PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R
Welcome back, everyone to Inspector Toolbelt Talk. Today we have on again, Dave Klima. Now Dave, before we start, I do have to say that you are now tied with Nick Gromiko, for being on the show the most, you and Nick are head to head. So we’ll see who’s back on the show next time. But this will be your third time on the show. But the first time that I get to talk with you, because you usually talk to Beon, don’t you?

Dave Klima
Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you having me on. And I’m actually honored and humbled that you asked me on to ask my opinions about things that are going on in our industry. And hopefully we can use these sessions as a way to educate home inspectors, especially, you know, the home inspectors using Inspector Toolbelt and listening to this podcast.

Ian R
Yeah, well, I really appreciate you being on, because just to remind everybody who Dave is, Dave owns one of the largest independently owned home inspection companies in the US and Canada. You’ve been an inspector forever. And you’re just an all around great guy. There’s not any time that I can ever remember saying somebody saying, “Hey, I tried to call Dave for random advice. And he said, No.” You just welcome guys. You help guys, you teach them. And that’s what we’re about here. We want to help guys, and the market is changing. The market is transitioning right now, we just had a couple of podcasts, we just did our Q4 outlook. And we’ve been talking about the real estate market changing into a buyers market, but not quite there yet. And we’ve also been talking about some other things. But most importantly, we want to talk about how to market in a buyer’s market. Because for a lot of us, maybe we’ve been a home inspector for three years, if you’ve been a home inspector for three years, you’ve only ever marketed in a seller’s market, and then even 5, 6, 7, 8 years, it’s been a completely different market than what we’re transitioning into now. So, Dave, what is your first piece of advice? What are some things that you think we should do to market in a buyer’s market?

Dave Klima
The first thing we need to do is thank the good Lord, that we’re finally transitioning away from that seller’s market where, you know, a lot of real estate agents were encouraging their buyers to waive the home inspection in order to get an accepted offer. And you make a good point about some of the inspectors in our industry only being in this industry during the seller’s market. Well, the same is true for a lot of real estate agents. Think about some of these agents that started out three, four years ago. Now they’re going to have to learn how to sell houses in a buyer’s market. And it’s a lot more difficult to sell houses in a buyer’s market. And so, you know, I’m actually welcoming the buyer’s market for a lot of different reasons. One, the percentage of inspections we do on real estate transactions is gonna go up, you know, I’ve talked to inspectors across the country, and some of them were saying, like, 50% of the time in their market, people were skipping the inspection. And now that the market is starting to normalize, you know, and starting to shift to a buyer’s market, we’re seeing that percentage increase. So that’s good for our industry. But as far as marketing in a buyer’s market, I remember back in 1998, when we started, you know, it was more of a buyer’s market than when 2008 came, we kind of had to crash and we had to experience that shift. So we’ve gone through that. And, and I’m happy to, you know, talk about those things today. And also, like you alluded to, I love coaching and mentoring home inspector, so anyone that listens to this podcast, if you want to talk to us, you know, private message me, and we’ll talk. But as far as a buyer’s market goes, obviously, there’s lots of different ways that we market our services, you know, some of us are going to use, you know, Google ads, some of us are going to use local Google services, ads even, some of us are going to use digital marketing companies to help market. I still believe that you need to get out to the real estate community and market to real estate agents and talk to them about our services and our products. And I think you need to talk to mortgage companies, because obviously, they have a connection with the client, and you need to market you know, to those folks. You can even market to an estate attorney, you can market to, you know, divorce attorneys. There’s a lot of different places that you can market your services. But I still think the number one spot is you know, marketing to real estate agents and marketing to your past clients. I think a lot of home inspectors have missed that opportunity to market to their past clients. And not only that, market new and exciting services that they bring to their company. I know a lot of guys are now, starting to, you know, do pest control services or you know, maybe like us, install radon mitigation systems or do mold work. So you have a have a lot of customers in your database that you can make money off of. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t market to those people. But I think one of the things that I’m really excited about is being able to market to listing agents in a buyers market and you know, these listing agents, they’re going to have to go back to work. I mean, the days of them, getting a listing, put in the MLS, having, you know, a bunch of offers, within hours getting an accepted offer within a couple of days, and that offer being over list price, without contingencies, such as inspections…those days are going by the wayside right now, it’s not fully transitioned yet, but it’s happening all over the country. I talk to inspectors and realtors all over the country. So I think marketing to listing agents is really important. And that’s one of the reasons I started the inspectedhouses.com system. So we could go to real estate agents and talk to them. And if I can give you the 60 second pitch, I’d love to do that. Is that all right?

Ian R
Yeah, sure. I want to backpedal just a little bit about the pre-listing inspections, because I’ve been pushing that right now. But I think you made a key point, you’ve covered a wide gamut of opportunities. But more specifically, when it comes to pre-listing inspections, a lot of agents have not been agents for very long. There are agents that have been out for two, three years, just like, you know, many home inspectors out there on the market. They may not know how valuable a pre-listing inspection is yet. So, now there is a marketing gap that we can fill. So, we might have an office presentation, or we might walk into a listing, we’re doing stopping by at the open houses, and that agent may have never really thought of a pre-listing inspection. So, now we have the opportunity to introduce them to that concept, “Hey, you want to sell this house faster, for more money and less headaches? Get your client to hire us for a pre-listing inspection. And then we turn it into a marketing piece, do office presentations, and really push pre-listing inspections, because that’s something I’ve missed out of our books. Pre-listing inspections have been almost nothing for the past couple of years, because everything just sells so quick. Now they’re starting to come back into our repertoire. People are starting to get them more. That’s where we really want to hit hard. But yeah, I want to, I want to hear your 60 second pitch, though. Let’s hear.

