PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian Robertson
Welcome back to Inspector Toolbelt Talk for our much anticipated Q4 Market Outlook with Beon DeNood, how are you, Beon?

Beon DeNood
Doing good, man, how are you, Ian?

Ian Robertson
Not bad. Do you know how long we’ve been friends, Beon, or at least known each other?

Beon DeNood
This is funny. I was thinking about that the other day, actually. Do you remember the first place we actually met? Do you remember where it was?

Ian Robertson
I thought it was on the side of a big commercial warehouse, and you were wiring lights. Was that it?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. It was somewhere in the middle of winter. We’re doing, like, some electrical work on a commercial warehouse in Albany, New York. Yep.

Ian Robertson
Yep. You know what I was using as a reference for how long we’ve known each other, was, we didn’t text back then, like, if you wanted to get a hold of somebody, or, like, do they have a cell phone? Oh, I don’t know. Do you have one? No, and you have to find somebody with a cell phone, and we’re like, do you have a cell phone? Like, wired phones were still a thing.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, because I remember another friend of ours, uh, Tom, who’s been on the show, and I and I texted him. He’s like, what is this? I’m like, it’s called text messaging. He’s like, this is cool. You can just send me messages.

Beon DeNood
We’re old men.

Beon DeNood
They were words on my phone. Like, where did that come from?

Ian Robertson
It was like, an old analog flip phone. That’s awesome. That is great.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, yeah. So that’s, that’s a while back. Let’s see that’s, um, sorry, lost you for a second there. What was that?

Ian Robertson
No, no, no. I was just thinking that in relation to our podcast here. And how, how quickly times change. Just, was it 20 some odd years ago, 20 plus years ago, and now times have changed. And even since we started this podcast, how, how much the market has changed, even just in the past four or five years? You know, it’s been pretty drastic in the past four or five years.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, dynamics have changed a lot. And I think a lot of folks, you know, surrounding the whole pandemic era, there was a lot of focus on that. But, I mean, really, we’re dealing with dynamics that have been progressing, regardless of situations like that, and we’re just, we’ve landed in a very different place than where we’ve ever been, at least, I think before, looking from the tech perspective, yeah, things, things have changed a lot looking at the home inspection market itself, when you put those two together, yeah, it’s just a completely different place.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I remember when we used to just inspect. Yeah. I tell that to guys all the time. I’m like, remember when we used to just inspect, and now it’s a whole thing. There’s all these industries out there trying to push into home inspections. There’s a home inspection. We’re gonna call it what it is, a downturn that happened 2022ish into early 2023, and we’re kind of pulling out of that. And it’s just, it’s just wild man, things change so much.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, and the market seems overall to be tighter. So home inspectors, I think, now more than ever, are looking at ways to economize, to do better, to offer other services. So even from that point of view, like you said, you know, you remember when you just went out and you inspected, and you, you know, got paid, and that was, that was the end of it. It’s, it’s just a lot more complex doing business now and and staying afloat.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and we’re gonna, we’re gonna drill down specifically into Q4, so October, November, and December of this year, 2024, and what we’re, what we think we’re looking at, and again, we’re not experts. We’re just a couple of guys giving our opinion on it. Although I gotta say, we’ve been pretty spot on. I’m pretty proud of ourselves. Maybe we’ve been vague enough to be accurate enough.

Beon DeNood
You say a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and maybe it’s this or that, then, oh yeah, we were, we were spot on.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, exactly. No. But I am kind of proud of where we’ve kind of judged where things are going to go, because it’s all cyclical. It constantly happens. And this is definitely a weird cycle, but if you go off of previous cycles. We kind of pick up what, what’s going on. Before we talk about that, I mean, you mentioned some some changes, and one of the changes that I noticed more and more is the home inspection market consolidating. And when I say consolidating, I’m not talking about, you know, business buying us up. I’m talking about less and less independent inspectors compared to large inspection companies. Again, 20 years ago, you’d have a few kicking around here or there, and now there’s quite a few, and a lot of new guys starting out, and within a year or two, they’re going into being multi-inspector, hiring guys, growing. We’re becoming a lot like I related to the HVAC field. I remember being younger and helping my uncle. He was an HVAC contractor, and it was just a bunch of single guys running around, and now there’s lots of big companies and way less single guys kicking around, but now that’s a nice even mix, and that’s what’s happening with the home inspection industry. I’m not saying that as a bad thing, because it’s a nice even mix. We still have an independent guy and big companies too.

