Fast and Easy Accurate Property Inspections

After you get the property under contract you will want to have it inspected by a rehab contractor to see what it will cost to make any necessary repairs, if there are any repairs needed. You will also want to have the contractor use your form so if you get more than one estimate then everyone will submit their repair estimates on the same form. This makes it easy to compare apples to apples so to speak. Now if the property needs a lot of work you may also want to have a licensed home inspector look at it as well. The reason we do not do this is that the home inspector will charge you to give you a report and it will not even include an estimate on the amount of money it will take to make the repairs. The rehab contractor on the other hand will give you a free estimate because they will want to get the job and actually make the repairs. Now if we are going to get a licensed home inspector to inspect the property we will do that after our estimate from the contractor. We want to make sure that the rehab estimate is within budget before paying for an inspection. I will show you later how to find just the right rehab contractor to work on your properties and to give you the estimates. When building a relationship with a rehab contractor and having them give you free estimates on your properties I want you to think about something. If you have a contractor go out to over five properties to write up estimates and you do not end up buying any of them, you need to start paying them to do the next few estimates until you actually buy one and they actually get the job. Remember to create win, win situations and don’t wait until the contractor has to bring it up and tell you that they can’t give you anymore free estimates because they haven’t gotten any jobs out of it yet. You don’t have to pay them much, maybe $100-$200 but once they actually get a job going with you then you can stop paying for the estimates again. If you feel like you need to get a licensed home inspector to perform an inspection then you can still get one but remember that they will charge you for the report.

How to Find Out the “Real Deal” on the Neighborhood

Here is a great idea to find out information about a property and the neighborhood. Any property you are thinking about buying you want to call the local police department on a non emergency line. In fact, when you make the call, the first thing I want you to ask is if this is a non emergency line. Then you ask them if you can get a police report for all of the activity in the neighborhood where your property is located. Some will have a website where you can get the information and some will have to mail it to you. Also if you own rentals then you will want to call or go on the website at least once a year to get a report. This will help you keep track with how the neighborhood is doing and whether it is going up or down.

Here is another great idea that you should do on all of the properties you are looking at buying. You should contact the local building inspection department or code enforcement department to make sure that there are no code violations on the subject property and if there are you need to get a list. This is also a good time to ask them for a list of all of the properties under code enforcement to try and buy the property.

After getting back your rehab estimate or home inspection report is a great time to go back to the seller to re-negotiate a better price if the report came in with more repairs than was anticipated. Please do not take advantage of anyone but it is a great negotiating tool.

I hope you have enjoyed this article taken from my course called the Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine! which teaches how we buy and sell 5-10 properties a month, have them sold in less than 2 hours and never leave the office or look at them. For many more articles and a 10 part ecourse on how to create your own Ultimate Buying and Selling Machine! as well as over 50 training audio recordings you can listen to online, download and collect, simply go to www.LarryGoinsFreeOffer.com where you will gain instant access to all of this and 51 Exclusive Editable real estate investing Forms and Documents all FREE! You will also get two FREE real estate investing eBooks, A free Personal Coaching Profile to help you jump start your real estate Investing, FREE Nationwide Wholesale Property Listing Notification, FREE Weekly Training Teleconferences with Different Topic Each Week, FREE subscription to Larry Goins “Almost” Weekly Investing Newsletter, FREE Admission for Two to Investor Palooza 3 Day Training Event, FREE Admission for Two to Larry Goins 3 Day Boot Camp, Plus over 31 Exclusive Articles on real estate Investing and Much More! Just go to www.LarryGoinsFreeOffer.com. Thanks and I look forward to working with you, Larry Goins