[Music] Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I am your host as always Stan McCune realtor here in Greenville technically Greer but you know we call it all Greenville and this podcast is all about real estate and the local Greenville Market if this is the first time you've listened to a podcast or maybe the second or third time I just want to remind you guys make sure you hit that little subscribe button it helps the show make sure that you download episodes as well I I don't think you necessarily need to do that every time but when you do it it also helps helps the show helps us to get out to more people Apple likes that in their algorithm but more so than that please leave us a review and at least a rating but also ideally a review that's really helpful we love to see that come through and if you need me if you need to reach out to me my contact information is in the show notes those of you that have reached outs me you know that I pride myself in being responsive I try to be as responsive as possible I'm constantly on my phone I live on my phone that's just the way it is weekends weekdays week nights whatever the case may be reach out to me I am available all right today we're going to be talking about assembling your real estate Dream Team assembling your real estate dream team and let me preface this by saying for a lot of people assembling their real estate Dream Team looks like them basically going through me as their realtor to kind of help them to do that and that is totally fine that's one of the values of a good realtor we' talked about that before but I wanted to break it down some people prefer to be a little bit more Hands-On they want to do some of that leg work themselves and that's totally fine for those that want to do that themselves I've got no problem with that I'm totally fine with clients that want to use people that they have used in the past or that they have good rapport with that is a totally acceptable way of going about this but I want to give you a filter through which to understand how I I assemble my team and if you find yourself in a situation where you're assembling your own team or if if there is maybe one part of the puzzle that you want to assemble that you want to be more Hands-On or whatever the case may be I want you to have a filter to put that through to understand what all the Dynamics are that go into putting a good team together to make sure that you have a real estate team that can help you when you're buying and selling but but particularly I'm thinking from the standpoint of of buying real estate here so we're just going to go down the line of like several key people in the real estate transaction and discuss what aspects of those people are the most important aspects the things that you need to take into consideration and I want to start with the lender this is a very important part Maybe side of your realtor the most important part of the process and we need to start by By Me explaining that not all lenders are equal they're not all equal there is a lot of variety among lenders you've got mortgage brokers these are guys that they issue the loan but then they are going to immediately sell it to another bank and then you know you're never going to actually or you might or you might not actually make a payment directly to the broker you might just you know they might sell it to BB&T and you just start immediately making payments to BB&T even though that's not who you originally went through there are local banks banks that are right here in town there are the The Big Box types of of banks that are National I reference BB&T Bank of America there are kind of the online only banks which would be kind of like the quick and Loans or you know Chase Bank also does technically have branches but I would kind of glump them kind of more into the the online type of options there are Credit Unions as well obviously that operate in a little bit of a different way than you know a local lender they're like a hyper local lender but not quite the same as just a standard local bank so there's all sorts of of different Banks and they all have their pros and cons obviously what people tend to gravitate to tend to think about immediately is who's going to give me the best rates right who's going to out of all of these give me the best rates and that obviously is a very very important consideration and I recommend that you at the very least price things out from a local lender from a from I should say a local bank a local credit union a and a mortgage broker it's it's good to have two to three people involved now now you want to make sure if they're pulling your credit that your credit can handle a few different hits but normally when you're buying a house they're expecting that to happen you know when they look at your credit in underwriting they'll see okay you had a few Banks hit your credit all at the same time that's just because you were you were shopping around for for mortgages usually and I have to say usually because it it differs for everyone that's something you want to talk to with your lender but usually it's it's going to be okay for that to happen but there's another Beyond just the rates what how how cheap your closing costs are how low your interest rate is going to be there's another very important factor in choosing a lender and that is some lenders are actually going to be more attractive to the seller and when the seller is reviewing offers if if all us is equal they might choose an offer that has one lender versus another okay now I'm I'm doing a quick drive by but I want to to go down a little bit deeper into both of these Concepts let me start by saying this in my experience the best options tend to be the local mortgage brokers and the the local banks credit unions can be a good option for outside the box types of things but often times they end up