In this video we look at questions you should ask a real estate agent when
you're buying a house. That's starting right now.
– Welcome to Homebuyer's School,
brought to you by Brookfield Residential.
– Hi everyone I'm Karl, welcome to another Homebuyer's School video –
a channel where you get the latest strategies tactics and tips from home
buying experts—and remember if this is your first time on this channel and you
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hit the little notification bell so you don't miss anything. So today I'm joined by
Kevin French, realtor with Re/max realty and the question we're gonna answer is—
what kind of questions should you ask a realtor when you're buying a house?
– When you're purchasing a home, you're going to want to ask the
realtor A) if they're familiar with the area, B) it's important to know their
availability because sometimes properties come on the market and
they're not on the market for very long if they're a good opportunity—and then
making sure that the person understands what they're actually selling. There's a
difference between condos apartment style town homes, or apartments or——
sorry—townhomes and then single-family homes, or duplexes. So having an
understanding of each different product type and mix, and then the advantages—
disadvantages of owning different property types would be key to
understanding when you're going out shopping for the first time.
– Are there realtors that have like I guess, specializations? So Realtors that
specialize in condos, realtors that specialize in single families. Or is it—
are most Realtors just generalists that they can help you to buy anything?
–A lot of them are generalists but at the end of the
day there's more specialization inner-city. There would be more
specialized condo real estate agents and then there would be more specialized
acreage. Obviously on the rural parts but as a general rule overall in the City of
Calgary there would be, and surrounding areas there'd be every product
that they would work with.
– And speaking of specialization,
I know you touched on making sure that that realtor knows the area right,
so are there Realtors that just work a specific area of let's say a city or a town?
Yeah a lot of Realtors tend to focus their business on a certain
part of the area that typically where they live, and then service those
clients within that neighborhood. However there's lots that branch out and
go through the city. That advantage of having somebody that works specifically
within an area or fully understands it is that they know where to buy within a
small pocket, or what's a better area within the community versus a real estate
agent who doesn't understand the area completely wouldn't understand that
this is considered the east side versus the west side all within the same
community in terms of the city it's named you know, whatever the community
may be—Symons Gate or Mackenzie Town—Symons Gate is actually a great
example, it's a sub community of Sage Hill so it's not actually its own
community in terms of how the cavity of Real Estate Board defines communities.
However it's a very small pocket that has a lot of different product types but
if you wanted to live within Symons Gate you have very limited pool to choose
from. So on the resale side there's more opportunity there for the for the seller.
– Well let's go back in terms of questions. So when you are talking with the realtor
and more of—do you ask more questions specifically to the product you're
looking for or do you ask questions about the amenities—or do you ask questions
about let's say, the neighborhood? What would be kind of the starting point?
How do you go from there?
– Most important would be to choose what works for the
lifestyle the buyer. So they're looking at whether they would want schools,
whether they want to be nearby amenities —whether they want quick access to main
roads so they can get to work easier for travel—that's going to be key—and then
working from there would be creating your wish list and then working with
what that buyer wants within those communities that tick all those boxes.
– Got it. So once you've settled on an
actual house, what kind of I things that you would want to check or work with
the realtors in terms of checking for that product or home?
– Once they've found the home that they're looking for then they're going to
want to go through the home obviously in detail. Understand the quality,
construction, any renovations that have been done. That's absolutely key making
sure there's permits for all the work that's been done—buying a home without
that is obviously a bit scary—and then having a overall feeling for how well
the home was taken care of. A lot of that will come down to the property
inspection. So after you've purchased you'd be going through the home with the
home inspector, room-by-room. Obviously if there's been damage here before, there
was a leak here, making sure that all that's taken care of and all been properly
fixed. But doing a good thorough walkthrough with the inspector
after the purchase is obviously key.
– And if you want to know more about walking through a home, check out our
video above and in description below. So do you actually need a checklist in terms
of when when you're actually buying?
– It's recommended, but the
checklist—the generic one I wouldn't really go by. I would recommend that you
create one that's tailored to your needs. You can work with your agent of course
to say these are my wants, these are my must-haves, these are the things that I'd
like to have—but ultimately I think that the number one thing is you choose what
works for the lifestyle. So a lot of people will say I want a nice new home
and I have X budget, and then that kind of defines where they're going to
purchase and then when they get down into it they say, well I don't want to
commute more than 20 minutes to work. Well that definitely doesn't work for a lot
or their criteria. So if they're buying in a satellite community and they're getting
the brand new home at the price point but they're driving an hour to work,
they're probably not going to be happy once they move in. So it's about
adjusting that to make sure that they get the best of both worlds which
typically takes some compromise but that's the reality of it.
– Perfect. Do you have anything else add?
– No, I'm good.
– Awesome. The question of the day I have for you is:
what questions did you ask your realtor when buying your last home?
As well as what are some of the critical questions that you believe helped you to
make that home purchase? Let us know in the comment section below.
If you want to watch more videos about
home buying, check out these videos here
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channel to learn more from the experts.
Thank you for watching.
We'll catch you in our next video.