if there's deficiencies found that we're not disclosed on that disclosure and we're real estate there's attorneys involved so much of the time it's best just to disclose I would I always encourage my clients to just disclose it absolutely and it seems and very often in real estate transactions even the nicest people can really get their defenses up so you know something like that would come up and it was just an oversight just get it out of the way like Aaron says just disclose everything try and keep everything transparent and approach the transaction with goodwill that's great advice what do you do if you have difficult or unresponsive buyers where a request has been made and like you said there's a three-year window where people can come back and they can sue or whatever what if you're in the process of trying to resolve something and then like the potential buyers just ghost you I've actually run into this a lot over the past couple of months on both sides where people have just gone on vacation in the middle of a transaction that just disappeared for a week or two I had a client here two weeks ago just missed their closed date entirely whoa yeah I mean it was five days after closing is that they actually got ahold of us and said hey where do we stand and I said you are standing in the middle of a legal battle is where you stand you disappeared during the closing and you never showed up for your closing date here's the attorney's number and so this this has happened it has happened a lot I was just negotiating a contract with a seller who just disappeared for four days ended up having some back issues and went to the hospital and just didn't answer the phone and this was after an agreement was sent in and supposed to be signed and so it happens a lot I would say that time frames very very clear on time frames and letting people know the expectation of what's coming next and then figuring out if they can meet those expectations so that attorneys don't have to get involved because it's it's a legal matter at that point you've committed on contracts to do something and you're contractually bound and so just to walk away or go on vacation or hey I'll respond in a few days it's just not acceptable if you don't want to get sued so if you do get sued is that a civil suit um as as far as the how the it goes through court at that point that becomes a broker attorney situation in our state okay and so as soon as attorneys get involved in a transaction a broker steps in and that is their job they're going to handle it with the attorneys and they're going to fight that in court and so how that's ironed out in court at that point the realtor's job is to step back and let the attorneys take it over and in north carolina our contract is reviewed every year and is modified every year and every scenario that that the attorneys who draft these contracts can imagine are incorporated into that and so most of those things time is of the essence and you know it lists deadlines for and and stipulations for the obligations of the seller and obligations of the buyer and when both parties execute that contract they're agreeing to those terms so yeah you know fortunately it's a legal document and the attorneys will handle that and the appropriate legal manner and like Aaron said the realtor step back we are not attorneys and and can't practice law so but if you are in a real estate transaction be present be mindful of the documents that you signed and adhere to to what you said you were going to commit to which brings me to the next big fear which is the fear of negotiation so I don't I don't want to assume anything but let's suppose for example that I was the one that had the back injury or whatever and I just skipped off in the middle of the closing of my my house and now I'm in the middle of a legal battle and I'm thinking oh no I've got legal fees and I'm going to get raked through the coals because I screwed up and I didn't keep my end of the bargain can I just back out of the contract all together and just say hey I'm not going to do this or is that is that part of the legal battle now and I'm obligated to to follow through and then pay the attorney fees and all that stuff yeah you'd be in breach of contract depending on on all of the when it was and all of that very likely you'd be in breach of contract and you would have to make the buyer whole um so any fees that they've paid for appraisals inspections their earnest money deposits their due diligence fees you'd be required to make those whole and then um you know whatever the attorneys determined so that is a legitimate fear and I can't just say fooled you guys and then like make it all go away but now I'm I'm on the hook for it and I'm responsible to do whatever comes next yeah yeah what if that's really expensive don't do it don't do it don't do it all right so if we learned one thing today it's uh once you make an agreement and it's on it's in contract and it's on the dotted line do not walk away and make sure that your phone is turned on and that you can be reached and that if it goes to a cell phone service or whatever that you have a direct call through a number where you put your realtor on the pass through so it comes directly to you and that you don't ghost anyone but it's not that you're moving forward in good faith that that carries that that carries a lot of weight our contract says that if there's proof that you're moving forward in good faith you can't close on this date because of extenuating circumstances that will be factored into it but if you're just ghosting and just you know on a beach somewhere yeah that doesn't count I don't think it counts what about losing money on the sale fear of losing money on the sale like I know for example that in North Carolina where I live a year ago there were people knocking on my door going hey can I buy your house I'm like no it's not for sale but now the value is not as much as it was a year ago so if I was going to sell my house now thinking that a year ago I could have got like top dollar for it today I'm probably not going to get top dollar for what it was a year ago people are not going to pay over asking price and all that stuff so what what happens and do you just then wait and say well I'll wait till the prices come back up again so that I can make all the money on the house or do you how does that work when I'm afraid I'm going to lose money on the sale of my home when I should have sold it a year ago and I didn't well this is that happened to me um years ago before I was in real estate it was when they caught you know 2008 um I had a townhouse and I wanted to sell it and I reached out to the realtor who had done most of the work in that neighborhood and they said no we're not taking any more listings they're just not selling so I um met I met with another realtor and it was determined that I was going to have to bring money to closing I would have lost money on the sale so I it was a pretty strong rental market though so I rented my property and had great success with