Dave Klima
Yeah, absolutely. And I might even have you, you know, do a demo, and and we can kind of go through, you know, the whole like, kind of little pitch I do with real estate agents. And then I’ll walk you through the, you know, program, doing it that way. And at the same time, we’re going to talk about the value of pre-listing home inspections.

Ian R
Do you want me to pretend to be an agent?

Dave Klima
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I’m going to come to you. And listen, anyone that wants to sign up for InspectedHouses, first thing I’m going to tell you, before we get down this pitch, is you can virtually use it for free, you sign up, it’s 100 bucks to sign up. And then I’m gonna give you know, all of Ian’s listeners, Inspector Toolbelt users a free membership until you get traction with it. So, normally, what we do is, you sign up, it’s 100 bucks to sign up, and then it’s free for three months. And then after that it’s only 49 bucks a month. But my commitment to you is, you know, if you’re using it for three months, and you haven’t gotten traction, we’re going to extend that trial, another three months, and so on and so forth until you get traction with the program. But I can promise you this, if you do what your coach and mentor do, you’re gonna get traction, because it’s really easy to convince agents to use this program. So here’s the deal. Ian, I’m going to come to you, and I’m gonna sound different than other home inspectors. All right, I’m gonna come to you. And I’m say, “You know what, Ian as a home inspector, I’m always asking you for business, asking you for referrals, so I can feed my family and pay my bills. But I haven’t been able to help you grow your business. Well, I just joined a new national program, where I can actually help you market your listings, capture leads, drive those leads to your listing, and drive those leads to your own website. And many agents across the country are actually using this program to get listings over other agents. Let me show you how it works. Text DEMO to this number.”

Ian R
“Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. I got somebody calling on my Bluetooth.” I’m sorry. I thought you wanted me to pretend to be a real agent.

Dave Klima
So, so anyway, then I would have you text, you know, to demo, which I’m gonna have you do here in a second. But before I do, let me ask you a question. Well, what did you hear in that message? That’s the first time you’ve heard that pitch. So what did you hear?

Ian R
I heard, you’re gonna help me grow my business instead.

Dave Klima
Right? I didn’t ask you for business, did I. Not one time. I didn’t say give me inspections. Here’s 50 off. What else did you not hear? You didn’t hear me say “Hey, I’m the best home inspector in the world. I’m not gonna freak your client out. I’m not gonna kill your deals.” As an agent, you’ve heard that a million times. Right? So, I gave you a different message, right? What did you not hear? Surprisingly, you did not hear me even bring up pre-listing home inspections. Right? Yeah, think about that. I didn’t even bring that up. And why did I not bring that up? Because some agents are stuck in the mud. They, you know, they don’t believe in pre-listing home inspections, they don’t understand them. They think it’s, you know, there’s all these different things that they think are bad, like, “Well, if I do a pre-listing home inspection, then my sellers gotta disclose everything that’s wrong.” Or “If I ask someone to do a pre-listing home inspection, I’m not going to get the listing.” You know, all of this kind of stuff. So I didn’t even bring up pre-listings in the beginning, in that 60 second pitch, I didn’t even bring it up. All right. So, then what, so basically, you’re giving them the pitch. And then after you give them the pitch, you’re gonna say, “Okay, let me show you how it works. Text DEMO to this number.” So for right now, all of you guys, if you could text the code, DEMO, to 574-406-0288. Go ahead, and text the code DEMO to that number 574-406-0288.

Ian R
I just got it. I did that. Just now, Dave, and I got an incredible rate on my car’s extended warranty.

Dave Klima
Yeah. Did you, yeah, I don’t think so.

Ian R
I’m just kidding. 574-406-0288.

Dave Klima
Yeah. Did you get a link to Demo House? I got your lead.

Ian R
Okay, cool. Oh, here it is. I got a link.

Dave Klima
All right. So it’s gonna say, View Property or Website. So, I want you to click on that. Alright. And I’m going to click on it, too. Okay, let me know when you’re there.

Ian R
All right, I’m here. 6009 Demo House.

Dave Klima
Right, exactly. So, okay, I gave you the 60 second pitch, and I got you to text in. And it’s really important, you know, since we’re talking about sales, it’s really important to demo the system. Like, you can’t just sign up for this program and say, “Hey, you know, I got this really cool pre-listing program, you need to do it.” Right? Or, you know, “Pre-listing inspections are really gonna help you grow your business, you need to do them.” Alright, it doesn’t work that way. It’s like, here’s an analogy I’ll give you, Ian. You ever been to Costco’s or Sam’s Club on the weekend?

Ian R
Oh man, I try not to, but I have.

