RE: Real Estate Podcast

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:00)
Stop scrolling Zillow for a second. The single most important hour of your home search isn't at an open house or scheduling home tours. It's the meeting you have before you ever see a single home.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:24)
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the RE Real Estate Podcast. I'm Ben Harang with my co-host Clint Galliano. Clint, good afternoon. How you doing today,

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:38)
I'm doing wonderful, Ben. How you doing?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (00:40)
I'm doing terrific. It looks like we have a string of weather that is nothing but sunshine and cool for the next seven days. No rain in the forecast. So life is lovely. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. There's a brisk feel in the air. So tell us what we're talking about today, Clint.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (00:50)
It's so nice. It's so, so nice.

All right, so we're going to kind of revisit some territory that we covered at the very beginning of this podcast. We're going to revisit the steps for the buying process with our clients. And this first episode is going to represent the first step. And that's the buyer consultation. And you may be thinking to yourself,

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:22)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:26)
what is a buyer consultation? it's not a sales pitch, it's a game plan session. It's a chance for us to meet with the buyers and the buyers to meet with us, get a feel for each other. And it's a strategy meeting to build out a roadmap for buying a home.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:40)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:47)
some people, they make that big mistake and decide, I just want to go see a house.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (01:53)
Well, Clint, think it's a waste of time to do a buyer consultation.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (01:58)
that some people don't even know it's an option. And so we're going to go over why skipping this is like trying to build a house without a blueprint.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (02:01)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

So.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (02:08)
Alright,

why don't you tell us what to expect, Ben?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (02:11)
All right. It isn't scary, it's practical, and here's typically what happens in a buyer consultation. We get into what your motives and goals are, why you're moving, what's your timeline, your must haves versus nice to haves.

We help you discover the difference between must haves and nice to haves. You might need a three bedroom house. You might want a blue door, for example. The blue door is not a need. That can be changed. The three bedrooms is a need. It's difficult to change the number of bedrooms in a house. So we go through it. We extract from you, the buyer, what you're really looking for.

We have the conversation and we can zero in on your wants and needs on the market and not just go flying by the seat of our pants to go find a house. We whittle down all the noise and we find three, four, five houses to go see. we know what we're going to see. But before we go see a house,

⁓ Yeah, how do we get that? How do we how do we make this happen? We get pre-qualified for a loan There's a lot of pre Pre approvals and I said pre qualifies that pre approvals are better pre approvals and pre qualifications Pre qualifications can be done in a matter of minutes Talking on the phone to somebody to a to a lender pre approvals

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (03:25)
That's the how.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (03:49)
requires you to send documentation into a lender and all they need to do to finish the application for a loan is to plug in the sales price and the address. They have all the other documents they need like bank statements and W-2s. So you're lot further along in the process with a pre-qualification than you are with a pre-approval and the difference in the nuances get lost on some people.

But if you really want to get in the game to win, the difference between the pre-qualification and pre-approval is important to understand. You also need to know about the full cost of buying. It's not just the down payment. There are closing costs. There's inspections. There are appraisals that need to be paid. So if you're to put 10 % down,

On a house, you're to need the 10 % down payment plus the cost of the inspection appraisal, the closing costs, recordation fees, insurance, prepaid insurance, just a litany of things that, can add up to a significant amount of money sometimes. also, when we talk to you, when you get pre-qualified, I tell people, I don't like to stretch your budget.

The budget is what you're comfortable with. There's a difference between what you can afford and what you want to spend on a house. What you can afford is what the bank will lend you, what they can pre-qualify you for. What you're comfortable with might be half of that. And that's something for you and a significant other, if there's one to make a determination on where you want to be. You might qualify for a

$750,000 house, but you might want to top out at 400. So you're not what's referred to as house poor. There's some room, you still have some discretionary income. So.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (05:44)
I'm a big

advocate of not stretching out or, I should say, running to the limits of your budget. ⁓ Because you never know when all of a sudden you may go a couple of weeks without getting paid or you don't want to be living at the edge of that envelope.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (05:51)
Exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Right. You want, you want to, you want to cushion in there. and you can still, we can still find a house in any price range. and it's, it's up to you to determine that price range with us poking and prodding and, asking questions on, on what you want. And it's, it's our job as a buyer's agent to, to find the house that you, that you want that fits your needs in the price range you're willing to spend. What typically happens is.

