Secrets From A 10x Winner Of The Five-Star Real Estate Agent, with Bryan Mize

The First Time Home Buyer Podcast - How To Buy A Home

Introduction

Bryan Mize is an excellent home inspector and founder of Optimized Inspection Services, a home inspection company in Seattle. He is passionate about sharing his knowledge and helping others to succeed in RE too. When he's not working he loves hiking, motorcycling, and enjoying live music/theatre.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript (sorry for the typos in advance! 😅)

Laura Moreno: First Time Home Buyer Nation, I am Laura Moreno and I am super excited to bring you our fantastic guest today, Bryan Mize

Bryan is a real estate agent and home inspector in Seattle.

He is passionate about sharing his knowledge and helping others succeed in real estate too. When he's not working. He loves hiking, motorcycle cycling, and enjoying life, music and theater. Brian, are you

Bryan Mize: ready to flow? Yes, I am. Let's go. Great.

Laura Moreno: So I've given our community just a little insight. Please share more about you personally and then expand upon your.

Bryan Mize: Yeah, well, um, I, I've grew up the son of a landlord and I personally have invested in real estate for well over 25 years. I'm the father of two kids, and so they've grown up with that as well. Uh, and it's just, if it has to do with real estate, I really thoroughly enjoy it in my. I've been a licensed managing broker for the longest period of time.

I was a loan officer for eight [00:01:00] years. I started a home inspection business. I've subdivided property, I've rehabbed homes. Uh, I just, if it has to do with real estate, I enjoy it. I

Laura Moreno: love that. I mean, you've done everything and you're doing everything. You've been a lender. You are now a home inspector and an agent, so you're like three in one unicorn power.

Bryan Mize: Yeah. Yeah. I, You know, I can't, because of all the multiple licenses necessary, I can't do mortgages anymore, but I can Sure help you figure out whether or not yours is in, cuz I used to do that for a very long time. Absolutely.

Laura Moreno: That's amazing. I mean, first of all, I love that you're a son of a landlord. Um, I, How, how has that benefit you in the, in the past and in your life, like being in the real estate business for so long and your family owning properties for so long?

Bryan Mize: Well, so I, I think it benefited me because of my perspective and my point of view when I was [00:02:00] getting into it. Um, I've always viewed your home as being an. As well. Um, and it's, if you buy it right, it's going to do well by you, and if you buy it wrong, it's gonna put you in the poor house. And so I learned from the mistakes and, and the good choices that my parents made, um, and I learned from that.

So when I did it, I did it differently.

There's really nine different, 90 different ways to do it. So I can't say it's the best way, but it's been good for me. Good

Laura Moreno: for you. I mean, can you share some numbers? How many properties have you bought and sold personally in your life? Like, do you mind sharing that?

Bryan Mize: Uh, I, I don't, I don't know. I don't keep track of the past.

Um, there's so many What I, my cur? Yeah. I, I currently own five properties. I have a fourplex, a duplex, and three houses. Um, [00:03:00] so I, I, I'm control eight rental doors, uh, which isn't bad for a small landlord. Um, I, I got my parents up to 11 properties before they started downsizing for retirement. Um, so within the family business at one point we had over 20 doors that we were managing.

Laura Moreno: Wow. Are you managing them? Were you managing well? Are you now managing them yourself or with someone else? Yes,

Bryan Mize: I manage them myself, which is. I'm a bit of a control freak, so it's not the right thing for everybody to manage your own properties. Um, but if you, if you like to learn the laws and stay up, tore on, on being fair, equitable, and getting all the right paperwork, then it helps you, you know, it, it, it helps me to manage my properties because I, I build relationships with my tenants and I get less turnover.

So it's, it's becomes a win-win. They get a better place to live, They're more [00:04:00] happy, they stay longer. I have less turnover.

Laura Moreno: Wow. That's great. And do you ever get clients from your tenants, like someone saying, Hey, I'm looking to, I'm looking to buy my new home now, and you're like, Oh, I'm your landlord, but I'm also a realtor and a home inspector, and I used to be a lender, so welcome to the cloud.

Bryan Mize: Yeah, . Yeah, it's, it's funny you would think that, but. Uh, half the people in the, in this country don't wanna own a home. They would rather call somebody when something breaks. They don't want to own their own. Uh, but you know, half of 'em do. So, um, some of my tenants have been there 13 years. I, and, and they know, and I have it written into my lease that if they want to, to, if they want to terminate their lease to buy a home, happy to do it.