Dave Klima
Right, and they have these taste testers out there, just, you know, giving out free samples of food, right? So, if they just had a guy out there, and that guy says, “Man, we got the best sausage in the store, you need to get some of these sausage sticks, they’re good for you, blah, blah, blah.” Are you gonna buy that sausage? Probably not, because you’re just taking their word for it. But he gives you a sample of this sausage, all of a sudden, it’s nice and spicy and savory. Like, man, this stuff’s good. You end up buying a stick and taking it home. Next thing you know, you’ve been buying that stick of sausage for the last 20 years, right? So it’s the same thing with this, you have to get the realtors to eat the sausage, you got to get them to demo the system. Right? So now they demo the system, like you just did. And you’re there. Okay, and, and so you’re gonna take them to the property page. And you’re basically going to say this. Now, look, hey, if this was your listing, we’re going to take buyers to your listing and only your listing, we’re not taking them to see other listings like other home searching sites do. And you can see there’s a video loaded on this property page. Zillow and realtor.com aren’t letting you load videos to the property pages. But with this platform, we can, and if you see these little white arrows, just go and hit that little white arrow once or twice. And you can see that, you know, pictures of the house are displayed, right. And so just like on other home searching sites, people can see your listing photos. Now, if you scroll down underneath that, you’re gonna see a whole bunch of language. And that’s normally where your listing comments will go. These comments don’t describe the house, they describe the platform. Now you can read this word for word, and I would encourage you to do that later to learn more about the program. But what you need to understand is that this program was started to help sellers, to help buyers, to help realtors, and to help home inspectors. And honest to goodness, buyers are loving this platform, because if you scroll down farther, you can see there’s a Purchase Home Inspection Report button. Again, this platform is hosting something Zillow and realtor.com are not, and buyers are loving this, because it’s kinda like Carfax for houses. And here’s why they love it. With the way traditional real estate is sold, we’re asking a buyer to make the biggest investment of their life, the biggest business decision they’ll ever make when they’re buying a house. We get them to sign on the dotted line to make that deal. And then we say okay, let’s go find out what you bought. Let’s get the home inspection done. And now when that happens, that’s when a lot of the anger and anxiety in the in the transaction sets in. And sometimes buyers, you know, they’re blindsided with a bunch of unexpected costs, you know, and they’re freaked out sometimes. Maybe there’s mold in an attic or termites in the basement. And now all of a sudden, you know, they don’t want that house anymore, or they’re worried, you know, about the condition of the house, and the deal blows up. And when that deal blows up, it’s terrible for everyone. It’s terrible for the buyer, because they just spent money on an inspection, appraisal, well and septic, environmental testing; they took off time at work to be at that inspection. You know, they got two grand wrapped up in that home buying process. And now that money’s wasted, and they gotta risk another two grand on the next house when they make an offer. So the way traditional real estate sold is not good for buyers. And they’re loving this platform because now they can see a home inspection report. Go ahead, hit that purchase Home Inspection Report button form.

Ian R
Yeah, I already did. I was actually getting ahead of you.

Dave Klima
So they can see that report for $20. Right. And now they can learn more about a house before they physically fight traffic to go visit the house. And before they make an offer on a house, so it’s great for them. Now, sellers are actually loving this program, especially in a buyers market, they’re gonna love it. Because traditionally in a buyer’s market, when there’s things wrong with the house, a buyer might say, “Hey, look, I want X, Y, & Z fixed, or I’m not buying the house.” They’re basically holding the transaction over a barrel. So buyers, you know, have a lot of control in a buyers market, unlike what we just came off of where sellers had control. Well, now sellers are able to say, “Hey, look, in the interest of full disclosure and transparency, we had a home inspection done. Here’s everything that we know that’s wrong with the house. We’re fixing X, Y, and Z. We’re not fixing anything else, please make your offer accordingly.” Right. And now, some agents think, well, if I asked someone to spend five or 600, for the pre-listing inspection, I won’t get the listing. And if you said it just like that, “Hey, if you want me to list your house, you know, you got to spend 600 on a pre-listing.” You might not get it. But if you explain to the seller, that hey, paying five or 600, for the pre-listing home inspection is going to, one, put you in control of the negotiations, but two, it’s going to help us know what’s wrong with the house up front, so we can build those repair costs in the price of the house. So for example, if we find out we need a new roof, we can say hey, 250 the way the house sits or 270 with a new roof, but if we accepted an offer for 250, and then found out we needed a new roof, you couldn’t go back and ask for higher price. So we’re able to build repair costs in the price of house. Also, the pre-listing home inspection pays for itself because you have time to shop around and get, you know, better repair prices at cheaper costs, versus paying last minute rush pricing, you know when it’s subject to other real estate transaction. And you can also save money by being able to make your own repairs. You know, if the home inspector says, hey, you need GFCI outlets, you could go to Lowe’s and buy them for like 15 or 20 bucks and install them yourself. But once we accept an offer, the buyer and the buyer’s agent are going to require an electrician to put those outlets in, now you’re looking at a couple 100 bucks. So hey, we get a pre-listing home inspection done, you’re in control of the negotiations, and you’re maximizing the equity. Also, when this report sells on inspectedhouses.com, you get the money for the sold report to help offset the cost of the home inspection. Right. So that’s really good for the seller. But here’s the best thing that happens for you the real estate agent, Ian, you’re gonna get that smoking hot accurate lead when that report is sold, it’s a hot lead, because someone opened up their wallet, they’re serious about the house. And it’s an accurate lead, because you can’t buy something on the internet and give a fake name, fake phone number, fake address. And here’s the best thing of all, you get that lead instantly, you get it automatically, and you get it for free. If it’s your listing, it’s your lead, you get that lead for free with the inspectedhouses.com system. Right. Now, let me ask you a question, Ian. Lok down at your phone, what’s the last text that you got? Did you get a text? Yup, the last text that I got says “For innovative home buying and selling strategies, this is it.” And then the realtors website, right. So if it was your listing, we’re going to drive that buyer to your listing for innovative home buying and selling strategies and visit, and boom, your own website. All of that happened off one text. Now let’s go back to the property page. I want to, I want to show you something. Let me know when you’re there.

