Are You Getting What You Paid For? (Inspection Tips)

this week we're talking about physical inspections i just got back from visiting seven different cities in the u.s in a really really quick trip and i did several inspections so i want to give you my tips for meeting with inspectors and just going through the whole process let's jump right in welcome to short-term rental riches we'll discuss investing in real estate but with a specific focus on short-term rentals quick actionable items to acquire manage and scale your portfolio i'm your host tim hubbard welcome back to

the short-term rental riches podcast i'm really excited you're here again thanks for joining us i just got back from a kind of hectic trip in the u.s i would say i was in seven different cities in a little less than three weeks so i was running around quite a bit i think i was in 12 different airports so uh it was a bit hectic but a big part of that trip was looking for new properties and i found some that i'm in contract for and also

uh inspected some that i decided to pass on and during that process i met with some inspectors so i want to tell you about that i gotta say it was really nice to be back in the u.s so many good friends and spread out all over the place us is really really spread out isn't it it's very big now it's good to see family i am back here in brazil now and on my way back i found this was interesting then i'll just get right into

it it was the first time in an airport that i didn't have to show a boarding pass they just scanned my face and it was super fast it was super fast i mean less than a like it seemed like a millisecond and it recognized me and said timothy i kept and then i'm gone so uh i feel like we're in the future a little bit so anyhow all right enough with my tangent backstory uh i viewed quite a few properties and i wanted to get into

how i go about doing inspection first of all hopefully you're doing inspections now it's a very competitive market out there there are times where people are putting as is offers in and that is an offer which basically says you're going to take the property as is so unless your offer wasn't like that if you had a normal offer that wasn't as his then you're going to be doing inspections and actually either way i would still be doing inspection because you want to know what you're getting

into right if you did make an as-is offer you've got to be prepared to pony up a lot of money if something was wrong and inspections are the way that we find out what's wrong with the property so there's a lot of different types the normal home inspection is what most everyone does but there are other inspections too and i'll mention this briefly so in your normal home inspection do you meet the inspector there i like to i just happen to find this apartment building it's

actually eight units in oklahoma city where i already have properties and i was in dallas which was nearby so i drove there it was like three hours away it just happened like i was only in dallas for a day so it really worked out well now i don't think you have to be there to see inspections as long as as long as you have someone that you really really trust there so had i not been able to go there i do have someone that i really

trust there and that would be okay for me to do it remotely in that city now if i didn't know anyone i would want to dig a little deeper and preferably be their person so since i was able to be there in person it reminded me of some of the things that i used to do walking the units first of all i like to see all the units now if it's a single family home there's only going to be one unit right but multi-family one this

one had eight apartments i went into every single unit the bigger you get with apartment buildings the more units there are the better the chances are that someone doesn't want to show you the worst units really if they're showing you five out of eight well the other three could be bad so you want to check out everything uh not just the units that are available now sometimes when you go in these units there's tenants in there and that can be a little awkward right you're like

in their personal space they have food in the kitchen they have their beds and stuff like in their bedrooms and they've got all their stuff there and you want to see all the space right now i wasn't lifting covers or doing anything like that actually i got there after the inspector had already left so i met with my property manager and we walked the units together and she pointed out the things that she saw when she was with the property inspector so we did walk through

all the units it was very quick it was very brief but it can be a little awkward but you want to know a really good trick if you have a tenant in there they are a fantastic source of information an untapped resource that i don't see a lot of people talking to when they're considering a property so for example there was one unit that had a tenant that lived there for 10 years 10 years now that is a lot of history and so i simply asked

her some questions how have you liked living here you know and you want to be polite and not intrude their space if they don't want to talk you can kind of get that vibe and you can leave but this tenant was very friendly and open so i talked with her as long as i could and found out about the property if there were any major issues or anything that had been there that you'd want to know about she had good things to say about the property

there were a few things that we already knew about like some basement links for example and so i asked her about those yeah i've been flooding in the basement recently uh you know the roof was replaced have you noticed any roof leaks going so this property was in great shape i think it's really cool i hope it goes through these things take a little longer especially with the commercial properties but we'll see how it goes and i'm excited to add it to the portfolio it is

in an area that requires a short-term rental permit so that's something i'm going to have to apply for but if you've been listening to this podcast for a while you know that i like to purchase properties that make sense with long-term rentals as well and this one does it's cash flowing with long-term tenants so worse comes worse i can do month-long stays or i can run it as a long-term rental so i i don't see any issue getting the permit but you know just a quick

note on that so another reason to do your inspections right you want to know what you're you're paying for there was another property that i was looking for in the same area i never saw this one personally in person but the description said gutted to the studs full renovation and then when my property manager walked through the property for me she said this property was not got into the studs you could tell it had old plaster walls as historic property as well so one of the

reasons for doing your inspections is making sure you're getting what you're paying for and if you don't do the inspections well then you also don't have that negotiating right now if your offer was as is which some of the offers a lot of the offers these days are because it's just so competitive but if it's not uh and i would not recommend doing an as is for unless you've got a lot of experience in real estate or you have a huge budget prepared to to take

on expenses that you might not know are there so i wouldn't recommend doing as is i didn't do it on this offer and one of the things that doing these inspections gives me is negotiating power now we did a termite inspection we did a sewer inspection where we actually have the video cameras go down the drain lines and we did find one of the two drains was blocked so that's something we're going to talk to the current sellers about and negotiate on we found a little

bit of termite damage that was another inspection we did so we did a general home inspection where we went through all the units we did a termite inspection we did a drain sewer light inspection and i'm going to have another roof inspection done as well because the home inspectors were not able to get up there you may find that that's common with home inspectors if you're at all concerned about the roof or if it's a large building where it might be a really large expense you

might want to consider getting a roof inspection as well so all of these things help you to negotiate on the property now you might be thinking well this market's crazy there is no room for negotiation but just remember if you uncover some issue with the property and you disclose that to the seller which you definitely will if the deal doesn't go through with you well they have to disclose that to the next buyer in their disclosures if it's a big issue just remember that it's much

better to bring it to the surface and negotiate and hopefully after doing all those inspections you can verify that you're getting what you paid for i hope you guys are doing really well out there and hopefully you're finding some properties out there in this market they are out there this one was listed publicly so uh there are properties out there keep at it i hope you're enjoying the podcast and until next time i hope you have a wonderful day ciao if you're looking for a ton

of free resources well you can check out the links in the show notes or head to our website restmethods.com where you'll find free guides house rules and my ebook on finding the best short term rental properties thanks for tuning in