Beon DeNood
Yeah. So in years past, like, if you started as a home inspector, you were always just a single operator, like, you know, self-employed kind of thing. And now most of the guys entering will most likely be an employee, or, like, a 1099 worker with somebody who’s got a larger outfit.

Ian Robertson
I wouldn’t say most. I would say more than previously.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian Robertson
I would say more than previously start off as an employee or work as a 1099. I would still say the vast majority still start off as a single inspector. And then they kind of figure out, oh, okay, well, this big outfit, they’ll hire me, they’ll pay me X amount of dollars, and I’ll just have steady income. Or, you know, they’ll, they’ll figure things out one way or the other.

Beon DeNood
Right. And I think it also regionally will differ quite a bit. Like, I mean, some parts of the country, like, I know, here, northern Florida, out in Texas, depending where you are, up, Northern Michigan, there’s some places where, obviously you have some some larger outfits concentrated. And there it’s, it’s a lot harder to start as a single operator. So if you’re going to start as a home inspector, you most likely are going to start under the umbrella of one of the one of the larger firms. Most likely.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I would agree with that. California, one of those big markets there. But enough, I guess, enough, what is it? Not digressing, reminiscing about the good old days. Let’s talk about the upcoming good new days. What are we looking at, in your opinion, here for our fourth quarter of 2024, Beon, because me and you were talking, I think it was just yesterday, some of the numbers kicking around, and depending on when this podcast gets released, maybe some of these numbers will change. But what’s going on in the market that makes you either optimistic or pessimistic about the home inspection industry?

Beon DeNood
Yeah, so I guess the big point of optimism everybody’s making a big deal of the half basis point slash of the Fed, of the rate, you know. So that has a huge effect on interest rates. And seeing as the home, the real estate market and mortgages is a big part of that, it’s also led the mortgage rate to slide. I think. What are we at now? 6.09.

Ian Robertson
Yep, exactly.

Beon DeNood
Yeah. So that’s the best it’s been in a long time. If we back off, even just a year ago, I think we were at 7.19 or 7.29, something like that. Now we may think, wow, that’s not much of a big difference. But I did a little bit of math. I figured, if you are buying a house, around about like $400,000 which I think is roughly about the average price of a house, which is crazy to think of, but I know that is the case. So if you look at that, and if you are putting down, let’s say the customary 20% so your loan is looking at about like 320, 330, or whatever that ends up being, that difference in interest rate amounts to a difference in your payment of 200 and something dollars per month in your payment. So it is enough to make a difference to a lot of people, where maybe they would have been out at the higher interest rate and back in at the lower so I think we will see a bit of momentum, even anecdotally, just looking at the general response from people, they seem excited about this drop, like, okay, you know, this may loosen things up a little bit, but I think we were talking about it the other day. I think the big problem still is inventory, and that’s going to block us. So I think it’s a bittersweet here. We may see an uptick, but I think ultimately it’s gonna, it’s gonna fizzle out pretty soon here.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I’m not saying I’m not optimistic. I’m gonna say cautiously optimistic, because here’s my take on the whole thing. The half a percentage point is a big drop, from what I understand is the biggest drop that they’ve done in the past three years, two years, something like that. It’s, it’s a pretty big slide, 6.09 I think it was, was it?