that so that may be an option for someone if they can rent the property out and then sell it at some point down the road or wait for the market to to get stronger but you it kind of depends on where you are too because it can kind of come out in the wash if you're selling lower you're probably buying lower too you're so if you're selling your house and looking to buy a house if you're selling high you're buying high if you're selling low you're buying low so I just can't wait until the money comes back up and then I sell a house for all the money then I buy a cheaper house and buy a cheap house yeah it doesn't work that way yeah I had people with all that boom going on people were like oh brooks sell my house okay where are you going well I don't know well yeah I probably can't afford to go anywhere well and that's the thing because we did look at I mean so many people knock on your door and they're like hey get up by your house and they're like well well I don't know what does a home cost and when I looked at the homes that we're selling in my area I was like well heck no I'm not going to sell my house because I've got less that's owed on the house that anything I could get into why don't I just stay where I am because I'm already happy here I just I like where I am right now why would I move the real estate is so situational and you really need to be able to lean on your on your realtor and all of the other professionals involved your attorney inspector survey or you really do need to to work with people that you feel good about and and lean on them because there's so many variables you said something a minute ago that caught my attention about renting the house and I wonder if you were renting the house are the banks going to work with you to do that or is this like a rent for sale like I rent you my house and each of the payments goes towards the sale of the home and then I'm financing it as a buyer how does that work I was just going to say we run into that a lot here and the reason we run into that a lot is because we deal a lot with military and they're usually putting a little to no money down which means in a year from now they're going to owe just as much or more on their home that they bought it for and so they turn around to sell it and there's there's no equity in the house and they're going what do I do with it I'm PCS-ing out and and I don't know what to do with my home I don't personally handle renter rentals but I've got really good rental companies that I work with that will come in and take that house get it on the market rent it out etc we're dealing with a situation right now where a client did a helock a home equity loan so they could purchase into another home and rent their home out because there was no equity in it and they didn't have money to bring to closing on their other home so there's all kinds of creative ways that you can do real estate is really going to depend on your agent and if that agent handles rentals but most agents know really good rental companies that they work with and they're usually happy to bring that company in and work something out and again that's going to be based on the market what's going on in that neighborhood and how much you can get out of the property there's usually good management companies as well that will manage the rental part so is that a property management company property management because most homeowners are going I don't I've never been a landlord I don't know how to take care of a tenant I don't want to fix toilets in the middle of the night like if something happens and so having your realtor bring in third-party companies that can help facilitate that is really standard in our industry and it'll give you know the person having to move or sell that peace of mind that yes maybe I don't have equity today but I can lease out my home for another 24 months while I go to Germany and a company is going to take care of that and I won't have to worry about it because some some money coming in can offset the price of the mortgage right so again if the house is totally upside down we've had we've had situations where people aren't cash flowing on the home in the rental market but now they're only paying $200 or $300 a month to hold that home while it's being leased out and it's not a huge mortgage payment they're able to cover those costs and still have an asset that will be appreciating inequity over time on the flip side of that we see people that profit two three four hundred dollars a month so it depends on the market in the home but there's always a workable solution that's I mean real estate is flexible yeah and like like exactly like Aaron said there's so many variables there are so many professionals that that we rely on and all of these fears that buyers have there's generally a solution to every problem you may have to get creative you may have to lean on some of those third-party vendors but work with people that you trust and more often than not you're going to come up with a solution well you guys this was so incredibly helpful thank you so much for joining me today for answering all these questions I know that I speak on behalf of a lot of the people that joined us today on some of the questions and concerns we will be answering questions in the comments and the notes below on the replay of this if you still have questions bring those in we're going to be meeting back here fingers crossed I believe that both Aaron and Brooke are coming back next week same time same place and they're going to be answering more of your real estate questions I'm going to throw in a couple of cleaning questions as we come because I know we got lots of house cleaning businesses that are watching this going hey how how do we work more with realtors the move in move out clean is a huge part of the the moving business so thank you guys so much for including me in this Brooke tell our listeners where they can go to to find you and learn more about you so again Brooke Bryant and Charlotte and go to ask Brooke Bryant and any questions that you have I'll be happy to try and answer I'm in North Carolina in South Carolina I'm licensed so that's the area that I know about don't know much about Texas but yeah if I can help I'm happy to do it thank you so much for your time today and Aaron where can our listeners go and find out and learn more about you or work with you yeah that's going to be a ask Aaron Brown and again I'm based out of the San Antonio area but we as realtors usually have pretty strong networks across the country and so if you're buying or selling you know from any part of the country you can usually get a hold of us and we can point you in the right direction or get you connected with a really good realtor in your area so we appreciate you guys and this was really fun we look forward to next week this was thanks again I'm Angela ask Angela Brown on all the social medias and until this time same place same time next week we will see you and have a great week thank you have a great week have a great week