Ian R
Okay, I’m there.

Dave Klima
You get there? Okay. Now, if you scroll down under the purchase report section, oh, by the way, if we just did a regular listing, like say you didn’t do a pre-listing home inspection, we can still help you market your house with this platform. The only difference is that purchase home inspection report section will not pop up. So if it’s a regular listing, we don’t load a report. That’s no problem, help you market all of your listings and capture leads. Okay. Now on the property page, you’ll see that’s where the real estate agent would go. So your photo goes there, your name goes there, your phone number goes there, your email address goes there, your logo goes there. You can even write a bio about yourself telling everyone how great you are. And with this platform, you can log in anytime you want and change any data that you want, change information about the house, change information about yourself. Other home searching sites aren’t letting you do that. But this platform does. Okay, if you scroll down farther, you can see that’s where the home inspector information is. So that’s my benefit with the program, we get some marketing exposure on these property pages. And when the leads come in, I get those leads, and I can market myself directly to that buyer, I know someone is interested in buying a house, maybe they’re gonna buy this house, maybe they’re not, but I’m going to be able to talk to them directly about my services versus relying on, you know, an agent, you know, to refer to me, okay. And then if you scroll down farther, you can see there’s a contact form. Now, maybe someone doesn’t want to buy the report, they just want more information about the house, that’s fine, they can fill out that form. Now, when that form is filled out on other home searching sites, the listing agent doesn’t get that lead necessarily, unless they’re paying for it. You know? And if you’re not paying for the leads off your listings, what are these sites doing? They’re selling them to other agents. So other agents are making money off your book and business. But with this platform, if that contact form is filled out, the only one getting that buyer’s lead, is you the listing agent and me the home inspector. That’s it. How cool is that program?

Ian R
That sounds pretty cool. Yeah, I love that they have my real estate photo, it’s from 1984.

Dave Klima
Yeah, there you go. Now, in conjunction with that, what I teach home inspectors to do, is we actually take it to a new level, we’ll walk into a presentation with some marketing flyers already designed in their color scheme, and I’ll print up like maybe 10 or 15 of them. And these flyers, obviously, we’re not doing a Zoom meeting, so I can’t show everybody, but these flyers are co-branded to the agents color scheme, has their information on it, all of that stuff. And on the front of the flyer, it’s kind of real, kind of salesy, you know, inspect it before you list it kind of thing. And on the back of the flyer, are all the talking points of why it’s beneficial for a seller to get a pre-listing home inspection. And agents are able to take that flyer to listing appointments, and they’re able to get listings over other agents. We also give the home inspector a script to obviously use when they’re talking to agents about the program, but we give them a script to give to the listing agent. So when they go to listing appointments, they can, you know, use that script to get listings over other agents. And one of the things that’s in the script, it’s pretty cool, is, you know, during the course of the listing appointment, they go through the script, they talk about the benefits of pre-listing home inspections. And inevitably, you get some sellers that will say, “You know, this all sounds great, but man, there’s nothing wrong in my house, you know, I don’t think I need to do a pre-listing inspection.” And at that point, the agent will simply say, “Hey, look, I understand what you’re saying. But I’ve sold hundreds of houses, I’ve never sold a perfect one yet. But I believe in this program so much. If you list with me that pre-listing home inspection’s free, you pay the inspector at the time of the inspection. And at closing, I’ll rebate that fee right back to you. The only thing I ask in return is when you have the smoothest, easiest, and most profitable real estate transaction you’ve ever had, that you tell all your friends and family members and co workers about me.” Okay, so that’s part of the script, right? And so we give that to agents. And I’ve done this script with agents like, I’m like, “Hey, listen, let’s pretend you’re a seller, and I’m you at a listing appointment.” And I actually did the script with agents. And I swear to God, about half the time, the agents are like, “Hey, you know what, I got a listing coming up, will you come do this presentation with me and explain the program?” They basically want me to go do the script for them. And so my reply to them is, “Look, you know, in the Bible, there’s this, saying, if you teach, if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach them to fish, they’ll eat forever. And I’m just gonna teach you how to fish.” Here’s the script. Here’s the marketing flyer, you know, and now, what I want every home inspector to think about, is when an agent goes to a listing appointment, and they promote the concept of getting an inspection, which is the opposite of what’s been going on. But when they go to a listing appointment and promote the concept of getting an inspection, and they promote your company to do the inspection, how powerful is that? Think about that.

Ian R
If I could ask you then just along these lines, so first of all, just to comment that, it, it’s all about the presentation when it comes to pre-listing inspections. We want to be very careful how we present it because just walking up and saying, “Hey, you want sausage?” to go back to your analogy, that’s going to be weird. All right. Now give it some packaging, a little bit of flavor, you know, present it the right way. But if you don’t mind me asking, how many agents in your area actually use this program? Like, do you have a, do you have quite a bit? Or is it? Because when you came out with the program, it was very much a seller’s market, and I watched it come out, and I’m like, oh, man, that’s a great concept. But kind of a seller’s market, like how many, how many do you have onboarded, do you think?

