BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 783.2: Home Buying Hacks: Inspections, Disclosures, and What to Look For w/Chris Hutchins

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Part 2: Knowledge is power, and this is even more true when buying a primary residence or investment property. In part two of our home buying hacks series, we’re back with Chris Hutchins from All the Hacks, as we touch on how to negotiate with a seller, what to look for in a listing, signs that you could score a killer deal, inspections, and the myriad of ways you can get out of a contract IF a home isn’t what you thought. Before you dive headfirst into real estate, tune in for some ESSENTIAL due diligence tips. In This Episode We Cover: Negotiation tactics elite realtors use and why you must know what a “win” is  Getting ahead in a hot housing market and signs of a desperate seller/agent  Home inspections and using yours to get seller credits or to walk away from a bad deal Quick wins you can use at closing for a few hundred (or thousand) dollars in savings  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch BPCON2023 Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram David’s YouTube Channel Work with David Pick Up Some of David Greene’s Best Selling Books Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob's Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's Twitter Rob's YouTube Past BiggerPockets Podcast Episodes Mentioned: How to Start with $10K House Hacking Tax Benefits Hear Chris on The "BiggerPockets Money" Podcast “All the Hacks” Episodes Mentioned: Insurance Net Fulfillment Over Net Worth Tune Into the “All the Hacks” Podcast Connect with Chris Chris email Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-783-2 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to our three-part home buying hacks series, where we are giving away all the hacks at every stage of the home buying process. We're here with Chris Hutchins, host of the excellent podcast, All the Hacks. In our first segment, we break down insider secrets to finding and working with an agent, and now we'll get into what to look for in a listing, signs that you could score a killer deal, inspections, and the myriad of ways that you can get out of a contract if the home isn't what you thought. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle, active spreadsheets, active phone calls, active stress. Here's a better question.

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Let's say someone's gone through this process. They pick their agent. They've figured out what they're doing and they find a house. And they're trying to decide, is this a good house? So let's start with that before we get to the offer. It's like you have a place in mind. You're looking at this listing. Maybe you do, maybe you don't have an agent yet, but what are the things that are really important for someone to be paying attention to when they're looking at a listing either online or in person?

What do you look for? I like to find stuff that needs a little bit of work, a little TLC personally on my end, just because I don't really like paying the premium of someone else's fine-tuned work that I probably don't like anyway. So I don't want to go in and usually do like a full rehab. that's not really my space, but I'm looking for something that I can really spice up with a nice paint job, maybe doing a lighter cosmetic renovation like churning out the floors or something like that. So I'm not necessarily looking for top tier. I'm just looking for something that I can come in and kind of add my touch to. I don't really like paying for turnkey properties personally, but it all comes down to what your buy box is. What about you, David? In a hot market,

like where we are today, it's usually a good time to buy real estate because when there are more buyers than there are product to buy, the odds of prices increasing are favorable because you've got a favorable supply demand ratio there. However, it becomes harder to get into the asset in those environments, which is why most people get discouraged. There's also an element where people aren't educated, so they all chase after the same homes. They want the ones with the best listing photos, the best locations. They're moving, ready. It gives you that emotional tingle that you just love. Those are the houses everyone looks for. You really want to go against the grain. Sometimes, smells can really benefit you when you're trying to buy home because it's going to turn off a lot of

your competition. Ugly floor plants. People don't realize it's usually not as expensive as you think to move walls around. But when it's got a closed-off kitchen, you can't see what's going on in the family room. The wife's thinking, I can't see what the kids are doing. I just don't like it. That's as far as they go. They don't realize that you can spend $2,000 and move a wall.

You can see everything that's going on there. Then painting and flooring, you can really, you can fix homes up for a lot less than what people think today. But you have to see the opportunity, not the move and ready product. And so how long the house has been on the market play into this? When you see something that's been on for a while or we'll get to something that just came on after. Hey, I mean, it's just like online dating, right? I don't do online dating, but I know how the thing works. If she's been single for six days, she's probably not in a rush to take your response to go out with you Friday.

But if she's been single for six months, she's probably going to give you a little bit more attention when you send that message. When a seller first puts their house on the market, they have all the leverage. They have tons of interest. People are going to look at their home. Showings are being scheduled. Agents are calling all excited. We really love the house. Do you have any other offers?