No problem. Just let me help. Happy to do. Why

Laura Moreno: do you think some people don't want, For the most part? Yeah. Sorry. How do, why do you think some people don't want to buy a home? Because for me [00:05:00] it's like such a, such a good step to take for your financial future. But why do you think some people don't want to own.

Bryan Mize: Yeah. Well, some people don't believe in real estate as an investment. Uh, they're worried about, uh, the maintenance of it, eating them alive. They don't know how to maintain a home. They would rather take that money that they would put into real estate and invest it in the market or something else. Um, and, and other people, they just, they don't want the headache, they don't want the overhead.

So they're happy to pay their rent. Knowing, knowing that if anything goes wrong, if the roof needs replacing, I'm gonna pay for it. They. Right, and I did have to put a roof on one of my houses last year it was $13,000. So that's why, you know, some people don't wanna rent cuz that's, I mean, don't wanna buy because they don't want that expense.

Laura Moreno: That's okay. I mean, everyone is allowed to do whatever they want, you know, No one is forcing anyone to do anything.

Bryan Mize: and I look at it in the same [00:06:00] eyes as you do. That said that real estate is an excellent investment. Any investment requires you to put time, money, and effort into it, right? So whether it's in the stock market, whether it's in your job, whether it's, whether it's classic cars or whatever you wish to invest in, you're going to have to put time and money and effort into it.

So I just choose real estate and that way I could provide a service to people, um, and that helps me out with my investment.

Laura Moreno: So you are in a, actually, in an, an excellent position to, to consider the market from many angles. Uh, what is the market like in Seattle? And as a first, if you were a first time home buyer today, what would you do?

Taking into account that maybe home prices are down, but interest rates are up, no one, there's a lot of uncertainty. What, what would you do as a first time home?

Bryan Mize: Yeah, it's really challenging because home prices aren't down as much as you would think in relation to how high interest rates went so quickly.

[00:07:00] Um, sellers are reluctant to lower their pricing, um, because they think the interest rate fluctuations are temporary, uh, or maybe. They bought too high, uh, which, so prices were spiking when rates were still very low and it was frantic out here. Um, there was a house in my neighborhood right behind me that listed for 710,000 and sold for 950,000.

Uh, and so they're trying to, Again, but they can't. Right. They paid too much money for it with, at this interest rate, it's, it's gonna be back down around seven 50 and so, It's like, it's challenging if you're buying a home right now, although it is more on the buyer's side right now, there is more negotiation taking place there.

If you are more people are doing home inspections and you get to ask the seller for some concessions, um, mostly those concessions would [00:08:00] come in an interest rate buy down, which makes the home more affordable in your payment. , How, how

Laura Moreno: does that work? I mean, an interest rate buy down, because for so many of our listeners, that could be a really good idea, but how do you even ask about that?

Who should ask that? And what, what is the benefit exactly? Oh.

Bryan Mize: Well, you need to have a conversation with your lender to determine if that's even a loan program that they offer. Some banks don't, mostly brokers will be, have access to a program like that. Um, but banks typically do more traditional lending, 30 or fixed adjustable rates, 15 years, those type of things.

But a three to one buy down an interest rate buy down allows you to, in essence, prepay some of the interest to the bank. As part of your closing costs up front, and that lowers your payment for the first year, the second year, and the third year. Right? So the, the payment is lower in the first year. It bumps up a little bit in the second.

It bumps up a little bit more in the third year, and then it [00:09:00] stabilizes in the fourth year. But by making it part of your closing costs, you can get a seller to pay that. You can get seller concessions to pay your closing costs to the seller, it's the same thing as taking a lower. Because they're spending the money, but to the buyer, it's a more affordable payment.

So in this market, sellers already want too much. You have to convince them it's not gonna sell for that money because it won't, it, it typically won't sell for that money. And then you have to negotiate that, that reduction in price, but use it as a buy down in your mortgage. There's a lot like creative ways to finance.

Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Moreno: And I wanted to go, No, I'm talking about creative ways of financing out of doing many things. I mean, you are the first professional that I interviewed that is both a real estate agent and a home inspector, and that you pro can provide both services. And even before starting the, to record the podcast, we were talking a little bit about that, but I, I want to know the.[00:10:00]

potential conflicts of interest, which you told me there's not many, and also the advantages of working with someone

Bryan Mize: like you. So, From the real estate perspective, if you're working with me as your buyer's agent, when we're touring homes and you're looking at the house and the finishes and the neighborhood and the location, while you're getting excited about the property, I'm looking at it skeptically because that's just how I'm trained.

That's how I look at houses. So I'll be telling you by the time we leave there, before we've ever written an offer, I'll be telling you the major things that I've noticed and and so that you've got a concept of what this home might cost you over the ownership period. Because it's just like with a car.

You gotta, the, the purchase price is not the only thing you pay for the car. There's maintenance and different makes and models have different maintenance schedules and they have different costs of maintenance. The true ownership cost of a home is more than just what you pay for it. It's what is it going to take in order to make it last [00:11:00] and be a good home and, and sometimes that's improvements other.

It's deferred maintenance. You need to know what you're looking at because there might be some big checks up front. So as your real estate broker, I'm ideally suited and specifically trained and very experienced in seeing every home through that critical lens. So before we ever get to the point of writing an offer, you've got an a general idea of what we're gonna find.

Plus there's different time periods, have different types of construction techniques and materials. The age of the home and what, what materials were used in its construction holds a lot of secrets as well, and I can tell you about those as we're going through it too. So all of that becomes part of the negotiation before we ever even write the offer.

Having that knowledge and then we can use it in presenting the offer in discussions with the seller, and then also do a real full inspection. Make sure that we get into the parts that we didn't see, because when we're walking through looking at houses, we don't go into the attic. We don't [00:12:00] go into the crawlspace.

We don't, we don't go poking around in the insulation to determine what the plumbing is or pull the cover off the electrical panel. We do those things. During the home inspection process.

Laura Moreno: I, I love that because you have such a great advantage ever against anyone else that is looking at the house. Well, first of all, while everyone is getting excited about the house and looking at the beautiful finishes, you are there, like inspecting and looking , I can imagine looking behind the, the frames.

Yeah. Is there any hole in the wall? . And the other thing is, So many people are sending offers, um, and then they have to do the home inspection. And in the home inspection, they might find things that are really big while if you already go with them and you can see those things before, before even getting to the whole contract and the whole, um, inspection period, uh, you, you give them such a big advantage.

Bryan Mize: Yeah. And, and it's better too because they go into the offer knowing some of the things they're [00:13:00] likely to find on inspection. So there's, there's not that disappointment. If you do find it, you're like, Oh, okay, we kind of expected that. We knew that that might be there. Right. Instead of writing the offer, getting all excited that your offer got accepted and then you find out that, oh, there's asbestos here, or failed LP siding, or, you know, things that could be very expensive.

If, you know when you write your offer that you might have some expensive issues and you know that going into the inspection, then when it does turn up, you're like, Okay, it's just more information and we can deal with that

Laura Moreno: and let's talk about that information because you were saying, uh, it's never a good idea to buy real estate without consider.

All of the information available to you? What do you mean by that?

Bryan Mize: Well, so I, I

Laura Moreno: consider myself, Do you have also any inspector, do you also have any example that will, um, any example that will illustrate that?

Bryan Mize: Well, yeah. Uh, it's, I consider my role as a home inspector to be like CSI for houses. [00:14:00] Right. So we determine whether or not the house has been abused or taken care of.

Did it grow up in a rough neighborhood or was it nurtured, right? How many additions has it had and were they done professionally? Things of that nature. So that's what I mean by knowing all of the information. How many owners has it had in its lifetime? We can, as a real estate broker, I can dig that out.

What did, what did the tax records say at square footage was five years ago versus what its square footage is today? If the tax records are showing a difference in square footage, then the listing, then that usually means the addition wasn't permitted. The the city doesn't know about. or they would be charging you for that extra square footage.

So there's just all kinds of red flags that need that, that aren't visible to everyone that you know. You don't want showing up after you buy the house. You want to know it in as part of the process of purchasing the [00:15:00] home. Oh my God, we

Laura Moreno: love working with you. We love to be just going through a house and you bring up your magnifier and you're the like checking everything out and they're like, Oh, it's so beautiful, this mirror.