Dave Klima
Here’s, here’s the beauty. Well, we have, I can pull up my account, I probably have 40 different agents in my system. But again, not all of them are doing pre-listings right now. I mean, let’s, let’s face it, it’s been hard to get agents, even with this program. It’s kind of been hard to get agents to do pre-listings, because they’re, they’re like, “Hey, man, I get a listing, I put it in the, in the MLS, I have an offer accepted. And a lot of those offers aren’t even getting an inspection done. So why do I even need to do a pre-listing?” Right? That’s been their mindset. So my answer to that has been twofold. One, if it’s the easiest time in the world to sell a house, don’t you want more listings? How come there’s a Coldwell Banker sign in the yard, and not yours, or a Century 21 or REMAX? How come your signs are not in those yards? This is a way for you to get listings over other agents. So that’s how I’ve been able to get some people to do pre-listing home inspections, right? The other answer is, the pre-listing home inspection is going to give you and your client a layer of legal protection versus when a buyer buys a house. And there’s no inspection done at all. And there’s already been lawsuits, I’ve been contacted to be, you know, expert witness in some lawsuits where buyers skip the inspection, they said, “Oh my agent pressured me to waive the home inspection”, or “The seller lied on their disclosure form”, all that kind of stuff. So when that report, that pre-listing home inspection report, is done, it kind of gives people, you know, somewhat of a layer of legal protection. And that’s kind of what the home inspection for buyers do, you know, also, it helps give them somewhat a layer of protection and you know, gives them an opportunity to negotiate repairs when they find out what’s wrong with the house. So the inspection component is very important in the real estate transaction. Right? Go ahead. I know you want to say something.

Ian R
No, no, you know, I keep pushing in our podcast here pre-listing inspections, because they were always my favorite thing to do. And to be honest, I checked with an attorney on this. And Nick Gromicko has said it. There’s no liability really, when it comes to a pre-listing inspection. So say you were just a terrible inspector, and you missed a leaky roof and a bowed-in foundation, and they’re all mad at you. There’s no damages is what they’ve told me. So I’m not, I’m not an attorney, but there’s no damages is what they say. So what are they going to sue you for? You just didn’t tell them or didn’t find something? You didn’t put them in a worse position? They’re still in the same position they would have been if you hadn’t shown up.

Dave Klima
Right. So here, yeah. So here’s, here’s the thing, when you do a pre-listing home inspection for a seller, the seller already owned the house with those deficiencies. So the only thing they’re really prejudiced, is they hired you to do a thorough inspection and give them a heads up on anything that could be wrong with the house, anything that would be a deal breaker, right? So really, the only thing they’re prejudiced, is their inspection fee. You know, like, hey, I spent this money with you, you didn’t do a good job. Really, the only thing you owe them at that point, you know, legally, probably would be an inspection fee, you’re certainly not liable for fixing damages. Whereas if you do an inspection for a buyer, there’s this term, “injurious rely”, right, and the buyers are relying on us to give them a heads up on anything, before they buy the house, anything that can be wrong with the house before they buy it. And so if we go out, we do a bad job, and we miss mold in the attic or termites in the basement, you know, they’re going to claim, well, look, had you done a good job and told me about this, I could have negotiated those repairs before I bought the house, or I may not even bought the house at all. So now I’m suing you to fix these damages, because you didn’t tell me about it. Right. So that’s kind of a big difference in the two scenarios. But I think a lot of home inspectors shy away from pre-listing home inspections, because they’re afraid another inspector is going to come behind them and make them look bad. And I think that’s terrible, then you shouldn’t even be doing buyer’s inspections, if that’s the confidence you have in your ability. You shouldn’t even do be doing buyer’s inspections. You know, that’s how I feel.

Ian R
Well, the one thing I will say in defense of that worry, is, it does get a little weird sometimes when you have conflicting reports, because you’re paying for a person’s opinion, and everybody has their own opinion. So I might say, “Okay, this, this is a two by four exterior wall, house was built in 1965. They’re all two by four exterior.” The next guy comes in and says, “Well, should be two by six exterior walls.” And now you have two conflicting reports. You know, there’s a, I guess you could argue both, but that’s a bad scenario, a bad example rather. But I’ve always found conflicting, conflicting reports. I had one. I’ll tell you an example. I did a pre-listing inspection. And I found old termite tubes in a corner of a house. And they were just old, but there were termites, or there were carpenter ants everywhere. So I’m like, yeah, there’s active carpenter ant action going on here. So I called out wood destroying insects in general. And I made specific note of the carpenter ants because they were active. Another inspector came in, missed the chimney issue that I found for the buyer, and then called out termites. So termite treatment is a lot more expensive than carpenter ant treatment, at least in my area. So my seller was upset. So I literally came to his house and I said, “Okay, let me show you something. What are those?” He goes, “What? Oh, my goodness, look at all those carpenter ants.” I’m like, “Yeah, they’re all underneath your stairs. I don’t see any signs of any active termite treatment. And you had termite treatment last year, you said.” “Yeah, I have the receipt right here.” “Great.” So there is a little bit of wonkiness when you have two inspectors with two different..I mean, look at it on Facebook. Put a picture of one defect up, and you come up with 800 different opinions. And everybody thinks they’re right.

Dave Klima
I agree with that.

Ian R
There’s a measure of that. But you need to be able to, how do I put this politely, be a big boy and put your big boy underwear on? And realize that that’s going to happen, and have a good reason for your position.