It's this frenetic, crazy emotional pace where the sellers are trying to think of how can I leverage this to get as much money as possible, which is really where I'm trying to guide my clients away. I don't want you in that feeding frenzy. If no one buys that house after 14 to 21 days, interest is starting to slow by day 30, day 40, they're getting worried. Okay, it's not who's the best guy that I can take to take me to prom. It's, am I going to prom at all? I just want to date. Does anyone want to buy my house? I'm stuck. I might not be able to move. And I write about this in some of the books that I have published for bigger pockets for agents. There's this spectrum of fear and greed. We usually all start off on the greed side.

And as you slide across, you end up in the fear side. And you're worried. I might not sell the house at all. So in most markets, depending on what your average days on market, like this wouldn't apply in an area with $7 million homes that tend to sit on the market for six months before they sell. But for your regular starter homes, they should be selling in less than 30 days in most markets in the country. So the minute you get past that point, you're going to start seeing some worry in sellers and they will be open to more aggressive offers or terms that are more favorable to the buyer. What happens if you are in a hot market? And let's say, you know, you've identified a neighborhood. you've looked, maybe a house comes on every two or three months, and you know, like, this is what I want. You know, you say the moment that house comes on the market, it's hot, it's the worst time.

Is there a way to get ahead of that? Is there a way to find homes before they get on the market and buy them? Is that finding the right agent? Or how do you kind of get what might be a hot home before it's hot? Rob, what have you been doing? You've gotten a couple deals this way? Yeah, so there are definitely a few, I mean, there's, let's see, there's the creative finance and the sub two deal, right? and that's effectively where you're cold-calling a bunch of property owners,

and also wholesaling, where you cold-call property owners, and basically try to buy the property directly from them versus going the realtor route. That's a very popular niche within real estate. But honestly, I think having a really big network of realtors that you're friendly with is super important. And more than just having like a bunch of realtors in your network, finding a realtor that I see,

and this is sort of where the marketing thing kind of comes into play too, but finding a realtor that's very good at marketing and having a vast network of realtor friends that can pass each other deals to you or pass deals to each other, that to me is super important because if you find someone that's like very new and very green in the industry, they probably don't have a lot of other real estate colleagues necessarily. But if it's someone that's been working in the industry for a while, they have the opportunity to find all these deals before they ever hit the market. So I have realtors that are texting me all the time that they're like,

hey, my bud just sent me this. It's going to hit the market next week. They're interested in selling it before even going to market. Are you interested? And I'll look at a deal much quicker, much faster and much more intentionally knowing that I've got first dibs on it. Do you think that applies for kind of consumer? Should I, if I'm looking to buy a home in a neighborhood, should I just talk to all the agents in the neighborhood and say, hey, I'm looking to buy it home. There's nothing on the market I want right now. But I just want you to know if you can find me something, I'm ready to go and just talk to 10 agents. Do agents like that kind of behavior? No, not really because you kind of send the message that you're looking for an open

relationship and they're wanting a committed relationship. So it doesn't benefit me as an agent if you come and you're talking to 12 agents in the years. If you find me the deal, I'll buy it from you. That sounds great, but I don't need to sell it to you. If I get a listing, it's so hot right now. Everyone's going to want to buy it, right? I don't have to discount my commission.

There's people that would probably give me extra commission if they wanted to get that home. or I want to be able to go to my seller and tell them I got 10 offers on their home and I want to look like a rock star to them. So I don't think the go wide instead of deep strategy works unless it's a buyer's market. When you are in those situations where it's very difficult to find someone to buy a home, we're talking 2010 when there was for sale signs everywhere. Listings were all over the place. REO inventory was massive. But there weren't a lot of pre-approved buyers that were willing to step in and buy a house. Then that strategy makes a lot more sense.

That's where you're reaching out to all these agents saying, hey, if you get a deal, bring it to me and I'll buy it because you're the prize in that situation. They need a buyer. And you're basically saying, listen, I'm one of the few buyers that's out there that can do this thing. But if you want my business, you're going to have to make it worth my while. That works a lot better than in a market like today where you're just one out of a whole bunch of other people that are all struggling to try to get a house. Yeah. I'm actually really glad you asked that, Chris, and I'm glad you clarify, David, because Chris, for reference, I'm in about 16 different markets around the country. So I actually

have a massive network of realtors in different cities, they're all very aware of exactly what I'm looking for. So when they get a pocket listing or an off market listing, they text me directly. When I'm working in a city specifically or in a market specifically, I do want just one realtor. And that's why I say, I want to find a realtor that's got a lot of realtor friends that can help find some of those off market deals. So it's about finding someone that's connected. Is that as simple as just seeing whose name pops up in a neighborhood most with the for sale signs, like who represented most of the sales or any other tactics for finding that super connected agent? I see why it would look that way, but there are so many real estate agents, Chris.