being actually a little bit more expensive than just the the normal local banks or just the normal mortgage brokers and the reason for that is that credit unions tend to hold on to the loans themselves they're they're kind of operating in a different space they're not going to sell loans whereas regular Banks oftentimes they will they will hold some they'll sell some I mentioned that Brokers they always sell the loans and so Credit Unions tend to be good for Creative types of of deals because they're looking at their portfolio of loans that they have and deciding okay we we have enough space to be able to to lend for this type of property but it's going to be a little bit higher interest rate so often times their interest rate is is the going to be a little bit higher than you'll experience with some of these other banks that are handling more conventional types of loans and and so often times a credit union isn't your best bet unless you're doing something a little bit more creative with and and that's strictly with regard to to the the rates and the pricing and all of that your your online or big box types of banks are really nice from one standpoint which is often times they have a lot of things that are just obviously online but a lot of things that you can do without communicating with people and for a lot of people that's really attractive you know fill out your application online get just get an automated pre-approval letter maybe you can just go back and just enter something in and they'll just immediately send you back a new pre-approval letter I mean there there's a lot of great things with that I've had some clients that use Quick and Loans that's like that it's like really quick really efficient and it's great but there's a problem with those types of Banks and and the problem is that it's only efficient when you're when everything goes smoothly when everything goes according to plan when you don't have any hiccups when you're not under the gun when you don't need something out of the ordinary to be done if you need something out of the ordinary to be done you're using a Chase Bank or a quick and Loans and in most cases a bank like even Bank of America or BB&T unless you have just a very close Rel relationship with a personal banker you're going to end up in a situation or or you may end up in a situation where you need something to get done and you can't reach the person to get it done or you're just waiting for a phone call for a long time or an email for a long time and it can be a really big deal and so let me tell you me as a realtor I have run into this on multiple occasions if I'm looking at two offers and offer number one has the lender as Bank of Travelers Rest a local bank and offer number two says Chase Bank on it you know which offer that I would want if I were the if I were the seller everything else is equal I'm going to go with the one with Bank of Travelers Rest and that's a just a small little bank but you know what I know people over there I can reach someone over there I can get someone on the phone over there they they care they're a smaller Bank these trans actions mean more to them do you think that a $250,000 mortgage means a lot to Chase Bank which is valued at who knows how many I don't know I don't know how many billions they're valued at but your little mortgage to them it's just a drop in the bucket right and they're probably just going to pass that off to to someone else it doesn't really matter to them and so having a local lender I think the outside of just the r them being local is one of the most important things to me if you need to get something done you can reach that person you know you have someone a banker that if you needed to you could go to the bank and talk to them that's powerful to them that transaction is a lot more meaningful than it is to these massive financial institutions that are doing almost everything exclusively online and don't really want to handle your phone call particularly now during Co when everyone is saying we have higher the normal volume call volume that is listen all those banks are going to say that now and that's that's frustrating tied into all of this and I've already alluded to this but the responsiveness and availability of the banker is a really big deal so you might get a local Banker that's not super responsive let me tell you I have Bankers that I work with both mortgage brokers that are local people that work at local banks bankers at local banks whatever you want to call them they pick up their phones on the weekends if I need something on a Saturday I know I can get it good luck getting that from from a quick and Loans if you're under the gun for something and you know you have not start of the process or whatever or or there's something again out of the ordinary you're not going to be able almost certainly to reach someone to get that thing done and being able to communicate with a person and to know that they are going to get back in touch with you or that they're going to get back in touch with me as your realtor that is a really powerful thing and that is something that really separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to lenders I had a situation few months ago where I had some clients that a home came on the market very unexpectedly that that they wanted they we were kind of un unprepared because they had kind of given up they' kind of given up crazy Market a lot of people giving up these days as a realtor we have to do a lot of work with for our buyer clients and and that's just the way it is right now but they had given up and the house that they really wanted actually came back on the market it fell fell out from being under under contract came back on the market we immediately went to look at it and they were not pre-approved or anything you know we had their pre-approval letter was like really really