2021 was an exciting year in real estate — and while we at Scout are excited for all that 2022 has to offer, we’re aware that there are still lingering fears and unknowns for buyers when it comes to navigating the current market. To help alleviate those fears and unknowns, we asked our Realtors to answer the most common questions consumers are searching related to buying a home. So pull up a chair, grab some tea, and get ready to buy your next (or first) home with ease using the tips below!

How do you WIN in the Nashville market right now?

“It’s really important to know what’s coming before it hits the market, so staying close to Realtor ‘coming soon’ forums is a great way to stay informed. I would also say any opportunity to waive contingencies is going to position a buyer better. For example, moving from a standard inspection to a pass/fail is a great way to provide a more competitive offer without sacrificing your ability to do your own due diligence as a buyer. Any opportunity to provide an appraisal contingency gap will net you better odds when competing in the market as well.” – Matt Vaughn

“Understanding the local markets within the Nashville area and having an agent that is equipped to go to bat for their clients in any negotiated situation.” – Dawson Huff

What tips do you have for local buyers ready to buy their next home?

“Have extra cash on hand, look lower than your max because you will probably have to bid over. Mentally prepare yourself for the likely possibility that you will probably have to put in multiple offers. Manage expectations by looking at each house and each offer teaches you something more for the next house.” – Traci Huff

“Get pre-approved before you ever start looking! It’s really important to have a good idea of how you’re going to obtain financing and who that’s going to be through. Don’t underestimate the power of shopping lenders and their rates. The more creative you can be with your financing, the more competitive you can be in the market in its current state.” – Matt Vaughn

What tips do you have for first time home buyers?

“As first time homebuyers, make sure you have an agent that helps you understand the ins-and-outs of the process and equips you with tools to make a decision with confidence. There’s a lot that goes into purchasing a home and it can be stressful. Having more knowledge will help you feel more comfortable about making a good financial decision.” – Dawson Huff

“Know the comps (comparable properties) in the neighborhood you are looking at before you start looking, get pre-approved, and really make sure you understand your down payment options and what closing costs could be.” – Traci Huff

How do I compete in a multiple offer situation?

“Learn as much as I can about the seller’s pain points. Writing accommodations in the offer to meet seller needs can often WIN the contract.” – Peter Noble

“Feel confident you are putting your best foot forward; that is all you can do — and be proud of it! You can only control your financial state not others” – Traci Huff

Where do buyers even begin if they want to buy a home?

“I believe the first conversation should be with your current lender and a conversation with a different, local lender. First things first, you need to know if it’s the right financial time for you to buy, and if so, what is your ideal budget.” – Peter Noble

“Start with contacting a realtor and schedule a buyer consultation. They will be able to help guide you through the process and they’ll be able to make introductions to lenders to help you get pre-approved.” – Matt Vaughn

BONUS: Triple your odds of winning the first home you put an offer on!

Make a cash offer with our cash. Cash offers are 3x more likely to be accepted over traditionally financed offers. Whether you’re a first-time homebuyer or a current homeowner, you have options. Scout’s Buy-For-You program upgrades your offer to cash, allowing you to beat out the competition, and even buy your next home before you sell.

Check out more information on Scout’s Buy-For-You program here.

Zinga’s Provides Expert Advice with unmatched convenience

Scout Realty provides vetted service provider recommendations for all things home ownership. From buying and selling to repairs and beyond — our Preferred Provider Program connects you to top-notch professionals in your area.

Why we love Zinga’s Blinds: They give expert advice and provide unmatched convenience — THEY EVEN bring the showroom to you! Zinga’s Blinds loves their customers and provides great service with their lifetime warranty, best price guarantee, no-pressure estimates and in-home design consultations.

Interested in a Quote? Fill out the Form Below!

When selling a home, you want to sell for the most money in the least amount of time possible.

We get it — you want more money if you’re going to put in extra work to sell your home. So we’ve narrowed down the top 5 (realistic and quick) home improvements that give you the best boost on your home value.