It's like the ones you see are the tip of the iceberg. There's so many of there. There's way too many agents. We don't need this many. It reminds me of a scene in the office where Dwight and Michael are walking through a crowded room. And Dwight says there's too many people. We need another plague. There's just so many agents that have flooded into the real estate space, like people coming to California in 1849, think of they're going to strike gold. They're all fighting to try to get that seller to think of them. It's just this massive marketing campaign that every agent is throwing themselves in front of people. And now you've got investors that are also sending letters to those same people saying, I want to buy your house. I want to buy your house. Most home sellers know in general,

they have what everyone wants. Their home is valuable. You're probably not going to put things in your favor by just talking to every real estate agent is out there and saying, hey, I want to buy a house if you get one, because if they can get a listing, it's guaranteed to sell. There's no reason they're going to go to you particularly. And then this is a very short question, but it's important. How much does the brand behind the agent matter? Is it all about the agent or is it all about the agency they work at or the brokerage firm they work at? The only people that think a broker matters is the broker. Your clients never care who your broker is. It's 100% the agent. Yeah. So if you're trying to find someone and they're like, oh, you can work with my colleague on the, that's like

red flag. It used to be really useful, just a little history lesson, because there was a time where if you wanted to buy a house that Remax was listing, you had to go to a Remax agent at that office to buy that house. So Remax had their listings, Coldwell Banker had theirs, Century 21 had theirs, and you would jump from broker to broker and look at their inventory. When we created the multiple listing services, this was an agreement between all brokerages that they would all put their listings into one central location that everybody could see, which eventually morphed into the online listing portals that we all see when we're looking for homes. That eliminated the value of going to an individual broker because now you can see everybody's inventory in the same place.

And if people that you know had success using those kind of like online brokers that are like, we're just going to cut your rate and give you huge discounts, you know, I know Redfin does that. Has anyone, have you heard success stories there? Is the savings worth it? In our industry, Chris, I'm just going to tell you the brutal truth. I look for a redfin agent to be on the other side of the transaction because I know I'm going to destroy them in negotiation. They are, because they don't make hardly any money on these deals. They usually go there when they're desperate for food. I'm starving.

Please, Redfin, give me some deals or whatever the discount brokerage is. I have had massive success, particularly targeting listings that are Redfin listings because those Redfin agents are not all the time. I'm sure there's going to be a Redfin agent out there. going to say, well, I'm a Redfin agent and I'm good. Yes, they do exist. I sell the most Redfin homes in this neighborhood. Yeah, like that might even be an advantage to tell people to look for those because your agent is going to have a field day with their agent if you have a good one. Yeah. Last tip. I got one more tip here. If the listing says run, don't walk, it's probably not that great of a listing. We were just talking about this yesterday. Like every listing agent is putting that

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Whether it's, you know, hot home, whether it's kind of the home you're not sure about and you want to rehab a little bit. What do you do when you've got someone and you're like, I want this home or at least I want to consider it and you're going through that diligence process of trying to figure out doing inspections. How do you optimize that part of the process to make sure you're getting the right home at the right price? First thing for uninitiated to understand, writing an offer is not a commitment to buy a house. A lot of people get stuck dragging their feet. They don't want to write an offer. They need time to think about it. They need time to pray about it. They need time to

talk to their mom. They need time to analyze it. By the time they get comfortable, write an offer, someone's already bought the house. This happens a lot of the time. When you write an offer, most of the time, you will include a contingency, which is an allowance to back out of the deal and recover your earnest money deposit if you find something you don't like. The main three contingencies are inspection contingencies, appraisals, and loans. So if you can't get your loan, the house doesn't appraise at value or something is revealed when you're inspecting the home, which can in most cases literally be, I looked at the front lawn and I didn't like the way the grass looked. when I inspected it, I want out. You can use that contingency for just about anything.