old and you know we just kind of needed to to restart some of those things and it was a Saturday and they were just like well Banks aren't open on Saturday like how are we goingon to we need to make an offer today how are we going to do this and I was like oh no they'll answer the phone for me and while we were in the house I called A lender and second ring he answered the phone within an hour he had me a pre-approval letter that is what you need now if you just really have an affinity for the Chase Banks and and the quick and loans and for all of those I listen I have closed transactions with them but just understand you might find yourself in this competitive market you might be finding yourself putting at a disadvantage for going with those Banks and they might be offering you all sorts of credits and all sorts of different things but what good is that if you lose out on the house because you're not going with someone local that is a very real thing trust me I talk to other Realtors all the time and they're like I do not want to deal with with those banks give me someone local anyone that's been doing this for a while knows that and so you need to to keep that in mind that needs to be a factor major factor in your decision so we're going to spend the most amount of time there on the lenders but there are a lot of other ones to consider as well your inspector now obviously I have different inspectors that I work with and I can recommend if you don't have one but really inspectors are an interesting thing right because their job is very it it's both Broad and also specific so they're trying to find like within two hours kind of like all the big stuff that's wrong with the house a bunch of little stuff and then you know be able to tell you okay the AC is here the furnace is here this is here these are the ages for all these different things so it's kind of a hodgepodge of different things that they're doing and the best inspector is someone that's thorough but not nitpicky right I I don't care if if I'm buying a house I don't care if you know there's this little thing here you know this door knob is loose okay that's great make a note of that make a note that the door knob is loose or that or that the door needs to be adjusted because you know it's striking a part of the ground or something that's that's an an important detail but we don't need an inspection report full of like 50 of those things and then but then like neglecting the fact that there's like hail damage on the roof right there needs to be a thoroughness but but not being nitpicky and also understanding what is important and highlighting those important things and and it can be tough when you're communicating with an inspector to know you know if you're interviewing them for instance to know if they're like that and and you know some of that you need to kind of go with your gut you need to say okay how does this inspector communicate is he you know comfortable in his own skin or her own skin those are very important factors as well and that can kind of help you to understand you know whether it's a good inspector or not strictly based on their communication style and and obviously that's a an important Point as well an inspector needs to be able to communicate well because they're going to be have a bunch of written Communications and you're probably going to talk to them either in person or on the phone as well some inspectors have a hard time communicating without sounding alarmist or without you know being like Oh man yeah there are just a bunch of things you know like that's not helpful and I've actually fired inspector there's an inspector U that I had a few clients use that I fired him because his communication was terrible never going to use that guy again and he was also a bit nitpicky interesting in ly those two things kind of go hand in hand the background of the inspector is helpful as well you know it's it's particularly useful if they have some type of a background in construction if they have done things Hands-On you know not just go they didn't just go to school to become an inspector now there are some guys that just went to school to become an inspector and they're very good at it so I don't want to completely poo poo that idea but obviously if they if they have more of a construction type of background that's that can be really useful that is great type of experience for them and as well some inspectors kind of get overwhelmed I mean the reality of the situation we all know this if you go into work on Monday and you have a huge stack of papers on your desk granted a bunch of you now are working remotely you're working from home so maybe your stack is a is an email stack that's been piling up over the weekend but it those days you don't care for those days right you would rather come in and be like okay I can get out in front of this and you know inspectors will sometimes they'll they'll go to a house and and if it's a massive house with a bunch of problems that is a bit overwhelming just naturally humanly speaking but you want an inspector that Embraces that that Embraces the challenge that doesn't let the overwhelming get to him maybe he's kind of like oh man I wish this were a little bit easier but he doesn't communicate that he doesn't let you know that he doesn't make a big deal about it make a bunch of snide remarks those are the types of things that separate a good inspector from a bad inspector good inspector is just going to embrace a challenge good inspector is going to be willing to to get dirty go in that cross space get on that roof do all these different things and not just be a guy with a CLI board walking around finding all the places that don't that you know that the COA is dried out on those are not the good inspectors I am very picky when it comes to the inspectors that I work with ones that communicate well