Paint

A new coat of paint will refresh even the most tired home. Neutrals are great to appeal to a wide variety of potential homeowners.
The ultimate goal of painting is for people to see a blank canvas — to envision themselves living their daily lives in each space.

Kitchen Refresh

The kitchen is the heart of the home. Make sure that your kitchen makes a statement by updating light fixtures, knobs, and pulls, or even adding a fresh coat of paint on the cabinets. Any boost you do in the kitchen will help your home stand out from among the crowd.

Updated Bathrooms

Make sure that every bathroom is fresh and clean. Updating the finishes such as faucets, vanities, mirrors, and light fixtures is a great cost-effective way to make the space look and feel more updated.

Floors

Did you know you can rent a carpet cleaner from your local Lowe’s or Home Depot? If you can’t replace your carpet, cleaning them is a great way to make sure that your home is putting its best foot forward — not to mention, potential buyers will immediately notice if your home smells like pets.

Energy-Efficient Features and Windows

Buyers love investing money in a home that saves them money in the long run. Adding energy-efficient features to the home will add to the overall value.

How do you pick your real estate representation?

After 18 years of selling houses, I noticed a trend. Many people hire agents based on their connection and not on the agent’s competency. 

The hiring decision

Typically, the primary motivation for choosing an agent is rooted in guilt. People tend to choose agents who they know, like, and trust because they want to be in relationship. They might feel guilty to make a choice that could impact their existing connections. So, agents themselves are trained to have their sphere of influence and to make sure they’re connected.

The competency gap

Connections can trump competency. The barriers to entry in the real estate industry are very low. In our industry, we only go to school for about two weeks to get our license, and this involves very little coursework. In Tennessee, we only have to complete sixteen hours every two years to ensure we are up to date.

In this sense, our industry offers agents very little educational training, and then agents often don’t get enough on-the-job experience to make up for this competency gap. Nationally, the average agent only sells five and a half houses per year. This means that agents aren’t even selling one house every other month. Imagine being a baseball player in the World Series who’s had only six bats all year. Your odds of striking out are pretty high. 

Even though our industry is well-connected, it’s not an industry that necessarily fosters an environment of increasing competency.

The way forward

Now, when you’re choosing your real estate agent, you have the knowledge. You can ensure that you find an effective way to evaluate not only the agent’s connections but also their competency. 

At Scout, we have some very effective resources to help: our seller and buyer’s agent interview questions. These are the questions you must ask to safeguard against making a hiring decision just based on who you know.

It’s great to be able to serve people from the heart. And most agents do a great job of caring for their community. However, agents must also have the competency and capacity to be able to serve their clients on the deepest levels. 

Download our resources, find a way to effectively interview agents, and don’t fall prey to hiring just because you’d feel guilty not using the specific agent or brand.

Is your real estate equity eroding? 

It easily might be. Turns out, a simple solution can reverse this trend and build your net worth.

Your inevitable timeline

Financial planners often take their clients through an exercise. On a vertical line, they pinpoint you (or you with your family) at one end of this timeline which represents the present. Then, they place you (or you with your family) at the other end of the timeline which represents the future. 

Along this timeline, no matter if it spans ten or fifty years, you’re going to face financial decisions. They could be to invest, to save for a child’s college, to buy or sell a home, or many other options. As you do so, one of two things will happen. Your future self is either going to have more money or less money. Which will it be? The outcome is entirely dependent on the type of decisions you make along your timeline.

Your timely real estate impact

Along their timelines, the average homeowner buys and sells every five to seven years. This means a person will own about seven or eight homes and have about fifteen real estate transactions in their lifetime. Under the traditional real estate model, people pay a percentage of their home value each time. This directly correlates to their net worth eroding.

Inevitably, you have built up equity and value in your house. Two thirds of American homeowners have their networth tied up within their homes. As you pay a percentage of that net worth, your future self (at the other end of your timeline) will have less money.