It's okay to rush to put a house in contract and then slow down when you're in contract and order your pest inspection, order your home inspection, order your pool inspection, order your roof inspection, whatever it is that you're looking to do. Take your time from that point. And if you decide you don't like the house, you want to back out, you can without penalty. What about hot markets where there's no contingencies or people are saying we're not accepting offers with contingencies? Are there secret contingencies you can kind of put in? Are there ways to get out? Or what do you think about those?

Here's a couple hacks that I'll share with you that normally you've got to be my client if you want me to know this. There's a rule in California that once you receive the disclosures on a property, you have seven days to back out after receiving them. It gives you time as a buyer to review these disclosures. That is not a part of the contract that realtors use. That is a state law that cannot be waived in a contract. Many times listing agents, because like I said, they're not all good. You get that discount agent. you get the person that hardly sells homes.

They're arrogant like, oh, I'm going to sell this thing because everybody wants my listing, but they don't know those little rules. So we've had times with our clients where the listing agent did not provide the disclosures up front. They just didn't have their clients fill them out. The clients didn't want to fill them out. They didn't know why they were important. If I see there's no disclosures, then they make me waive contingencies.

I will put the house in contract, wait for them to give me those disclosures. And then the timeline starts. I have a certain amount of time after they've been. I'm trying to remember if it's three days or seven days. I believe it's seven days. but I have three in my head. That might be something else. Anyway, we then have a period of time to decide if we want to move forward on that house.

And we backed out and they said, well, you don't have an inspection contingency. We said, yeah, here's the disclosure law. There's nothing you can do about that. That's one loophole that we've looked for. That is, that, that's good. You dirty dog. Everybody go back 30 seconds and listen to that again. That is so good.

I can see why you didn't want to necessarily say that on the podcast. You don't want people to know. That's exactly right. And so when I'm selling homes as a listening agent, we have our people fill these disclosures out. And if you write an offer to buy the house, the first thing I do is say, review these before we even accept your offer. I want it to be signed that you've looked at them to start that timeline as fast as possible. I also, it's why I want people to come to me to be their agent because like I said, when you use an agent that doesn't sell a lot of homes, they don't know that. And even more importantly, I know that they don't know.

And when I sense that as the agent, that's where I start shifting everything to protect my client. Another one that people don't think about. Usually when you buy a house, you have a period of time to send in your earnest money deposit. So there are certain times where there's two houses and you like them both and you don't know if you're going to get one. So you write offers on both houses and then you get lucky and end up two of them. What am I going to do now, right? Well, if you don't send the earnest money deposit in and you cancel the contract, there's really

no recourse that the seller has to come back after you and say, no, you, you, you have to give me money for this. There is no money in the escrow to take out. So when you're a buyer, either put more money or a longer period of time before you have to put in your earnest money and use that time to do your inspections, do your praying, talk to your mom, go through your due diligence. Or in some cases, I will admit, I bought houses out of state and the listing agent and the escrow company literally did not ever check to see if I sent the earnest money in. I've closed on several houses in Tennessee that I never sent the earnest money for the entire escrow. And nobody even asked about it.

I just sent the whole money into clothes. And I was fascinated that that happened. But it probably happens in more markets than people think. Or with agents that aren't experienced selling houses like this hypothetical redfin agent we talked about that doesn't even know they're supposed to check, you might make it 10, 12, 14 days before an escrow officer realizes, oh, we don't have earnest money. And they contact your client about looking into it, which is plenty of time to get some of those inspections done without a contingency. I love that. And it's funny because I took that strategy we

mentioned earlier where I used the seller's agent. And in fact, we made an offer and they set disclosures like two hours before we made the offer. It's like quick cursory glance. And fortunately, everything worked out, but I did not get reminded by the seller's agent that I might have some time to back out. And I think that's one of the risks when you use the seller's agent is that they might be, they might give you a little bit of the edge to try to get the deal done because they might make a little bit more. Not at the risk of kind of completely tanking the purchase price for their seller, but they're certainly not going to try to come up with creative ways to save the deal and get you out. Yeah, of course not.

Those bros ain't loyal. Not to you. That's awesome. Any other things when you're going through inspections, things that people often miss, things that you learn. I feel like every time, and it's only happened two times, but every time I bought a home, like 30 days later, I'm like, how did I miss that? Any tips for finding all the that's?