Beon DeNood
6.09, yep, on 30 year fixed.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, on a 30 year fixed. That’s pretty good. But here’s the problem. So let’s use your math that you gave us, $400,000 house. The average person is not going to put down $80,000 as a 20% down payment. So it’s just the average person doesn’t have $80,000 floating around. The average home is $400,000 the average person has less than $10,000 in their bank account. You know, I was just reading as on bank rate. The numbers of the amount of money the average person has on hand is astonishing, which is why they say the next recession is probably going to be a credit recession, because it’s just building and building. But now so you take that $80,000 and you roll that into the mortgage, and if you pay any less than 20% you’re gonna have to pay PMI, which is primary mortgage insurance. So that’s 6.09% that half a percent slide, I’ll be honest with you, the average person, I don’t think is going to matter that whole that much. I mean, yeah, is it going to make a difference? Sure. But I mean, if you’re paying a stupid amount of money for a house and primary mortgage insurance, that half a percentage point is not going to make or break your decision to buy home or not. And the problem is, and we’re talking about real estate, because this affects us and our industry, how many houses are being sold and how many are being bought, and the demand for it. The other problem is, what you mentioned, inventory, and the lack of inventory, the lack of houses for sale, is still artificially keeping the price of a house too high for the average person to buy. Average household income. It’s like two people earners is a little under $80,000, the average person needs to make, like $120,000 to buy the average home. So it comes down to inventory. There’s not enough inventory, and when there’s not enough inventory, houses become more expensive. The less diamonds there are, the more expensive a diamond becomes. The less anything there is, the more expensive it becomes. Inventory and price, I don’t care if we drop it down to, so some experts say the same thing. I was looking at an article this morning. I want to say Bankrate, but that was the other one. But either way, I think with NerdWallet, they were saying the same thing. They’re like, you can lower it to whatever you want, but if the house is $400,000 and five years ago, it was 250, but their wages haven’t gone up, that person still can’t afford that home. So I’m not overly optimistic for it, and I think it just had more to do with the overall economy and election year than anything else. You know, elections coming up in November. So we’re gonna see big swings like that, like, oh, look, we went down to half a point. Things are getting better, or things are getting worse, or whatever anybody’s trying to do to get themselves or the other person elected. I don’t know.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian Robertson
So I’m less optimistic on that front of things, but I do have optimism in other areas? Do you disagree with me, Beon, or agree?

Beon DeNood
Well, no, I mean, it checks out, I think. So, basically, what you’re saying is, overall, people are financially worse off than what they have been. You know, folks are still, not a lot of cash on hand, and then, you know, just the being priced out of the market. So I wonder if, because consumers must be ready to not only just settle on a higher interest rate overall, you know, 6% as opposed to even a five or a four, they’d have to just settle, settle on that, but they’d also have to settle on not the house that they would have liked. They’re going to have to, you know, look at something a lot smaller that or, you know, in a different neighborhood than what they were looking for, so that they can bring their price point down. But ironically, that is exactly where the inventory problem is at its worst. So, yeah, it seems like the log jam is not quite completely unstuck yet.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I think that 2025 is going to be a little better. But I think 2026 and 2027 is when, as you put it, the logjam gets a little bit more unstuck. Because here’s what’s going to happen, somebody who bought a house in 2022, let’s make up this person. They bought one at $300,000, very likely that $300,000 house is now worth 380,000 depending on where they live. So now, even though they just bought their home, a couple years later, they already have equity in their home. But they also have an interest rate of 3.8% so they’re gonna hang on to the house. They might have bought it during the frenzy, and it may not have been their dream home or whatever. They’re going to hang on to that, though, until at the very least, we hit the high fours for interest rates on the 30 year fixed. And I do have some other guys that have, you know, Bankrate people and all these bankers online. That’s what they’re saying too. They’re saying minimum, high fours, then that will create inventory. But once you create inventory, then the prices will go down. We have to have stagnant inventory before prices go down. So stagnant inventory happens typically after a recession, or after so many houses go on the market that are overpriced. That may or may not happen towards the end of 2027 but for Q4 specifically, I think we will see a slightly busier than normal season right up to Christmas, because there are certain people out there that have been waiting to sell their home that are at a 6% mortgage. Maybe they bought in 2019, or wherever. I forget when it was 6% so now that, now they might sell their home, or somebody had a home, they bought it in, let’s say, 2015, 10 years later, they’re a third of the way through their mortgage. They pay down a lot of their interest, they’re starting to pay down more principal, 6% mortgage isn’t as big of a deal, that 80,000 equities probably going to be more like $130,000 equity. So they’re going to take that equity and they’re going to buy a better house. 10 years is going to push somebody like, I’ve lived here long enough, this wasn’t the house that I wanted. Let’s go into something else. And 6%, they’re like, listen, that’s right about where we’re at now anyways, not going to be as much skin off my nose. I’m going to do a 15 year mortgage and get it down to 5.5.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian Robertson
So that stuff’s going to start to happen, in my opinion, in Q4.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian Robertson
But the season always gets really slow the week around Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons, and then the market is a dead stop from like December 15 all the way through the end of the first week in January. It’s just like numbingly dead, which I don’t think anybody complains about, because that’s when you’re kind of like finishing up a few, maybe small inspections, yada yada yada, spending time with your family. But I think it’s going to be a busy October, first half of November and first half of December, but not overly in most areas. I think it’ll just be slightly higher.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian Robertson
2025, I think is going to be modest growth in our industry. I think we’re going to get a little bit more, and we’re going to feel better, like, maybe we’re like, hey, I just started out a couple years ago. I’m making 70, $80,000 a year. Maybe this 2025, will make 85, $90,000 or maybe we’ll be able to work the same but increase our prices a little bit, something like that. It’ll give us more wiggle room, and especially too, because the number of inspectors, number of active inspectors, let’s put it like that, number of active inspectors keeps going down in small increments, so they’re finding other industries. The low end of the inspection industry is just leaving, and even some of the high end of the inspection industry just from attrition and time, and we’re like, yeah, it’s time to move out. So we’re losing some of the industry, even though the overall numbers are still big.