are willing to get get dirty not get overwhelmed not you know whatever get frustrated when it's a difficult type of inspection and you know when they communicate they communicate in a way that's clear that's accurate that doesn't color the house in in a inaccurate way in people's minds and and by the way all of this is important as well because this is usually I always I have to get permission from my clients to do this but usually we send if you're the buyer we send the inspection report to the seller so that they can review it that helps them to see it and and to U make sure that they understand that they do the repairs correctly and they might call the inspector they might reach out and and have questions and depending on on that inspector's personality that can really be a positive or really be a negative so there is a lot to consider there so that's your your inspectors how about your appraisers okay well you're not be interviewing your appraiser ever I mean I guess if you need a oneoff appraisal for instance if you're not getting you're not getting financing you don't need an appraisal because you're getting financing you you have a unique house and you want an appraisal done just because you want to see what the house is worth okay then reach out to reach out to an appraiser and you know have the conversation with them about how they how they approach their appraisals what they consider valuable or not valuable ask probe some of the questions that you have about your house why you think your house is unique and how they might approach that okay so so you can go ahead and kind of get a sense by talking to the appraisal about those the appraiser about those things when you're getting financing guess what guess who picks the appraiser well kind of sort of the bank but also kind of sort of not we there's a lot of regulations here and it it's kind of like a random pool that the lender ends up selecting or or getting assigned an appraiser from and so the appraiser is a very very important piece of the puzzle but you have very limited control over the appraiser what happens if your appraisal comes in low what what ramifications do you have well usually if you're not wanting to bring more money or if the seller is not willing to reduce their price or if you're not willing to back out of the contract your option then is you can't just like ask for another appraisal like that's a conflict of interest that's the bank not following protocol usually at that point we'll have to to change lenders unless you can prove that the appraisal was not done correctly sometimes we can contest appraisals that can that can be done but It's Tricky contesting appraisal usually doesn't work that is something that I can do and and I feel like I'm pretty good at it but appraisers you know it's not like they're haphazardly doing their job like if they put a number in writing like they're accountable for that number if they mess that up that's not good that doesn't reflect well on them and so usually they stand by the number that that they give so all of that to take into consideration you have limited control over over the appraiser very important part of the puzzle if you run into a low appraisal situation then at that point we've got to talk we got to talk through your options are you able to bring more money to the closing table is your is a seller willing to come down on the price what what are the options and that will all come down to the way the contract is written what terms whether you have an appraisal contingency how much money you're you're planning to bring down how much more money you could bring down how much leverage you have with a seller etc etc all of those things come into play at that point all right next one number four on my list and and this isn't really in any order outside of the lender to me was the most important one but number four is your insurance agent now a lot of people just have an agent that they have always used and and that's totally fine listen that doesn't impact the transaction that's the nice thing nobody nowhere on the contract does it say that you have to list your insurance agent or that you're getting the home insured or or anything like that so so that's nice but if you're getting financing you do have to have homeowners insurance and so you need to make sure that you can get homeowners insurance some properties if you're buying a fixer upper for instance there can be some challenges to getting insurance if you buy an old house that has like old knob and tube electrical in it guess guess what you're going to have to find a pretty creative insurance company there are some that will do it but but you you might have to go a few insurance companies deep in your phone or on on the web and and of course I can help with this as well but the the first insurance company that you call might not be able to to finance that or sorry to provide insurance on that property and so that is a a very important consideration I think that having a local insurance agent although not necessary obviously they can be licensed in a state but operate out of a different state but I think having a local insurance agent is helpful because they might need to I've had situations where an agent had to go and and take pictures of the property there was a question about the property that came up as they were underwriting the the policy and the agent had to to go out there and actually snap some pictures obviously it's very important for them to be responsive just like just like these other ones the particularly like the lender but you want your insurance agent to be responsive someone that you can go to with questions someone that doesn't take multiple days to respond to an inquiry sometimes again things happen quickly and you need to be able to get a quick answer having a local responsive agent is is important for you obviously