Yeah, sure. So I think one thing to keep in mind, and David kind of hit the nail on the head with this one is when you like get into escrow. If it's your goal to get into a property, get into escrow as fast as possible. I typically run two sets of analytics, especially with rental portfolios. I have my back of the napkin analytics, right? Where I just want to know, does this property feasibly work? If it kind of does, okay, great, I go into escrow. And then I run my deep dive analytics.

analytics for that, right? The reason I say this is because a lot of people, like David said, will spend so much time just getting, you know, like analysis paralysis and then they'll lose out on the deal. One of those things that typically give me a lot of analysis paralysis back back when I started was this little phrase in the listing that says, as is, no, seller not willing to make any repairs to the property. And so that held me back from ever buying properties or ever making offers until I figured out that that really doesn't mean anything. Really, you can buy a property as is. But David, correct me if I'm wrong, there's no actual legal paperwork that is signed that says that you can't actually ask for concessions. Because what's happened for me

100% of the time is I'll make the offer on an quote unquote as is house. And then I get the inspection report and guess what? I ask the seller for $10,000 worth of repairs or a $2,000 credit or whatever, right? So just because something says as is doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take that at face value and that's something that I think a lot of people miss when they're buying their first or second or third property. 100% correct. I laugh in the face of as is. It means nothing, nothing.

As is is a completely toothless claim. When someone says I'm selling my property as is, what they're saying is I don't want to make any further concessions. But no seller wants to make concessions. It just doesn't matter anything. The only time someone could say I'm selling a house as is, is if you have no contingency, and your earnest money deposit is so high that you would not want to back out of that deal. Because you could always back out of a deal.

You'll just forfeit the earnest money and the seller will get to keep it. So let's say, Chris, you asked earlier, what if you just can't get contingencies? And all the things we've mentioned, you don't have any wiggle room. But what if you just make your earnest money deposit really low? Like, all right, no contingency. Short escrow, I'll give you everything you want $3,000 earnest money deposit. You find something you don't like it in the house. Worst case scenario, you lose $3,000.

And no one loves it, but it's better than closing on a house that has a bunch of problems. So don't ever believe as is. Rob and I bought a house together, actually. He kind of got to see behind the scenes of I was kind of working the negotiation through our realtor. So it was like me telling Rob to tell our realtor, hey, say this. And he saw some of the just the angles and the experience that when you've been through these escrowes you develop, sellers always start off with a hard stance. I'm not taking less than $3.5 million.

And then three weeks, four weeks later, all of a sudden, three million starting to look like a possibility. I'm not giving them anything. Well, we get these inspection reports and, hey, your pool has got some issues. Your landscaping has some issues. Your roof has some issues. It's going to be $75,000 worth of work that needs to be done. You give them a week or two of sweating that out. They start to think a little bit differently. And so oftentimes in near the buyer, you want to gather as much as you can about what's wrong with this property, present it to the sellers, and then wait. Let them marinate in their worry that you're going to back out of the deal or are going to find something else and they're going to have to give you concessions.

The knee-jerk response is almost always no. I will not do it. But if you wait long enough, those knows frequently turn into yeses. So when I'm listing a house, I will have my client pay for a home inspection, which they never like doing because they're 500 bucks, but it saves you so much money, Chris. You would ask for other hacks when you're in escrow. Anytime there's an inspection that's done, the perspective is as crazy as this is, is the buyer's buying a house in perfect condition.

And if anything's wrong with it, they deserve a credit or they deserve a pair. They deserve something to put this house back into perfect condition. Frequently, the house is in much better shape than other houses in the neighborhood, but they still use that inspection to get a discount. Short answer is, if you are buying a house and it's not a situation where they have another buyer willing to pay more than you in backup position who's going to jump right in there, anything absent that, you can ask for credits, you can get a significant chunk of your closing cost paid for by the seller.

or if you wait long enough into the escrow before you ask, almost regardless of the condition of the home. So when I'm selling houses, that's how I get people to waive the inspection contingency. You're going to get a home inspection paid for. We're going to give that to the buyer at front. We're going to say, here's what it looks like. Here's all the reports.