buyers are looking at houses outside of their price range and try to try to force themselves into the price range of the house. And that's, that's doing things backwards. if you're serious, the don't even look at houses, not in your price range, would let down to what fits your needs and make a run at the, at the one you like the most.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (06:52)
Alright, the other part of the buyer consultation is the process and the market that gets covered. That's where you come up with the game plan that gives you the A to Z roadmap from search to sold. That covers making an offer, doing inspections, getting the appraisal and closing date. So...

when you're at the buyer consultation, you can get a snapshot of the current local market. Is it hot? Is it cold? And what does it mean for you as a buyer, especially in your price range? Because as we've talked about before, especially in our market updates, different price ranges in the market are really at different levels of hot and cold. ⁓

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (07:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (07:38)
that's all going to depend on your surge and your offer strategy.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (07:45)
And what you need to understand is that the negotiating strategy differs if the market's hot or if the market's cold. So the deeper you can drill down into things, the more likely you'll have a winning offer on a house that you want.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (08:02)
Yep, all right.

Now we kind of go over the real value and why this is a must do. So this is the wiffim

WIIFM, what's in it for me section. All right, so this is gonna be a list of benefits for doing the buyer consultation. right, benefit one, it saves you so much time. All right, so you don't have to sit there scrolling through Zillow. like, don't like that house. I don't like that house. That one's kind of okay.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (08:34)
You stop seeing homes that never would have worked anyways. You're only looking at qualified properties that fit your real goals and budgets. also, get a competitive edge. In this market, you can't think about it. When you find the one, you're 100 % ready to write a clean, strong offer that day. And the sellers and their agents take offers from a prep buyer more seriously.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (08:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, and I tell people that typically buyers that that want to do it their way and there's all kinds of people some some people will Will follow our lead to a tee and they get in the house much quicker than people that want to do it their their way And if they want to do it their way, they'll likely lose out on two or three houses that they think they like

And when that happens, I have the conversation. we talked about having adult conversations. It's okay. You want to keep doing it your way or you want to do it my way now so we can help you buy, help you buy a house. and they get frustrated and they said, okay, we're going to listen now. So we, do what we need to do in the next offer typically gets accepted because we are much more ready to do it. Then we were on the first two or three that we missed on.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (09:53)
and story time here. We haven't told a story in a while, Ben. So, it's different market than we're in today, but I was working with a buyer and we wrote, I think we wrote four or five different offers on different houses. And everyone, we'd go into it and say, well, let's offer $10,000 under less price.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (09:57)
It's been a minute.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:23)
let's offer 12,000 under list price. Let's offer 8,000 under list price. And I would write the offer. And we were always the third or fourth offer in and on, you know, at the time that we're submitting the offers. And he kept missing out. And finally he says,

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:23)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (10:41)
I I need to take your advice and we need to maybe offer what they're asking for or maybe even a little bit more so we can get an offer accepted. And like you said Ben, the very next house that we made an offer on, we got that house.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (10:51)
Right. Right.

It's amazing how that happens. cause, cause it just means we, we, we do it every day, day in and day out. And we see the market. We, we know the pricing levels. you know, you don't have to have to do everything we say, but if you, if you follow our lead, if we're not going to stretch your budget, let's just do, do the groundwork and get ready to go find a house that you want to buy.

and get an accepted offer on it so we can get to the closing.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:28)
Alright, benefit three. Having that buyer consultation, kind of like I said at the beginning, it builds trust and sets expectations. This is an interview for you. Do you even like this agent?