Beon DeNood
Okay.

Ian Robertson
Active numbers are getting lower.

Beon DeNood
It does seem like new guys coming in asking about education, tips for getting started. It seems like that conversation is happening, happening a little more than what it has been. So I think some guys see the opportunity they may be looking to make a career change, and they see, okay, maybe market’s going to be picking up over the next while, and by the time I’m certified and ready, it’ll probably be okay, you know. So it looks like maybe we’ll see an uptick in the number of inspectors, you know, as the market picks up. But I know what you’ve always traditionally said is that we do usually see a bit of a spring boom, so or boon, boom. Don’t know which one to use.

Ian Robertson
I say boom, B, O, O, M, as in, Mary.

Beon DeNood
So, you know, looking forward to 2025, spring may look good, but I think those numbers are realistic that you just put out there. So it’s not like you’re going to have a worse year. You’re going to have a marginally better one, but we’re still not, you know, having a banner year quite, quite yet for 2025 but not, not as terribly horrible as we’ve seen in previous years, where the bottom’s falling out continually.

Ian Robertson
Man, well, remember, what was it last season or the season before we even skipped one of our quarterly updates, because I’m like, these numbers are too depressing.

Beon DeNood
Miserable, yeah.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, I still remember that one market, one of the major cities in the northeast, only had 200 homes for sale out of a population of just under a million. I’m like, sheesh, that’s, that’s sad, but now it’s, it’s better.

Beon DeNood
Yeah.

Ian Robertson
And the problem is, we want it, when we, we have this mentality. I have it too, of the Amazon mentality. I want, I want my package, and I want it now, put it on my doorstep, give it to me. You know, I’m imitating my my father-in-law.

Beon DeNood
Do you turn into another person when you go shopping on Amazon?

Ian Robertson
Apparently, he doesn’t even use Amazon.

Beon DeNood
Give me, give me, I want more.