Your way out

How can you avoid this negatively correlated erosion of net worth? Meet a fair fixed fee for services. Put very simply, this model doesn’t charge you outrageous real estate commissions which will erode your net worth. In fact, every time you buy and sell under this model, you’re actually preserving your net worth.

Who are “luxury agents?”

I’ve been in the real estate business for 18 years. We’ve done over 1,500 transactions for over half a billion dollars in sales. Because of this, we’ve learned a thing or two. Historically, I’ve seen many agents desire to be called a “luxury agent” who can focus on the “luxury market.” 

What does “luxury” mean?

When someone says they want to be a “luxury agent,” it typically has a lot to do with getting close to rich people: being their friends and charging them commission based on the value of their home. If the commission is based on home value, “luxury agents” can then often increase their pay without equally increasing their work.

What about non-luxury?

Rarely will you see an agent who says “I want to focus on first time home buyers! I want to focus on people who are struggling and don’t make a lot of money. I want to focus on teachers, policemen, and firefighters because they need our help.”

Unfortunately, you’ll tend to see agents migrating towards the luxury market. On Shark Tank, Kevin O’Leary actually calls this out, saying that the world has a big problem: real estate agents. I’ve been in the business for years, and at first it felt like he was taking shots at me, but I had to admit that he had something there. He said agents are eroding people’s net worth and equity.

What about your equity?

When agents want to focus on the luxury market, it has tangible effects. Sticking to only the selling side, if an agent sold one luxury home at $500,000, she’d make $15,000. If she were to sell another luxury home priced at $1.5 million, she’d make $45,000. 

What has this luxury agent done that’s worth earning $30,000 more for the second home sale? They may talk about doing a wine and cheese for brokers (and it better be some quality wine and cheese they’re utilizing). They may highlight a certain magazine where the home is listed, but do these services account for the additional $30,000?

Just because you have the money, net worth, and dream home does not mean that you should give it away when you sell. 

What now?

If you hear from someone who focuses on the luxury market, make sure they can quantify exactly what they will do for you to merit the extra money they’ll make. Ask questions, and do pay them more if they have a clear value proposition and clear additional benefits you’ll be offered.

And if they don’t? Preserve your equity. Don’t pay more just because you’re worth more.

I want to tell you a secret.

You’re not going to hear this from other real estate agents. If you know this, it can make you a lot of money. It can equip you to make better decisions.

What’s the secret? Buyer markets and seller markets really dictate the home sale.

Where’s the market balance?

The National Association of Realtors has said that a balanced market is six months. This means that if your home is listed for 180 days, neither the seller nor buyer has the advantage. However, if it sells before 180 days, the seller is winning. If it’s after 180 days, then the buyer is winning. 

What drives the sale?

Does the listing agent actually move the sale of the house, or is the market really driving the value and sale? Even though most real estate agents base their commission on the value of the homes, the listing agent is rarely in a position to actually sell the house. Almost always, the sale is market driven as the type of market is going to drive the sale of the home.

Who’s the seller?

There’s more. I’ve been in the business for 18 years; we’ve done over 1,500 transactions for over $500 million in sales. What I’ve seen is that, typically, the buyer’s agent is showing and tangibly “selling” the house. The listing agent usually has very few opportunities to actually sell the house. The buyer’s agent is the one who brings the buyer, unlocks the door, and walks through the house without the seller’s agent there.

Why the commission? 

Why would you pay a commission in a seller’s market to the seller’s agent, the? On top of it all, the sale is heavily market driven. All home values are determined by what a buyer will pay for the property and what the seller accepts. In essence, the buyer and seller are coming together and saying yes.

What about a flat fee?

If you want to hang onto your equity and preserve your wealth in such a market, negotiate a flat fee for your agent as you understand that they may not be driving the sale of the house. It may have more to do with market conditions, what the willing and able buyer has said, and what the buyer’s agent has done to promote the house. If you’re selling your house, in a seller’s market, and things are selling in less than a hundred days, a flat fee may be your best solution.