Dave Klima
Right, well, here’s what I’ll tell you. Well, a couple, a couple things. Just because well, let’s just, the first thing, any inspector can come behind me or my guys and find something that’s a little bit different, right? And vice versa, we could go behind another inspector and report on things a little bit different. But it shouldn’t be the deal breakers, right? It shouldn’t be like, you know, the big deal breakers, if we’re all doing a good job, right? So that’s the first thing, and you got to, you got to set the expectations when you’re doing the pre-listing. And I think a lot of agents know that, right? The other thing is, though, just because someone comes behind an inspector and finds something, doesn’t mean the first guy missed it. And here’s a perfect example. You brought up termites. Let’s say I go out and I do an inspection. And when I’m doing the inspection for the seller, the sellers live in there, and their garage is just full of crap. You guys know that? Right? So in the termite report, I might say, hey, no evidence of termites. And then I’ll list you know, the garage, fixed walls, fixed ceiling, stored items, cluttered condition, the whole nine yards. And that obviously limits the inspection. So now, let’s say the seller moves out. And now the buyer comes along, and they come in with their buyer’s inspector, and all of that stuff’s removed. And now he can see the walls around the whole garage, and he happens to see some termite tubes coming up. And he recommends, you know, the house be treated for termites. So in that scenario, the first guy didn’t miss anything, right. And so we shouldn’t as home inspectors come behind someone that did a pre-listing, and just assume that the home inspector missed something, because what he was inspecting at the time of the pre-listing, it could have been obstructed. And that’s one of the reasons why I always recommend the buyer get their own inspection, because the condition of the house can change from the time when the pre-listing is done, until when the buyer comes along. And here’s the beauty behind pre-listing home inspections. We just came from an era where 50% of inspections or 50% of transactions, were having waived inspections in some markets, right. So we weren’t even getting a half of inspection per real estate transaction. And in a normal market, maybe 85, 90% of homes get inspected. So let’s just say nine out of 10, just to be, you know, optimistic. So point nine inspections per real estate transaction, okay. So if we do a pre-listing home inspection on every house that hits the market, that’s one inspection per transaction, we’ve already had a sales increase for our industry. And if we asked buyers, hey, you should still get your own inspection done, because the condition of the house can change from when the pre-listing was done until we come along. Now we go to two inspections per real estate transaction, we doubled the amount of work for our industry. But in theory, that sounds great. But in practicality, here’s what happens in my market. Half of the time, half of the time, buyers accept the pre-listing home inspection and move on. But the other half, they still get their own inspection. So think about it. I do a pre-listing half the time, someone still gets their own inspection. That’s 1.5 inspections per real estate transaction, and that’s way better for our industry.

Ian R
And at the same time when you’re doing a pre-listing inspection, my report gets sent out to all sorts of people. So there could be five people that download my report, look at it, when only one of those people is going to get the house. Those are four people that I marketed to. I had, it was funny, because I had on my report, the name of my client is like, I’m gonna make up a name just because I don’t wanna say, Greg Timberland. So, these people kept calling me to inspect houses, and they’re like, ‘”Hey, is Greg around?” And I’m like, I don’t have an inspector named Greg. And they’re like, “No, Greg Timberland. Yeah, this is your company.” I’m like, “Yeah, this is my company.” Turns out, I did a really good job on this inspection. And they thought my clients name was, was an actor’s name. So they kept calling for Greg Timberland. And I was doing all these inspections. I’m like, is it a guy named Greg with the same company name? And then I finally figured it out at one point. So it’s great advertising.

Dave Klima
Well, yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Ian R
The point I want to emphasize with that, though, is, I’m not making people feel worried about pre-listing inspections, you do have to have your A-game on, you have to know that there’s going to be a guy right behind, you should always have your A-game on. But when I’ve done a pre-listing inspection, and there’s been an inspector in there before me, I’m on high alert, because I’m like, okay, some guy’s been here before me, I’m doubling down, I want to do the best job in the universe. It’s just a, it’s a mentality thing, it’s kind of like, okay, I’m gonna want to outshine this guy. So I had an example where I did a buyer’s inspection. And I always walk around the house two ways. So I stand at the front door, and I go to my right. And then I go to my left. And I learned that from another home inspector, because he’s like, you know, it’s funny the things that you find the second time around the house walking in the opposite direction. So on my second time, around, walking to the left, I noticed the chimney was leaning. And the only way you could see it is one corner of the front yard because of the way the house was built. And I’m like, oh, man, look at that. I almost missed it. The first guy who did the pre-listing inspection, totally missed it. I knew the guy. He’s like, “I do a once around, if I can’t find it the first time, it’s not there.” One of those guys. And so I wrote it up. And they had an engineer, two engineers come and a chimney guy, and they’re all like, yeah, no, this is bad. The one guy’s like, “It’s gonna be like five grand, just to keep it going for three years.” The other ones are like, “You need to rip the deck down next to it and the chimney.” So everybody’s all upset. So that home inspector wrote the nastiest letter about me. Something about hurt, displacement, and all that. But it was a good example of, he didn’t have his A-game. He should have thought, “I have somebody following me, another professional, an expert in my field, I need to have my A-game on.” So don’t be scared of pre-listing inspections. Because you know what? He had no liability. He got a little upset, his pride was hurt. But it’s not like he got sued or anything, because what are they going to sue him for? His inspection fee? Okay, I don’t even know if he returned it or not. So you just, for reputation sake, make sure you do the, we should always do the best job possible. But when somebody is coming right behind us, checking our work, that’s basically what’s going to happen. So, difference of opinion, difference of opinion, is one thing, but finding a complete defect that somebody else missed, that’s a whole different situation.

