Real-estate agent, lawyer, inspector, stager are the authors of ‘Real Estate Process’
Pedro Arrais
Sun
A Victoria real-estate agent has teamed up with a lawyer, a home inspector and home stager to coauthor a book that helps demystify the process of buying or selling a home.
The idea of writing The Real Estate Process occurred to Vi Brown, an agent with DFH Real Estate, because she frequently had to give the same advice to prospective buyers and sellers.
1. The agent
“So few people understand the whole process,” says Vi Brown, who has been selling real estate for more than 20 years. “It is a simple process that has never been fully explained.”
Because there is so much involved, even real-estate agents are not likely to cover every detail, she says. Although the book was written for the layperson, Brown says a number of copies have been purchased by other real-estate professionals. Although many will give the books to clients, she suspects others, especially new real-estate salespeople, might find the information valuable.
“These days, there are no formal mentoring programs for new (agents),” says Brown. “No one in the industry would refuse a request for help, but a guide such as this that explains how things work would be helpful for some of my newer colleagues.”
The book is not meant to be encyclopedic in scope, Brown stresses, but it covers enough ground for people to be empowered.
“People couldn’t find answers, because they just didn’t know enough to ask the (right) questions,” she says. “The book gives them a road map of the process so that they know whom to go to and whom to ask the question of.”
2. The lawyer
The role of a lawyer is to gather the necessary information, transfer the property and collect and disburse funds to the different parties in a sale or purchase.
“My job is to make sure the client understands the legal implications of the real-estate process,” says Kelly Orr, a lawyer who handles a lot of real-estate transactions with Browne Associates. “I check for covenants, limitations and encumbrances on the property.”
She says most legal documents in real estate today have been simplified. Documents that at one time had to be filed manually can now be registered online.
“They are now written in plain English so that a layperson can understand,” says Orr, a graduate of the University of Victoria who has more 15 years’ experience. Mortgage documents, which, at one time, were more than 40 pages long, “are now only four to five pages — but with a set of terms to reference the missing information.”
3. The home inspector
A house inspection, while not mandatory, is often recommended as a prerequisite to purchasing and sometimes selling a house. With home prices what they are today, buyers and lenders feel more comfortable going ahead with a purchase on the basis of a clean inspection report.
“I approach each house as if it is hiding something from me,” says Robert Hughes, owner of Fleetwood Building Inspections. “I see every house as a new mystery that we have to solve in three to four hours.”
He says business has never been better, as banks and other lenders either request or require a home inspection report. In Ontario, it’s even customary to have a pre-listing inspection to take the mystery out of the property.
“There’s so much riding on that report.”
4. The home stager
“Everybody wins when the house sells faster.”
Clutter and the look of a “well lived-in” house can delay and lower the selling price of a house. In order to obtain the best price for a seller, a listing real-estate agent might suggest clients engage the services of a home stager, the most recent discipline in real estate.
“First impressions don’t just count; they are the most important,” says Josee Lalonde, a certified Canadian staging professional and owner of Josee Lalonde Real Estate Staging. “For a house to be competitive today, it has to look nicer than the other homes.”
Most of the time, Lalonde will work with the client’s furniture and augment it with items to modernize the look. On a few occasions, she has had free rein to strip wallpaper, paint walls and to dress a house up with new furniture, artwork and accessories.
For an extensive redo, Lalonde recommends clients move out of their homes for up to two days. She says her favourite part of the job is seeing the look of the client when she reveals the staged house for the first time.
The costs vary, depending on what services are needed, but, on average, sellers can budget up to half a per cent of the asking price.
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