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (11:40)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:41)
You

learn how they work, how they communicate, text, email, phone. It aligns everyone on the same team with the same goal.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (11:52)
Okay.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (11:52)
and they also

find out how you like to communicate.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (11:55)
It's a mutual job interview or a mutual interview. It's a job interview for us. It's an interview for you, whether you want to work with us or work with somebody else. so that, that just, I tell people all the time, find somebody you're willing that you, that you comfortable with, that you trust and stick with them. They'll, they'll treat you better than anybody else. And you don't have to develop a relationship with.

10 people to see 10 different houses if you're the listing agent. Calling the listing agent on a house is probably the best way not to buy it. And that leads us into the fourth benefit is what is agency? Who does an agent really work for? So a listing agent works for the seller. If you call a listing agent, the listing agent will also work for you, the buyer.

And they would be what we refer as a dual agency agent representing both the buyer and the seller That is becoming more and more difficult Clint Clint doesn't do it. I don't like doing it But it's a it's a personal choice If I have a client that wants to buy something I have listed I'll do it but if I just get a phone call off of off of a sign On somebody I don't know. I'm not

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:09)
down.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:17)
I'm not going to be a dual agent. I'll refer it to another agent so they can get representation and I don't have to represent both sides.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (13:26)
I use that as a selling point when I'm working with sellers or buyers in that I don't do dual agency so that they never have to question in the back of their mind whether I'm representing their best interests or not.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (13:28)
Mm-hmm.

Right. And how does the, big question about all this paperwork and the most resistant on why people want to, don't want to do it is how do we as buyers, agent, agents get paid? All of our expertise and knowledge comes at a cost. We do not charge a fee upfront. You don't have to pay us anything for us to go find a house and help you through the process. We are performance based.

We get paid at the closing. If you don't close, we don't get paid. So it comes with the fee and whatever that fee is, is negotiated. So once you negotiate and settle on the fee with the agent, that fee can be paid either by just required cash to close by the buyer. It can be rolled into the purchase agreement if the seller agrees to it.

or any combination thereof. But nobody's expecting a check just to go out and see houses and try to help you find the house you want. We get paid at the closing and not before.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (14:46)
unless they're an actual flat fee upfront agent. And we don't necessarily do that, but that is an option also.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (14:49)
That's true. It's

an option. You're right. My bad on that one, You don't do it, I don't do it. I don't know anybody that does it. But that is an option.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (15:02)
All right, next, some pro tips and some red flags to look out for. Pro tip, do 15 minutes of homework. Write down your questions before you go to the buyer consultation. Write down your three must haves and your three deal breakers, because that's going to be important for you to have those. Because when that question comes to you, it's going to be like being a musician. I used to play in a band and everything.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (15:19)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (15:26)
run into other musicians and say, hey, let's jam sometimes. What songs do you know? And I'd sit there and go, ⁓ and could not remember a single song that I knew how to play. so if I had that ahead of time, you know, maybe tattoo it to the inside of my palm, I could say, no, this song and that song, you know, or have a playlist with me or something like that. That makes it a lot easier. You know, have something to prompt you.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (15:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (15:54)
So that's a really good pro tip. Now moving on to red flags. All right, red flag number one. If your buyer's agent does not suggest a consultation, they just wanna meet you at a house. They're a door opener, they're not a guide. They're just looking to basically get paid. They're not necessarily, how do we, what's a good,

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (16:10)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (16:22)
way to say this. They're not committed to you. They're not necessarily a trusted advisor. They're just coming to open the door for you. Red flag number two. The whole meeting feels like a sales pitch. know, it's me, me, I, I, I, I, me, me. You know, it sounds like a choir warmup. It should be 80 % about you and 20 % about them.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (16:23)
What, they're not committed to you?

Mm-hmm.

Which is not. Right.