Dave Klima
Listen, we’re in the human business, errors are gonna get made from time to time, and it happens, right. And to your point, what you’re saying, I find that when my guys are doing pre-listing home inspections, and when I’m auditing their reports from time to time and looking at them, for some reason, it seems like they’re a little bit more thorough, a little bit more detailed than when they do a buyer’s inspection. And it shouldn’t be that way. And we bring that up in, in our meetings, it’s like, hey, you know, you guys are doing pre-listing home inspections, you know, you’re gonna have an inspector come behind you. So you don’t want to look bad, right? You don’t want the company to look bad. Make sure you do a good job, right? Well, we should have that. Right. But we should have that mentality, obviously, you know, when we’re doing a buyer’s inspection, we should try to have our A-game every day, right? But sometimes we don’t. I mean, we’re in the human business, you know, and sometimes things happen and, and so here’s one, here’s one thing that I did, as the owner of Inspected Houses and get my name out there. I’m meeting executives from different national companies. And one of the things that we did, is I negotiated with RWS, many of you listeners may use RWS Warranties, but I negotiated with RWS, where if someone is a member of Inspected Houses and uses the RWS Warranties, then they’re eligible for mortgage payment protection for free and what that means is, if you do a pre-listing home inspection and load it to the Inspected Houses system, and a buyer comes behind you with their inspector, and let’s say that inspector finds something that’s not in your report and it kills the deal. Well, RWS will make the sellers mortgage payment up to five grand a month for three months.

Ian R
Oh, wow, I didn’t know that, that’s cool.

Dave Klima
How cool is that. Yeah, actually, you know, they just changed it? Well, it was. That’s what the deal was with RWS. Ports now owns RWS, and they changed it. So now it’s a five grand maximum payout. But still, if someone has a $1,500 month payment, they’re gonna get their payment made $1,500 month up to a maximum of $5,000 payout. Yeah, so if you’re an RWS user, and you sign up for Inspected Houses, you don’t have to worry about someone coming behind you and find something that kills the deal. Because that mortgage payment protections, you know, is going to help the seller in that situation. And when you tell real estate agents that, their mouth just like hits the floor, they’re like what, say that again, I’m like, listen, don’t worry about someone coming behind me, and finding something different. Because if it’s something that kills the deal, the seller is gonna get their mortgage payment made while you relist the house.

Ian R
Yeah, that’s incredible. So I just want to kind of go back and talk again, just to reiterate, there are so many advantages of pre-listing inspection. One, there’s more of them now, and agents need them whether they realize it or not. Two, they’re easy to schedule, you can do them generally speaking at your convenience, instead of having to do a five to ten day, you know, contingency period. It gets you free marketing, because everybody’s gonna see your report, buyer’s agent, seller’s agent, and all that stuff. Likely, the person who is selling the house is also buying a house close by. And you’ll probably get that inspection too. There’s very little to no liability, depending on who you ask. And I mean, there’s just such a long list. If we’re not doing pre-listing inspections, this should be every office presentation that we do, pre-listing inspections in your platform Inspected Houses, this is the perfect market for something like that. And again, I remember when you came out with it, I’m like, man, great idea. Awesome platform. Seller’s market is really hard for it right now. Right now, this is the time for Inspected Houses and pre-listing inspections.

Dave Klima
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what’s really cool is, with this program, you know, everyone that signs up for it gets this coaching and mentoring. And it’s a little bit different than the coaching and mentoring, you know, with other groups that you got to pay 500 to 1500 a month to get coaching and mentoring. With this program, you get a marketing tool, it’s 49 bucks a month, and you get an on demand consultant. So how it works is, you want to talk to me about anything home inspection related, anything in our industry, you just call me up and we’ll talk, and a lot of guys will just call me, and we’ll spend five, ten minutes on the phone. If they need a longer conversation, half hour to an hour, we just schedule an appointment. And I help guys, like if they’re transitioning from a single man operator to a multi inspector, you know, they need things like an employee handbook, they need a non-compete agreement, non-solicitation agreement, they need all kinds of advice on hiring people and systems and processes. And I share all the things that we do at our business to help make them successful. So it’s a really good value that they’re getting. But I want to touch on something when you talk about value of pre-listing inspections. And you touch that a little bit, how, you know, the sellers are buying a house, you might get that inspection. Well, I can tell you right now, I’ll just give you a real life example. A realtor named Christiana Leverett, she’s in the Nashville area. So a home inspector signed up, got her to do a pre-listing home inspection. She called me, she said, “Man, I signed up for this program. And I didn’t know how well it was gonna work. But we did a pre-listing home inspection. And I got 11 leads off of that listing. And one of one of the leads bought the report and said, you know, I liked the house, but I don’t like the neighborhood. And I’m not going to, you know, buy this house. But I love this program that you’re doing on selling the house and I’m going to be listing my house, can you, you know, do this program on my house?” So of course the agents like, yeah, and listed the house and the home inspector got another pre-listing, you know, out of the deal, right? Well, then out of the other 11 leads that were left over, the agent got two more buyers to work with, you know, a lot of the buyers that are becoming our leads are already working with another agent, right. So, so she couldn’t represent them, you know, because they’re working with an agent, but two of them, were not working with an agent. She picked them up as clients. So she turned one transaction into four, right? Think about that. Now the home inspector, he got all 11 leads, that’s 11 opportunities for him to do a home inspection for those people. Again, only one person’s buying the house that he did the pre-listing inspection on. The other 10 people are going to buy a house somewhere. So he has an opportunity, you know, to, you know, market his services directly to those buyers, right, and so it’s an amazing program. So doing pre-listings and talking to agents about it and getting them to change the way they do their business, it’s kind of hard. But when you have the inspected houses platform, you show it to them, you actually show them how they can, you know, grow their business with it and get leads off of their own book of business, versus paying for leads. They love that program. And what we came up with is the real estate agents get a one year free membership. And then after that, it’s only 99 bucks a year, originally, we had it set up where they were paying the same as the home inspector, but the home inspectors came to me and said, “Hey, can we change this, we actually want to use this program to get agents to use us. So if you give them a one year free trial, then it’s more likely they’re going to try this with us. And then after that, it’s only 99 bucks.” And that’s been really, a good move that we did. And so what happens sometimes, you know, if you’re a home inspector and you sign up for this program, you’re gonna go out and do a presentation. And some of these agents, you know, may never sign up for inspected houses. And they may never ever do a pre-listing with you. But they ended up using you and sending you buyers inspections, because you sounded different, you sounded unique. You, you know, explain to them that you could help them in a RESPA compliant home inspector law compliant way, and they end up sending you buyers inspections.

