Macomb County MI real estate - 1st time home buyers info & advice

One of the cities in my area has a wonderful online service in which you can find out the current taxes,
utility bills (water and sewer) and also check to see if there are any permits that have been pulled for
repairs or renovations.

In the case of vacant homes (foreclosures, REO's, etc.) there is also one more check that you as a purchaser
need to do:  Pick up the phone and call the city and find out if a certificate of occupancy is needed prior
to moving in to the home and if an inspection is needed by the building department.

A buyer client and I are in the middle of a "counter offer" purchase on a bank owned home, and one of the
things that I asked her to do was to call the city building department and find out if this home needed to
have an inspection prior to her being able to move in to it.   As it turns out, this home was red-tagged (although the tag was not readily visible when we viewed the home) and does need to be inspected by the building department.

It will cost the buyer $200 for the city building inspector to come out and look at the home, as well as additional fees if permits need to be pulled for any city mandated repairs.   Most small repairs can be done by the potential home owner, but those needing more expensive work (electrical, plumbing, heating & cooling, etc) will require additional inspections and permits.

Please don't assume that just because there isn't a notation on a city / township online service about an inspection being required that this is truthful.  Data does "fall through the cracks" and entries are sometimes not made in a timely fashion.

                                                Pick up the phone and call.  

For those wondering why I don't make the call myself for my buyer clients:  Third party translations can sometimes fall short of accuracy.  I want my buyer clients to hear for themselves what the city / township building department has to say.  They can also ask specific questions while they are talking to the representative while those questions are fresh in their minds.

Caution - true story below.   (Specifics changed to protect the privacy of someone but the meat and potatoes are there.)

Last week I received an email from a future Macomb County MI home buyer.  The email was cc'd to approximately 30 other Macomb County real estate professionals.  In the email the future home buyer asked each agent to send a list of all of the bank owned homes on the market that met the criteria that was stated at the end of the email.  After driving around and viewing the homes the future buyer would then call the agent who sent her the list with the homes she was interested in to represent her inher purchase. 

Nothing was said about what would happen if all 30 of us sent her lists and how she would handle choosing an agent to write her order (purchase offer).

In her defense I would like to point out something else in her email:  She is under a time crunch because of her financing and did not have time to call agents and wait for return phone calls.

Some of the things that ran through my head after I read it:

Buyers agency and 'what it is that we do' has not been explained to her.

The time it takes to properly represent a home buyer has also not been explained.  (I did some old fashioned math and averaged the hours I have spent with my last 3 buyer clients and came up with 73 hours representing their interests from start to finish.  This doesn't include the "after care" that I take with each one.) 

Where could I cut corners?   Of course I would have to cut some corners in switching modes to an order taker and not a performing my duties as a buyers agent.  But where?   My instinct told me there wasn't any aspect of my due diligence on my clients behalf that I would be comfortable cutting from my services.

I had a chance to make some quick money and I turned it down.  All I had to do was return her email quickly, perhaps pick up the phone and call her and introduce myself and tell her the list of foreclosures were on its way.  And oh, by the way, pick me!

I don't feel badly about it, in fact I feel pretty darned good about my decision.  I sent her an email wishing her well and congratulating her on being a future Macomb County home owner. I also advised her to ask the agents that responded about buyers agency.  I hope that after wading through all of the agents emails and phone calls that she picked someone who would be able to sit her down and explain buyers agency to her and what it is that we do.  Or, that she received a darn good order taker and everything goes smoothly for her!

~Kris Wales~  A partner for your real estate needs in Macomb County MI