And you're like, Sure, sure, sure Laura, but let me check these things out. I mean, you bring such a great advantage for home buyers. It's like you guys look at the beautiful staff. I'm going to try to find everything that is wrong. Do you, do you mind killing the deal if, if you find something that is not good?

Like, because yeah, so many agents really depend on that commission check and they are scared of killing the deal. But I can imagine you're like, Yeah, okay, let's go to another one. .

Bryan Mize: Yeah. I, I, I, of course I don't do it for free, so the, the, the commission is how I get paid, but it's gotta be the right house or I don't.

I don't want the commission. I don't wanna put people into a home that's going to hurt them and harm them. And that's different for everybody. That's not my decision. I don't kill deals. The clients decide whether or [00:16:00] not it's okay for them once they have all the information, right? So people ask me all the time, Hey, would you buy this house?

And I'm like, That's an unfair question because I buy crappy houses. I fix 'em. , do you know how to fix up a house? It doesn't matter whether or not I would buy it, right? And then there's sometimes where I'm like, Yeah, there's nothing here that would stop me from buying this house. I'll buy it. If you don't buy it, I will.

I've actually said that to people because some houses are just in such great shape. and it's, it's just a good location, solid house that if they don't want it, I'll buy it. But they have first choice cuz they're my client . But I like to collect houses. So, you know,

Laura Moreno: they, they, Has it ever happened to you or they were like, No, no, you can go ahead

Yeah,

Bryan Mize: that, that, that did happen once. It was about 17 years ago. They're like, Yeah, we're gonna pass out and it's just not the one we want. And I'm like, Okay, great. And I went and I bought the. , [00:17:00]

Laura Moreno: Did they get any bad feeling about that? I don't think so. I mean, if they did, if they didn't want it, No,

Bryan Mize: no, no. They bought a different house.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and that's what the house will speak to you, right? So as the client, as the buyer, the right house will speak to you. But as we all know, sometimes they don't say everything. It's my job to make sure that you hear everything in the conversation when the house is speaking to you, so you don't get blinded by, by like a flip house.

Right. The, the ones that look all very shiny and new, but they didn't really do it right. Right. You've seen the, the HGTV shows where they flip this house and often. , they're just putting lipstick on a pig. They're not fixing what's broken underneath. They're just making it real pretty houses like that. I, I wanna protect you from that.

That's, that's, I love picking those

Laura Moreno: apart. I, I actually love those stories and I actually, it's interested in that. You have to be very careful about those [00:18:00] houses that looked really good and that have been fixed because sometimes people avoid spending all the costs or they are just, uh, fixing them and they are doing it themselves.

Or you have to be very, very careful. .

Bryan Mize: Yeah. The, the, I often run into, uh, DIY repairs, do it yourself repairs. And I'm just like, What were they thinking? ? So sometimes Hmm. Sometimes they weren't thinking, they thought they knew what they were doing, but they really didn't.

Laura Moreno: Yeah, totally. So one thing you were say is one of your most impressive accomplishments is on a regular basis you help buyers avoid properties that will cause them a lot of distress.

Do you have any example of.

Bryan Mize: Yeah. And, and it goes back to what I was just saying with the flippers uncovering the hidden, the hidden. and defects in a home. Um, and it's true too also that stagers will strategically place things to make you think that there are features in the home that [00:19:00] aren't there. Like, uh, Like what?

Like they'll, they'll plug in, Well, they'll plug, they'll put a bed against the wall and they'll plug in lamps behind it. But the lamps are not connected. They're connected to an extension cord. There's no outlet back there, . But they want you. I think there's an outlet back there. Or they'll hang the big picture over the fireplace and, and they're hiding all the damage in the wall from the previous television installation, things like that.

Uh, but then there's also, you know, You get up into places as an inspector, you get up into places that people don't look at until inspection time, like the attic or the crawlspace. And you can find mold issues. You can find rat and rodent issues. You can find insulation problems or plumbing leaks, and it's just, you know, things that people aren't prepared for.

Uh, a a lot of, a lot of people don't really know how a house operates. They don't know how to fix it, especially if you're in a field that has nothing to do with construction. Like, say you write software for a [00:20:00] living Mo, a lot of, we have a lot of those clients out here in the northwest that, that they write software and they don't know a thing about houses, so they can't fix it themselves.