Ian R
Yeah, so there’s a lot of advantage. And we are, we are kind of running out of time here. But we have two goals as to what we wanted to talk about.

Dave Klima
I do want to mention one one other thing about this real estate channel coming out, right?

Ian R
Yeah, so that was what I wanted to ask you about. We have okay, a little less than two minutes, if you could tell us about the real estate channel. Cuz I was kind of wondering about that, you put out some information, and I really wasn’t connecting the dots.

Dave Klima
Yeah. So a couple things. You know, again, it since I started this program, I’m meeting different executives from all kinds of different places, and had this executive come to me, and they’re starting this channel called Abigail TV. So starting this network, it’s gonna be launched on Roku, which has 53 million subscribers, right. And on this Abigail TV, they’re going to have different channels, ABA basketball is one of them, All Paraplegic sports channel’s another one, there’s just different channels, the restaurant channel they’re coming out with, well, one of the channels they’re going to have is going to be called the Real Estate channel. And I got involved with them, I just signed papers for my market. And what they’re doing is they’re signing on an exclusive agreement with people in markets to be the Real Estate channel provider or channel owner. So now I can go to real estate agents and say, hey, look, you know, we have this channel called the Real Estate channel, we can market all of your listings on it, it’s only $1 a minute, which is very cheap, right. And so their agents will load their listings to the channel. And then I can go to mortgage companies, title companies, builders, anyone associated with real estate and sell them advertising on the channel. And as a channel owner, I get to keep 80% of every dollar I bring in. And I have to pay Abigail TV, 20 cents, right. And the deal I negotiated was, I get to be the exclusive provider to the home inspection community. So I get to go out and talk to home inspectors about it, they can sign up, it’s $1,000 to reserve your channel, because they want to make sure people have a little bit of skin in the game. But you have to be a member of Inspected Houses, right. So that’s kind of my benefit with the program. So I’m going out and pushing this channel for them to help drive membership for Inspected Houses. But I already have guys like, I have a guy, you know, in different bigger cities, they’re like, I want the whole city, I want the whole city and they’re already, their wheels already spinning on how they can use this to help make themselves make a lot of money. And, and anyway, we don’t have a lot of time to talk about it. So if you want to have me back on, we can talk more about that channel. And I also want to touch on the ability for home inspectors to make more money off their book of business versus just doing a home inspection. And a quick example I’ll give you guys is you know we do pest control, we do radon mitigations, we do mold work, all that stuff. So we did a home inspection for a client, $525 home inspection, obviously added a radon, you know, and the termite and all that kind of stuff like many of you do, but since we do radon mitigations we’re able to install a system, so we took that one job and installed a $1,400 radon system. And then the client moves into the house and all sudden she wants pest control work done. So now we signed a contract with her 75 bucks a month to do pest control. So I took a $525 inspection with a client and turned it into $3,000 worth of business and all of you guys can do that. 100% ethical ways to do that. And I’d love to come back on and spend an hour just talking about all the different ways that we can maximize the amount of money that we have in our books of business. Yeah.

Ian R
I’ve often said it’s a dead end market with a home inspection because you do the inspection. That’s it. There’s no recurring income. That’s what I mean by dead end. It’s one paycheck. So I’m all about that. I wish we had more time to talk about those things. I’m very interested to hear about the real estate channel. I know you have guys in a lot of major cities, like Louisville is already taken in a bunch of others. So I’d love to hear more about that. And I’d love to have you back on and talk about creating other revenue streams.

Dave Klima
Yeah, we absolutely need to talk about how home inspectors can make money off their book of business in a 100% ethical way, without sharing their clients data. And I can, I’ll show people, you know how they can do it without sharing the clients data, by putting the client in 100% control of their data.

Ian R
Yeah. Well, I’m looking forward to that. Dave, as always, it was great having you on the show. And maybe the next time you’re on you’ll beat Nick Gromicko, and you’ll be our most regular guest.

Dave Klima
Well, listen, I’ll be your guest contributor, let me tell you something. I have a ton of respect for Nick and what he’s built, what he’s done, you know, for the industry and, man, he has so much training out there for inspectors to take advantage of, and, and Nick is a wealth of knowledge. And, you know, I think, you know, he’s done a lot of good things for our industry. And if you’re not a InterNACHI member, you should check it out, and definitely consider joining that organization.

Ian R
Yeah, ditto on that. Alright, thanks for having me.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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