Ian Robertson
Give me that package. You gotta meet my father-in-law. He’s funny, um, but when we see here, we say, oh, we’re gonna change. And then we’re like, oh, it didn’t change. We’re like, no, it did. The package you ordered from Amazon is closer, but we got five day shipping here. It’s not same day on your doorstep. You know, we gotta, we gotta wait a little bit. It’ll be, it’ll be a better winter. I’m, personally, I’m excited about that. I was worried the interest rates were going to stay higher, and these are still not high interest rates. I wish, I wish, I wish everybody would understand these are still not high interest rates. It’s just what we’ve become accustomed to. It’s like we were accustomed to having free french fries with our burger, and now we have to pay, you know, 10 cents extra. We’re upset about it. I know it matters when we pay our bill, but historically, these are not high interest rates. But either way, it’s, I think it will help us this winter. I’m excited about that part, but I’m expecting, as you put it, modestly, marginally better numbers, not throwing out money out our window, because we’re making a billion, but definitely, marginally better.

Beon DeNood
Right. And there’s, there’s a couple of the things going on in the market as well that may have a positive or negative effect. We’ve spoken before about the whole change in the, you know, the buyer commissions, and how that whole setup is we, we still, actually, honestly don’t know how that is fully going to impact the home inspection market, like tangibly. And the other one that I wanted to bring up, and I’m not sure about this, so I want to get your opinion, is we, in my opinion, we’re seeing a bit more of even mortgage companies requiring inspections because of the burn that happened when things got sloppy, you know, when the real estate market was super high. So I don’t know if that is enough yet where so maybe, like, maybe the number of transactions is still not super high, but maybe we’ll see some more inspections because of things like that. But then, on the other side, we got the whole new buyers, you know, agent situation that we don’t know how it’s going to impact. So it may be a wash, but I don’t know. I’m just, I have no idea. I’m just bringing it up to have a conversation on it.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, so I think both of those things have already positively affected us. So I’ve said this before, and actually artworking RE Magazine had us on for an article that we collaborated with them on. They interviewed us. Rather, we’ve already seen a positive uptick, and even just anecdotally, I love that word, but in our own companies, I see the number of people not working with an agent or hiring us outside of what their agent recommended. So we’re like, oh, where did this agent come from? And then we talked to the buyer, and they’re like, no, my agent didn’t recommend you. I found you on my own. And then just people just not working with an agent, those numbers are up, and they started to go up with the NAR thing. So the NAR settlement, there’s so many workarounds. I literally see agents hanging the commission rate on the sign out in front of the house. One agent was funnily, humorously wearing a shirt with the commission rate that they were offering the buyer side. It’s like, this is awesome, but so that’s not gonna, that’s not gonna change it logistically, because there’s lots of ways around it and besides the humorous ones, but it created awareness. So people like me, I’m still going to work with an agent, but I’m going to be more aware, and I’m going to say, well, what about this? What about that? And I’m not going to, if anything, it hurt the trust of people in the real estate industry, which NAR knew, and I think that was ultimately one of the goals of the settlement. So that’s already affecting us positively, whether that logistically works out or not for home inspectors, that’s great for us. And then you had asked, what was the second thing that you asked, Beon, I’m having, talked about how old we are, and now I forget.

Beon DeNood
Even mortgage companies, it seems to be a rise of them, like requiring inspections as part of the part of the transaction.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. So one of the one of the things that we didn’t realize is we complained when people were skipping inspections. I kind of view it like when you complain, when you skipped your doctor’s appointment, but then you realize that you had a medical condition that should have been caught, and now you’re worse off for it. You and all your friends are going to learn from that, and everybody’s going to go to the doctor now regularly. What that did for us was refortify the home inspection industry in people’s minds. So I see people still skipping inspections, but not as nearly as regularly as they used to. And states are even pushing still to have legislation to not require a home inspection, but require the option to have a home inspection to be in the contract, which is still, you know, that’s a whole different discussion. So I’m still seeing positive things out of that. So we may net the same transactions, I think, is what you were kind of getting at, say, an area has 1000 transactions, we may still have 1000 transactions, but before, it might have been 500 inspections out of those 1000 transactions. Now it might be 750 out of those 1000.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian Robertson
That’s kind of what I’m seeing, and I agree that that’s good for us. There’s good stuff that came out of this for our industry as a whole. We came out smelling like a rose to be frank.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, no, for sure. So it’s interesting. So then there’s not maybe a direct correlation between market up and down with how inspectors locally are doing. It may seem more of a deviation, you know, where inspectors actually doing okay, even though the numbers are maybe not looking as good as they used to previously, which is not a bad thing, that’s pretty good.

