Lesson 1.9: Inspection Strategy

Lesson time: 6min 9sec

Key Takeaways:

1. Key features that REA and Domain have beyond their property listings.
2. Why you should try and get in for an inspection ahead of open day or the auction.
3. What to say to a real estate agent to convince them to give you what you want.

PLAY VIDEO BELOW

Scheduling

In this lesson we’ll get granular with one particular feature of both www.realestate.com.au and www.domain.com.au that is particularly useful: the OFI Scheduler. Both Websites have an open for inspection scheduler, and when you’re trying to research a lot of properties, making good use of this is critical to time management and tracking the market.

When you start looking for property, you should be filling your day with open for inspection and auction times and ensuring that you’re not going to run into time clashes as you try and see the best fit properties. This way you’ll be able to streamline your house hunting. This is a feature that is free, simple and very fast to use. 

The "saved properties" feature is great to track sales you may have inspected. As it may have turned out, you may not have any interest in buying the property after inspecting it, however, it’s worth keeping it on your list, so you are closely monitoring the results to understand in real time the prices that are being paid for property you have first-hand experience with.

Private Inspections

We would recommend you take it another step, however. At least for the properties that you are most interested in. Rather than wait all week to join the (potentially large) crowds of people attending an inspection or auction at the advertised time, we recommend getting in touch with the agent privately on the phone, ahead of the listed date. When you get them on the phone, impress on them your desire to get in early (and ideally solo), as well as what a highly qualified buyer you are and how you’ll be ready to sign the contract immediately if it should be “the one.”

You might be surprised with how often this works, and as the saying goes, if you don't ask, you won’t get. A key lesson to learn here is that successful house hunting means that you’ll need to be comfortable with asking for things to be done to suit your objective. It can be difficult to muster the courage at first, but agents are used to such requests and are usually happy to accommodate if this will make their own jobs easier.

Key Reminder

Mastering these two features that we have talked about here is essential to mastering the property hunt. Thankfully, they are easy to learn, robust, and totally free. Remember, on average - buyers will research 300 properties before they get serious enough to make an offer, using ways  to become more efficient and effective is a great investment of your time.