ones that are helpful and that come up with Creative Solutions I think that is perhaps the most underrated part of working with a Homeowner's insurance agent and and for a lot of people that's not important because they're not buying creative properties if you're just buying a normal property that you want to live in then it it's probably not going to be that big of a deal that they have to come up with Creative Solutions or whatever the case may be but there are times when having someone an insurance agent that is able to think creatively can really be what gets a deal done that is a that can be a very crucial very important part of it and so I like to to talk to different insurance agents and just you know ask them well what would you do if you if we're buying a house that has you know knob and tube electrical how are you going to handle that how how do you handle you know hazardous materials what if there's as bestus and just hear the way they process that if they start sounding a little overwhelmed or like oh I don't know we can do that that might not be a a a good Agent and so that's something worth considering as well a good agent will help you to understand if you can or should file a claim on on a property based on you know if a hail storm comes through a good agent will they won't be able to tell you if there is damage to the property most likely they're not an adjuster there's a difference between an agent and an adjuster but they can at least tell you if it's worth it to file a claim what the ramifications might be those are the things that make for a good insurance agent how about a contractor and this is one that is obviously a very important one for many people if you're purchasing a property that needs work I'll start with this a good contractor has a good reputation and if you need to figure out whether they have a good reputation or not run them by me and I'll I I'll check with some of my sources if I don't already know who they are but that reputation is gold I've heard so many people say you know what I went against the recommendation of a bunch of people to use a guy and I will never do that again I regret that and and yeah you you should there's a reason why there are so many contractors out there right now as they're in such high demand and a lot of them aren't that good and so you have to really vet out their reputation maybe get some sources from them references and and check them out make sure that they are someone that would do a good job and of course I have contractors that I have worked with over the years that that I feel like do a good job as well but if you're interviewing them on your own look for that reputation that's really important when you're walking through a house with a contractor there there are some things that you can pick up on as well for instance if the contractor kind of has his or her own Vision you know and and sees the potential of a house versus coming in and and this is kind of a common theme we've talked about some of these people getting kind of overwhelmed if a contractor comes in they're like oh man I mean they they messed up everything in here like this is look at this wiring H this is going to be so much work and if they if they keep using that type of language versus saying oh man yeah we could just we could do this and have you thought about doing this and and they're they're bringing value versus just emoting right I you don't want a contractor that just emotes I had a contractor one time my very first contractor in my very first house I didn't know how to do this how to interview a contractor I didn't I didn't know how to go about that process and and there wasn't as much information available back then as there is now but I just remember every time I would ask him something he would start with this like you know like he would make this sound like you know and and it was almost like he was nervous and just just wasn't comfortable about stuff I don't know if he wasn't comfortable about himself comfortable about the project it wasn't even that big of a project but that kind of comfort level comfort level in themselves Comfort level in in the project in the house you can pick that up pretty quickly when you're walking through it with a guy or with a gal you know there aren't very many contract rors that are women but there are some and and sometimes there are husband wife teams and there there's all sorts of different ways to that we see that in the contractor world but the point is that if you want to see a level of comfort you want to see a level of that they aren't so focused on all the things wrong that they can't see all the things all the potential that can be done because you want obviously you see potential you want for them to also see potential and they can hopefully bring ideas for you that will be helpful for you in the long run and and and that will allow for you guys to kind of bounce ideas off of each other I think as well how good of a listener are they like you want them to be able to bring ideas and whatnot but you also they also need to be able to listen they also need to be able to take good notes to have an idea of of what you want and to be able to When You Say Hey I want to do this if if they then come back like two minutes later and say now do you want to do that you know did do you want to replace the windows and you just told them like a few minutes ago that you wanted to replace the windows they're not listening or or they're overwhelmed and not able to process everything and so try to pick up on those types of things and one of the most important but overlooked traits of a contractor is how organized they are and oh man that is I mean that really does separate we talked about before separating the wheat from the chaff an organized contractor is a very rare bird but again there are some things that you can pick up on what type