Hehehehe

Right. ⁓

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (16:52)
because they should be

learning about you and your needs and your wants.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (16:56)
The part about us is just explaining to the buyer what we do, how we do it, and how we get paid. The rest of it is about the buyer and what they want and what they need and why they're moving. And what's the big wants? What's the big deal breakers? Just so we can get an idea of what it is that you want so we can whittle the market down to those three four or five houses that

you potentially may want to buy.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (17:25)
Alright, red flag number three, they don't ask anything about your finances or if you're pre-approved. This is a massive red flag because that means that they don't even have the forethought to qualify if you're, you might be ready and willing, but if you're not able to make a purchase, then they're wasting both your and their time.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (17:48)
Mm-hmm Yeah, the the days of And I saw this 30 years ago when I first got in Phone rings somebody wants to go see a house and I've seen people dart out the door faster Then you can shake a stick at going show a house to somebody they never talked to before never heard from Don't know anything about All I know is that if they buy the house, they're gonna get paid

And that's how it was done 30 years ago. Not so much anymore without the buyer consultation on the front end to build that foundation and to serve as a.

platform so you can build a relationship with the agent that you're comfortable with.

You know, it all goes from there. So I tell people it's, you and me against the world. There's nobody else on your side. Don't take any advice from anybody else. And that's, and it's true. if anybody wants to talk about real estate, change the subject and talk about the weather. Don't do it. Cause you, you gotta get all kinds of advice from people that thought about getting a real estate license that think they know what they're doing to people that bought a house 10 years ago, to people that.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (18:35)
I stole that from you.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (18:54)
bought a house 50 years ago and tell you the prices are crazy. Don't you even think about buying a house? Well, when they bought a house, their prices were crazy. So just block out all the noise and literally as you and me against the world. and that's the best way I can explain it.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:13)
So to recap, buyer consultation is your foundation. It's a strategy session that ensures that you're not just looking for a house, you're on a clear path to buying the right house. The analogy is you wouldn't run a marathon without a training plan.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (19:28)
I wouldn't run a marathon with a training plan, Clint. Right. Right.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:32)
I wouldn't run a marathon, period. I wouldn't even think about running a marathon. I

wouldn't think about running a 1K

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (19:39)
But if you think you want to run a marathon, you're not doing it without a plan. ⁓

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (19:43)
Exactly.

So this is your training plan is the buyer consultation. All right. this is the deal. All right. This is your homework. If you're thinking about buying a home in the next year your very first step is to not click request a tour because first off you might think that your

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (19:59)
Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (20:02)
contacting the agent that you see associated with that listing. You might think that you're contacting somebody that's representing, wants to represent your interest. In reality, you're clicking to contact the highest bidder unless you're on a specific agent's site. Most likely you're not. ⁓ So either way, don't click or request a tour unless you're on my website or Ben's website.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (20:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (20:32)
then you can click Request a Tor. That's OK. ⁓

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (20:34)
Yeah. And

that's so bad that there's not a potential lawsuit going on about that. There is a lawsuit going on about that, about the misrepresentation, about who people think they're contacting when they click request a tour. And I'm not going to name any names, but you're probably smart enough to figure out who it is.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (20:41)
there is.

have. Nope.

All right, so your first step is to call an agent that you trust and say, I'd like to schedule a buyer consultation. And if they go, huh?

Maybe find another agent.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (21:06)
say thank you very much, I'll be in touch.

You find somebody, but it's a people business, it's a relationship business, it's a big deal, you buying a house, find somebody you can get along with and you trust to help you through the transaction is the best advice I can give you. And that starts with the buyer consultation. If you don't already know the agent, you need to build the relationship with somebody.

I'd rather it be myself or Clint, but whoever it is you're comfortable with, need to develop that relationship and stick with them. You jump in their hip pocket and go along for the ride and follow their lead. And you'll probably be able to find a house.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (21:42)
All right, and that's your buyer consultation. If you got any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can find all of our contact info in the show notes or go to rerealestatepodcast.com. You can watch episodes. You can find the link to our YouTube channel. You can find Ben's website and my website. Whether you're on

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (21:44)
think that's it.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (22:07)
listening on a podcast app or watching YouTube. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Send it to your friends, comment, all the fun things.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (22:17)
Okay. I think that does it, Clint. That's another one in the can.

Clint C. Galliano, REALTOR® (22:21)
Yes indeed. Have a good one, man.

Ben Harang, REALTOR® (22:24)
All right, you too, Clint.

See ya.