What about Scout?

At Scout, we offer a flat fee starting at $5,000. This $5,000 is full-service because we understand that we are sellers in a sellers’ market. Since our sellers are winning, we want to position you to win. Welcome to behind the curtain of how markets influence sales, with strategies of how to succeed.

What does the federal reserve’s deception of the housing marketing mean for you? 

Looking at a twenty year history of the value of homes, we can find the average home value–$200,000–in American during the early 2000s. Looking forward to this year, 2020, we see that house prices have increased to $400,000. They’ve almost doubled in twenty years. 

The increase for agents

This housing price increase is great for real estate agents working off commissions. If you attach a 3% sliding scale, agents who were making $6,000 in 2000 and now are making $12,000 in 2020. We need to ask what agents are doing to warrant making double the income.

To figure this out, since I’ve been in the business for eighteen years, I asked myself what I was doing even just 10 years ago. In 2010, the average home price was around $260,000 which meant the average agent was making about $7,500 per sale. Since the current 3% agent commission rate on an average home means the agent comes away with $12,000, what differences in services result in the $4,500 increase in pay?

The impact of technology

Working back in 2010, the real estate process was actually much more physical and manual. We had to get wet signatures on physical, paper documents. I had a call log; if people wanted to see a house, I’d write down the name, number, and everything else to coordinate with the seller. We had desk computers, SD car plugins, and perilous MapQuest. 

Now, in 2020, we have digital signatures so we can email documents, and with a click and signature, everything stays online and is very easy. We have laptops. We have iPhones to help with photography. We have apps to unlock doors and pull up surrounding listings.

In the ten years as commission doubled for agents, technology has made many things much more efficient, faster, and easier for agents as well. And, this technology has even decreased costs. Often, agents can work less and make more. Unfortunately for the customer, there has not been a clear pass down of benefits. 

The results for you

Home values are skyrocketing. That means your equity should be increasing. Whenever the agent has technological advances that makes their job quicker, easier, and more efficient, I believe there should be a monetary pass down to you as the client.

And that’s just what we’ve done for you at Scout. We decided that we just can’t ride this wave and make money off you. We’re just going to establish what we feel like our services are worth and set a very low fee. This has worked; our clients are saving around $10,000.

The bottom line

Don’t allow the agent community to erode your net worth. Be an informed seller, make decisions based on your best interests. And we know you’ll come out ahead on the other side. At Scout, we know it’s about a win-win and hope that we can win for you.

Have you ever wondered why real estate companies do not offer clear value for the customer? When customers consider all the various local and national real estate brands, how easy is it for them to notice what separates one company from another?

What about sellers and buyers?

It’s very uncommon to find a real estate company that clearly says “hey, if you’re a seller or buyer, this is the benefit of working with us.” In essence, most companies place their value proposition in being agent-centric. They aim to attract agents, because if they do so, theye figure the agents will go and attract clients.

However, companies like Zillow or Red Door have emerged with a great online platform. These companies are able to write an offer right off the bat without even listing the house. Even with their challenges, they, unlike the more traditional real estate companies, are doing a much better job of being client-centric. 

Why does client-centrism matter?

Being client-centric is simple. It means that everything the company and agent is thinking about is with the client in mind. 

The traditional real estate environment could learn from this model by simply asking “what are we doing uniquely different and especially beneficial for the customer? That’s why, at Scout, we started to innovate.  We realized there’s so many companies focused on the agent and the benefit of the agent. And, it’s not that we don’t value, love, and want to serve and benefit agents (because we do). It’s just that we want to be client-centric first and have the agent come second. That’s why, if you visit our website or see our ads, we aim to speak right to the heart of the customer.

What’s the Scout difference?

We are obsessed with adding value to our customers. We’re obsessed about over-delivering, about creating wins for them, about offering flat-fee service pricing rather than charging outrageous real estate commissions.