If you don't like it, find another house. But if you want this house, this is what you're buying, and you're going to waive those contingency. So when you're selling, that's what you want to do. When you're buying, you want to avoid it. And then one practical thing to look for that everybody misses is what we call the sewer lateral connection. So there is a sewer line that runs from your home out to usually the sidewalk where it connects to the city sewer line. Those plumbing lines, if it's an older home, usually running through the

front yard, can become infiltrated by tree roots. This is a crazy thing. But when the roots are just pushing against that PVC pipe for years, they will eventually push through there. And then the roots will grow. And these sewer lines can become clogged and they're very expensive to fix. So one thing I tell every home buyer who's tried, like, what could I miss? What's the that thing that I might have missed? Get that sewer line scoped by a plumber before you buy the house during you due diligence and make sure that there are any clogs because those skins can be 10, 15 grand a fix when they get messed up. Yeah, that did happen to me. We did a sewer scope. There was a problem with the sewer. They sent out the plumber to quote unquote fix the sewer. And we asked for the

sewer scope like an hour before closing and they're like, oh, we didn't do one. But everyone's hands were sort of tied. It was December 31st. We were all trying to close that year. It was going to mess everybody up. So we were just like, all right. Well, I mean, if they fixed it, then in theory, we should be good. My wife moved in with our two kids. And then that week, ramen noodles and poop show up in our bathtub. And it was a whole thing. And so lawyers got involved. And it was a whole thing. And basically, what happened was the seller's agent lied to us about what, about the repair and basically never even told the plumber kind of thing. And so because we didn't get it re-scoped, and while we didn't do it, while they owned it, it became a whole problem for us. So I would say from a sewer scope standpoint,

if you do have to make repairs, make sure you pay for two sewer scopes. And what do you guys think about inspections when the seller's already done the inspections and they're in the disclosures? And it's, yeah, I remember when we bought this house, the disclosures like, here's the building report, here's the roof, you know, inspection, here's the termite inspection. Like, they were all there, do you still recommend people go do them themselves also? Usually not. Like the thought, the fear is, well, that's the seller's inspector. But the inspectors themselves are licensed professionals that don't really care who the

seller is, who the buyer is. They just want to make sure they don't miss anything so they don't get sued. So what I tell my clients, when you're getting inspections someone else has done, is call the home inspector and ask them. Like, you can actually do that, especially if you're the one who pays for the inspection. But even if you're not, hey, I see in your inspection line 9c2 shows that. this is that something I should be worried about? You get great information from home inspectors. They give you the context that's often missing, especially because when you're first buying a

house, or even if you've owned a lot of houses, like, Rob, you could probably admit, we don't know what a lot of that stuff means. You see a report and it lists something. You're like, well, is that a bad thing or not a bad thing? Just ask them. Do you see this very frequently? Oh, yeah, every house has that issue with the tresses in the attic or whatever the case is. No, that's very concerning. That electrical system should not be wired that way. I rarely ever see that, that's a big problem. So having those conversations with the person that inspected the house and then specifically asking, is this a common problem or is this concerning to you? Or maybe when you looked at the house, what stuff from this report stood out to you in your experience?

Now you're getting 20 years of experience to that home inspector's perspective benefiting you as a person buying the house. I like it. I'm going to rapid fire through a few things quick that I've done in this part of the process. One, we did get an inspection that said that there were termites, I got another inspection and found someone that was willing to crawl through a smaller hole than the original inspector was to figure out what was wrong and find local treatment that was going to be less expensive. So I think any time an inspection reveals something that could be expensive, it could be worth doing a second one. Another one is I'm trying to figure out when we're trying to buy a home what the person cares about because sometimes there's sellers that really just want

to close fast. Some want the most money. Sometimes, you know, someone might just want to make sure that the house is going to be taken care of by a good family. You know, like, I find that if I could figure that out, either through the agent or, you know, some other way, maybe from some neighbors. Sometimes, you know, we ask the neighbors about the sellers, you know, you can try to optimize what you're doing. Because if all you want is, if you know what's important to them, if they care about fast close, then maybe that's the thing you optimize for.

And, you know, my brother-in-law's tip was always, it's a lot easier to extend a fast close than you think. So if you say we're going to close in 30 days, you need to push it back, you know, day 30, it's a lot easier. I'm going to throw a couple little things that I've thrown in contracts or learned and regretted not doing. I'm curious if there are any last things that you try to negotiate for. For me, I always had this rule when I bought a car that's like try to get them to throw

in the floor mats. And for the home, I always love getting a little extra at the end of the deal. To hear Chris's full list of extras, he's been able to work into a deal. Keep listening. The next part of this conversation will drop tomorrow. So make sure you're subscribed to the Bigger Pockets for Real Estate podcast. and make sure to check out Chris on the All the Hacks podcast, wherever you get your podcast. Do you ever notice how every passive investment somehow turns into a very active lifestyle,

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