They're gonna have to pay somebody. And that's the distress I try to save people from. Right. If they can't work, if you're not, can't work on it yourself, then that's gonna be an expensive house. And if you're prepared for that and you want, you're okay with that, that's fine. But I want, But you tell them, but I want you to know.

Yeah.

Laura Moreno: Wow, that's, uh, that's, uh, tell me. That's really, really awesome. But tell me more about the reputation in the industry because, uh, from by the way you speak, I, I completely understand that you're an excellent realtor, an excellent inspector, and you tell things, clients how, how they are, you know, you tell everything to the face.

But, um, I've also heard that it's very important to have a great repetition with. Realtors and other lenders in the market. So tell me more about your reputation. Like how are you considered in the market?

Bryan Mize: Oh, well, [00:21:00] um, I'm, I'm actually a, a 10 time winner of the Five Star Service Award for Real Estate .

Laura Moreno: Wait, what?

You just didn't make that?

Bryan Mize: No. No, it, it, it's, it's, it's one of those, there's a, there's a rating agency that's national that goes into major metropolitan areas and they, they conduct phone interviews with people and they, they, they select about it. I think it's about 2% of, of agents in each market that, that fall into this five star category.

Um, I, I've won it 10 times, so I ,

Laura Moreno: and if you're, if you're not watching this interview, his face is like the most innocent face in the world. It's like, I just won it 10 times. You know, .

Bryan Mize: Well, I, I, I never asked for it. I don't know who nominated me. I don't know how I got in there, but, Yeah, that they, I keep, I keep, they keep, they go out and they do, [00:22:00] they do polls and I keep winning.

So I guess I've got a pretty good reputation. Um, it's a lot. So to you it's a, it's a. Lot easier for me to track my home inspector reputation because people do go online and they leave reviews for me. Cuz that's more of a transactional service. And I've got a lot of reviews on Zillow too, for past clients, for, for real estate.

Um, so yeah, if you, I just, I, I average about 4.9 stars, so

Laura Moreno: I'm That's awesome. That's, that's awesome. Now, uh, let's go into our lighting round where we, where I'm going to ask you a series of short questions to help our clients even farther. Okay. Sure. Sure. Let's

Bryan Mize: let us go.

Laura Moreno: Okay, let's do it. What is your biggest piece of advice you can give to someone trying to buy their first home in Seattle now?

Bryan Mize: Uh, don't get sticker shock mar, mar markets fluctuate. Uh, but the, the values will go up and down. It's, it's outside your [00:23:00] control. You're already spending a housing expense, so just don't over buy. Right? Don't stretch yourself too thin. Uh, that, that would be my biggest advice.

Laura Moreno: Have you seen what it takes to get anyone?

Have you seen anyone ever stretching themselves? I mean, have you suffered that yourself or like anyone that you know?

Bryan Mize: Oh, okay. Well that's, that's kind of a personal question, but I'm happy to answer that. Uh, yeah. When the market turned in 2008, I owned seven properties. Um, and all of my income was in real estate and all of my assets were in real estate and everything went.

My income went down, my assets went down. They changed all the lending programs and it was a very tumultuous time for everybody. I, uh, I came, I came out of it still hanging onto three houses, but it took me fighting for four years to hang onto those three. Um, and that, that's, and they were just single family homes.[00:24:00]

And since then, that's when I've had, I've increased my portfolio, but, uh, Good for you. I mean, yeah. If, if it, it. We don't know what the future is going to hold. Right. I don't see, I don't see a housing bubble like we had in 2008. Back then, I was, I was a lender, I was a real estate broker and a mortgage broker.

I hadn't started the home inspection business yet, and I could, I, I didn't see it coming on the mortgage side of things, but that's because I was, In it and everything seemed normal. Now that I'm not in the lending side of things, they've tightened that up a bunch, but they're still, they're still doing some of the things that led up to that, just not as bad.

So I don't, I don't see that happening again in real estate. I do see that that might happen in like, uh, business lending right now. There's a, there's a, a bubble growing in business lending and auto lending, things of that nature, but not in real estate lending. So, But, but everything [00:25:00] has a ripple effect.

And with the interest rates spiking, it's, it is making a little more challenging. And, and people get, people get a fomo, a fear of missing out, which makes them want to, you know, just go that extra mile. Well, you just gotta be cautious of that. And make sure that, make sure that you're still going within your means.