Ian Robertson
No, yeah, we can’t. We can’t look at our..the problem is it was such a recent memory. 2020 and 2021 were insane. It was like real estate’s version of 2005 and 2006 before the Great Recession. It was people throwing money at us. We couldn’t, we couldn’t do the inspections fast enough. You could get your license and have your schedule booked for the rest of the year, practically. And it’s just not what it is, that wasn’t practical. It wasn’t realistic. So we can’t compare our numbers to that. I don’t even, I scrub those numbers from my mind when I look at numbers, because that’s not anything realistic, but modest gains over a long period of time are better than the short gains in those short periods of time. It helps us to be more founded, more, more solid as a company. We don’t rely on those big swings, and we don’t worry about them so much. And there’s still guys out there that are, you know, there’s guys out there that are still struggling. Some markets are hurting more than others. Yeah, regionally speaking, there’s guys that are just, I hate to say it, but if there’s 20 houses for sale in three counties, you could be the best inspector in the universe, there’s nothing to inspect. You know, it’s not their fault, necessarily. But, and then some guys are like, I never saw a recession. You know, it’s like, they’re just, they’re just hammering up work left to right. So it’s definitely regional.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, awesome, yeah. I think that that’s, that’s a pretty solid summary, but it is interesting understanding all these factors and some of them, we just have to stay tuned and see, see how it works. As far as the greater economy dynamics are concerned. Obviously, cooling interest rates is done to fire things up a little bit, and it’s going to be interesting. It’s kind of like winding something up and not knowing how fast it’s going to, well, you know what you’ve just done. So we’ll have to watch that as well as we go into next year, how the general economy responds, you know.

Ian Robertson
Here’s, here’s my opinion, and maybe I’m wrong, but remember when the millennials were becoming the big buyers in the market, me and you, we’re considered geriatric millennials. They call us. But when our generation became buyers, they were worried about us, but at the same time, we were relatively well paid generation, and we were willing to sacrifice to buy a home and all that other stuff. And Nick Gromicko actually talked about this on our show one time. My problem with the next generation, the younger millennials and the older Gen Z that are buyers now is they’re not. They call it now house poor. That’s what we’ve called it for, like, what 5, 10, years. But you know what we used to call that 30 years ago, homeownership. People talk about, they’re like, well, I don’t want to be house poor, so I’m just not going to buy a house. So our generation be like, oh, all right, I can give up eating out. We just won’t eat out. And then, you know, 5, 10, years later, you’re doing a little better, and you’re eating out, and things kind of level out. The younger generation is less willing to do that, and they’re less focused on home ownership. They like the idea of it, but they’re less focused on, less fixated on it. They’re like, oh, well, I’m gonna live in a tiny house or with my parents and travel and do this and that. And they’re less willing to be quote, unquote house poor, as that term has developed over the past decade. And they’re, they’re more wanting to do other things. I think eventually, over the next decade, them becoming the primary buyer set is going to definitely lower the value of homes and increase inventory. They’re going to be trying to get them to buy houses, because they have very little motivation to compared to other generations.

Beon DeNood
Interesting, yeah, that’s a very interesting take. So it’s, it’s like a, it’s essentially a shift in values with the next generation, like buying a home is not way up there anymore like it was with previous generations. And one thing I’ll also say is that the whole dynamic behind buying a home, it’s going to be a very different process with, with the next generation. So when you’re looking at Gen Z, like, when Gen Z is the predominant generation in the homebuyer market, the whole marketing strategy and everything is going to be very, very different. So it’ll be interesting to see that unfold.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, and I’m not saying that it’s good or bad with Gen Z.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian Robertson
It’s different.

Beon DeNood
Right.

Ian Robertson
So back in the 80s and 90s, I mean, I was little then, but home ownership was the thing. That’s what you did. There was a lot of family pressure and societal expectations that eventually you just buy a home.

Beon DeNood
Right, right. You were, you were judged. Your own worth was judged very much by whether you had a home or not.