of how are they communicating with you right are they communicating in a way that's organized do they have like five different emails that they're emailing you from that's probably not very organized do they have like an online or or some type of software that they use for managing their project that's good that's good organization not the end all be all but that's good when they look at a house do they have are are their thoughts organized are they thinking okay let's look at this then let's look at this then let's look at this and let's take these measurements and let's do this all all of those things help you to get an idea of whether whether they're organized or disorganized and usually if they're organized that's a really good sign now I know some contractors that are pretty organized but are not good at what they do because there are there's more to doing that job than just being organized but that is a part of it that definitely comes into play and you can definitely pick up on that in your conversation with them just the way they just organize their thoughts and the way they think through things all right we're starting to go over time here one last thing and then we're done closing attorney all right closing attorney is probably the least important out of all of these that's because in South Carolina you know some some states don't even require closing attorneys we do in South Carolina they do the title work they issue they help to issue the the the title insurance policy to make sure that you're protected in terms of your ownership of the home and with a closing attorney the thing is that they do represent the buyer but they really also just represent the transaction now that being said one of the things that I like is the closing attorneys that explicitly Embrace that they are representing the buyer in a unique way that even though they're also representing the transaction they're they're not really representing the seller right so they're representing the buyer and the transaction now some some closing attorneys in South Carolina and in Greenville they will not say that they're representing the buyer they'll only say they're representing the transaction me as a buyer agent I like the the attorneys that are like that will say hey we are representing the buyers as part of this they are the ones that are paying us they're the ones that are hiring us we have a fiduciary type of relationship with them we're also nonbiased to some extent in terms of of the transaction we have to be honest with all parties but they are the good ones in my opinion are the ones that say upfront hey we are representing the buyer more so than the seller in this transaction I like that that's not the end all Beall but it it's just it's a good part of it it's also good if if they are just helpful in general and that's a little bit of a harder thing to vet out if you call closing attorney and you know you'll probably get the the person that answers the phone it's not going to be the attorney but if you ask them some questions and they're able to answer your questions or are like hold on let me me get the answer to that right now that's a good sign that that means they're they're organized that means they're helpful versus them saying you know what if it's an easy question you know what we'll need to get back with you in a couple hours if it's an easy question if you're just like hey when could you close this when you have availability to close this or you know something like that and they need to like get back with you on that that's not helpful that's not good and I've got closing Attorneys at the actual attorney I've got on my phone can text them and get an answer from them but at the end of the day most closing attorneys defer the majority of their work onto their paralegals and so the rubber meets the road with the paralal a good attorney has good paral legals a bad attorney has bad paral leals at the end of the day that is what determines more so than anything what is a good attorney or not and you say well how do I interview the pargal well unfortunately you can't but I can share a a lot of experience that I have had over the years with different attorneys and can can help you with that I have people all the time actually that are having issues with with different closing attorneys investors that are are cranking out a bunch of of different deals throughout the year like hey who's a good closing attorney like they're I'm just having all kinds of trouble with pargal doing this or that and so I I make recommendations to to people all all the time for for for different closing attorneys and so I can help with that as well unfortunately that's going to be one that perhaps you can do some online research but it's a little bit trickier from the standpoint of trying to interview them and trying to to get a sense of what these different parties are like because you're probably the first time you call if they don't know who you are you're just going to be talking to the secretary you're just going to be talking to the front desk person but the cling attorney is is a big deal at the end of the day from the standpoint of if you're doing anything creative if you're trying to close quickly you want to make sure that that is a good closing attorney that they can handle it that they know what they're doing that they can help you in a situation where unique things are happening and again I can assist with that and if you need assistance with that I hope that you will consider using me as your realtor if you're not already doing that my contact information is in the show notes I always say that I always say please rate and review subscribe do all those cool things to the Pod hope you guys are enjoying it that is a wrap for today let me know if you have any questions but until next time stay safe enjoy the nice Spring weather outside [Music]