Laura Moreno: Hmm. Have you ever told anyone, Hey, I think you're getting over overly excited and you may get yourself into trouble. Like, you know, I know what you mean with this, like beating wars. Uh, you get so excited. I'm passionate that buyers may lose their logic and become more emotional than logical and getting to trouble.

Have you ever played that role of calming someone down and being their logical. .

Bryan Mize: Well, so my, my role. My role as a real estate broker is not to, to tell people whether or not it's a good idea, but what I do is I remind people of, of what they told me of why they're doing it. [00:26:00] So I remind people and keep them because what people will, they'll settle.

They'll start getting frustrated and they'll be like, Oh, well I can't do this, so I'm gonna go a little bit more. I'm gonna go a little bit more. And then I'm like, Now remember you said this is why you were doing it and this is what, you know. So I remind, try to try to help keep them grounded in what they were saying was their motivation in the first place.

And, and, but, but at the end of the day, if somebody wants to make a decision, uh, I can't stop them. I'm not going to, I.

Laura Moreno: Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Uh, and the last question for you is, what have you seen are the top mistakes that home buyers make and how can they avoid them? And I suppose this could be the same, , any other mistakes that you see people make?

Bryan Mize: Well, it's around here. Over the last couple of years, the top mistake was. That people didn't get their inspections. They were waving, inspection, they were waving this money. Um, I, I had a lot of people calling me up saying, Hey, [00:27:00] um, I close on Tuesday. Can you come on Wednesday and tell me what I bought? And it wasn't always good news, right?

I just didn't

Laura Moreno: up like the craziest call ever. Like, isn't that like the, like what are you talking about? Like, come on. No. Like, isn't that like, Yeah. What if I have to tell you about news? ,

Bryan Mize: but, but that's what it was taking for people to get homes during that, that crazy time. Um, they would had to not have a home inspection.

So I was to, I, I have a service where I offer a pre-offer consultation where I'll walk through the home with you for an hour and cover all the, all the big ticket items, right? The roof, the attic, the crawl space, the electrical, the plumbing, all that stuff. Tell you what I'm saying before you ever write the offer.

So there those are available. You just have to find the time to do it and make sure you get that information before you write the offer. Um, so, but

Laura Moreno: yeah, the biggest, But what happened with some of those calls [00:28:00] then? You went after the after the deal had closed and what, what do you say? I mean, do you go with a straight face?

Like whatever you, But I cannot do anything about it, like,

Bryan Mize: Yeah. Well, no, I, I, again, my job is just for information, so it's like, okay, here's what you have. This is, there's no such thing as good news or bad news. It's just news. And once you have the news, then create a plan on how you're gonna deal with it.

But yeah, there's, there's, there's people who bought in June and then December comes around and their basement's flooding, and there was that. They didn't know. Whereas there's always symptoms. That's the number one thing we look for here in the northwest. The number one thing we look for is water moisture.

It's because that's the biggest enemy for our homes. Um, there's always, always symptoms.

Laura Moreno: Wow. I mean, wow. I'm very happy that the market is changing because now, you know, home buyers [00:29:00] can get their, That's the thing is like you'd, if you buy your home and you don't do a good job and you end up in debt and you end up with a flooded basement and no savings in your account because you just put a home, you are in the hole, I mean, mm-hmm.

you are not going. Hopefully you don't lose your house and you're going to think it very, very well before buying a new home. Or you know, it's like this is not a positive experience for you. Now, you may not want to do it again. You may tell your children not to do it again, like your first time home buying experience has to be really, really good.

What would you suggest is the best way to have a good home buying experience?

Bryan Mize: Realistic expectations. Um, so education up front knowing, you know, having the conversation with a professional who's been through it multiple times too, right? So, friends, family, your real estate broker have these conversations up front of like, Okay, these are my goals, these are my dreams, this is what I wanna do.

What do you think? What am I not [00:30:00] thinking of? Right? Because first time home buyers, sometimes they don't know the questions. They don't know which questions to ask. So to ask the question that says, Hey, what am I not thinking of? What, what? What can you tell me that I haven't brought up? Right? That's always a good question for a first time home buyer to ask somebody experiences.