Ian Robertson
Yeah. And it’s not so much now, they’re like, okay, I’ll rent. And then I hear a lot of the Gen Z, uh, they’ll talk. They’ll be like, listen, if I can’t have my dream home, I’ll just rent and not have any home. So it’s, they’re gonna need to be convinced as they get older to buy homes, whereas now you don’t need to convince our generation and older. They’re like, that’s just what you do. But you’re right. The advertising is going to be, get a home. Here’s why, have your own yard, have this, have that, and they’re like, oh, maybe I would want that. They’re going to need to be convinced. I feel like that’s going to definitely fix it, but that’s definitely long term. That’s going to take a little while. But, you know, 10 years flies by, but Q4, slightly better, 2025 is going to be better than this year was, unless something, you know, catastrophic happens, some sort of world war, or, you know, Texas tries to secede from the United States, again. Sorry Texas guys, but I keep hearing about that, I’m okay either way.

Beon DeNood
You know, I think they just keep it dangled out there, just to keep everybody honest. So, yeah, but yeah, so it is interesting. One, one thing, though you’ve been talking about it, other people are talking about it, direct to consumer marketing, still super important. And even as we’re talking about Gen Z, I mean, as over the next five years or so, if you are building up, if you’re let’s say, I mean Inspector AJ, right? So Austin Jenkins, we, we’ve interacted with them a lot over the last few weeks. And, I mean, that’s the, that’s the recipe, right there, right? I mean, that kind of direct to consumer marketing, where your, your name is in front of them constantly. That really will help you to insulate you and prepare you for the next generation of buying, I think, because that sort of marketing is going to be absolutely key.

Ian Robertson
Yep, exactly. Every time people call me, they’re like, what should I do for marketing? And I tell them exactly what you said, the phone goes silent. You know, do I like to make TikToks all day and interact with people on social media? Not really my favorite thing, but you know what? So’s digging a ditch in the backyard, looking for a septic tank and then measuring the poo layer on top, like, who introduced, you know, three gallons a minute of water. It’s like sometimes we need to put on our big boy pants and say, okay, my big boy pants are going to be sparkly and shiny while I do a fancy dance on TikTok. I really digressed in that thought. I just started talking and stuff started coming out.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, no, but, I mean, it’s true, like we’re feeling, we feel uncomfortable by it, but I mean, you know, hire somebody, ask a family member, you know, who’s good at that stuff, you know, to help you get started. But that makes me think of something else. There was, there’s a realtor, I forget where he’s located, somewhere here in the United States.

Ian Robertson
The running guy?

Beon DeNood
No, no, no. There’s another one. He, he’s got the clips labeled as going Gen Z employee to make the edits for my my house showing video.

Ian Robertson
And it keeps going *sounds*.

Beon DeNood
Yeah, and they took out, they took out all of the, all of the voice content, and it’s just him taking a breath, or it’s really hilarious.

Ian Robertson
I saw that one. Everybody should look up that video, because it is hysterical.

Beon DeNood
I wish I had the name of the guy, but yeah, it’s like, if you, if you search, even if you search Gen Z employee, video edit, realtor, I’m sure you’ll find it, but it is really funny.

Ian Robertson
So here’s, here’s a social media idea. Steal this one everybody. Get a video of yourself doing a short little inspection and explaining some things, and then have somebody edit out all the words so that all it has left is the breath that you’re taking in between words. And you like flicking your hair or just kind of like looking around. It’ll, it’ll go viral, trust me.

Beon DeNood
We should, I think, I think, send us the clips of the links to the clips, and we make a little montage on our YouTube channel.

Ian Robertson
Yeah, we’ll share it on our YouTube channel and on TikTok and everywhere. Just sent it to us. I’d love to see that.

Beon DeNood
Oh, that’d be great. It’ll be awesome.

Ian Robertson
Cool, Beon, thank you for being on, Beon, and we’ll see you again, probably at the Q1 market update in January.

Beon DeNood
Sounds good, man, we’ll see you then. Thanks, Ian.

Ian Robertson
Thanks, bye.

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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