It's also really important to find out when, when you're interviewing agents, because you should just like you interview anybody, you would interview a doctor, a lawyer, or an auto mechanic. You interview anybody. You should be interviewing your agents, and you should be finding out what their history is.

How long have they been in business? How many transactions have they done? Do they own their own home? You would be shocked to find out how many real estate brokers don't even own a home. They don't own their own home. Now wait a minute. How many, if you do own a home, how many homes do you own? How long have you had home?

Right? Go ahead and ask these questions. You're going to be spending a lot of time with this individual handling the [00:31:00] single largest transaction of most people's lives. It's gonna get personal. Just start out getting personal. Ask them. It's gonna get personal.

Laura Moreno: Going back to not owning a home, I know there's many people say that they don't mind if their agent doesn't own a home, but I always.

They have to own a home, they have to have gone through the process, through the motions. Mm-hmm. , no, I did very, very well. And ideally they have bought a few homes. They have investment properties, so they are not really depending on your commission to make a living. You know, they have more flexibility, more breathing room to make sure they give you like a, a good advice, good thoughtful advice.

Someone like you, and that's someone like you.

Bryan Mize: and, And actually that's exactly why I started the home inspection business because back when I was losing everything, the people were still buying and selling homes. Just nobody I knew. And I could, I couldn't do mortgages, I couldn't do real estate. So I was like, Well, how do [00:32:00] I get involved in the rest of the transaction?

Right? How do I get involved in that? And prior to 2010 in Washington State, there was no licensing law for home inspectors. Anyone could be one. And so I didn't want to become a home inspector cuz there was a lot of idiots out there being home inspectors. And it didn't have such a great, it didn't have a real great reputation.

Too much competition. When they passed the law, only 400 people who were calling themselves home inspectors actually got license. And I says, Okay.

I can go do that. I'm licensed number seven of the year to pass the law. Yeah.

Laura Moreno: Nice, Nice. Awesome. Well, Brian, you've shared with us amazing information today. What can we do for you?

Bryan Mize: I. Well, uh, just take, take some of this knowledge. I, I just hope that your, your listeners in, in any area of the country, take this knowledge and interview , interview your [00:33:00] agents, make sure you're getting some that can provide you more than just one side of the transaction, right?

More than just writing a contract, let them give you some advice. Just, just take the advice. The questions and get somebody to help you because if you do it right, it'll take care of you the rest of your life and on into your retirement. But if you do it wrong, it can be a really tough road to hope.

Laura Moreno: I agree.

And how can we get in touch with you?

Bryan Mize: Well, I mean, uh, if you're gonna put my name there, uh, on the, on the podcast, just google my name cuz I'm all over the internet. I've got, there's, you know, I've got over 500 reviews on Google and I'm everywhere. Uh, but you can also call me at my phone number two zero six three four nine.

Zero, seven, three, three. You can call or text anytime. I'm happy to answer questions when I'm available. I answer the phone always, unless I'm in front of a customer [00:34:00] or in a crawlspace.

Laura Moreno: Awesome. And by the way, thinking about going to crawling space, I just don't know how you guys do it is in my nightmares, like finding the snakes, the spiders, I don't even know what's in a crawl space.

It's like freaky. Yeah. How do you do it? You have a peel, You have some shot before getting into a crawl.

Bryan Mize: Uh, I wear my personal protective gear. I've got a full body suit. I look like I'm in breaking the bed. I've got a face mask or respirator. Yeah, I've got, I'm covered up when I go down there. But yeah, I've seen some really ugly, nasty ones.

And then, then I've also seen some really nice clean ones. So you just, you don't know until you go. It's a lot source scopes. I don't. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm, I'm telling you, you gotta check it out. You gotta go. Uh, same thing with sewer scopes. You don't know until you put a camera down there. People are like, Well, the house is new.

I don't need a sewer scope. But there have been problems found in brand new sewers. Like they didn't connect them right. Or the pipes [00:35:00] crushed. You know, you just, you don't know until you look at it.

Laura Moreno: You just need to have a great home inspection. Just have a great agent, great lender, great home inspector, and everything would be.

You can breathe. Yeah, you can sleep at night.

Bryan Mize: Well, Brian, it does matter that the team you put around you does matter. Yeah, it

Laura Moreno: does. Well, Brian, thank you so, so, so much for being the first time home by a podcast.

Bryan Mize: Well, thank you for having me. Take care.