My Real Estate Agent Told Me Not to Buy My Dream House!

January 23, 2013 Wendy Carpenter-Israel

First-Time Homebuyer Tips: What’s an Exclusive Buyer's Agent in the Washington, DC Metro Area?

As an Exclusive Buyer’s Agent, I help people find homes and purchase them. The search can be long, and the twists and turns in the process can sometimes be downright strange, but still, in the end, I help people find homes and buy them, except when I tell them not to buy them. Because that is an equally important part of my job – to let my clients know when I think a particular home is unsuitable for them.

I've been in this business for ten years and have acquired much experience and knowledge about real estate. Before this career, I worked as a carpenter doing residential remodeling, and I bring that background with me when analyzing homes. And there are often times when my knowledge and experience tell me that a client needs to walk away from home. Quickly. But it gets tricky when that's different from what my client wants to hear.

Last week, I went out with clients in Northern Virginia and showed them nine houses. And, of course, the one that intrigued them was the house with the inherent flaws. It was a 1940s colonial on three-quarters of an acre. The colonial was small, but the house had a relatively new addition on the back. The addition had a two-story atrium, a large family room, and two bedrooms upstairs. Add that to the original colonial in front, and you have four bedrooms on the second floor. So what's the problem? There is no connection between the two bedrooms in the front and the two in the new addition in the back! Each is reached by separate stairways on opposite ends of the house. And the way the house's old and new parts are joined, it is impossible to knock walls down and construct a new passageway between the two. This makes for an incredibly inconvenient upstairs, especially if you are a young couple planning to start a family.

In addition, several other things were wrong with the house that just added to the main design problems. I discovered that there was only one air handler for the whole house and no return in addition, which leads me to believe that heating, especially the air conditioning, would be very deficient in that part of the house. The kitchen was advertised as "gourmet" but was, in fact, old, plain, and in need of a total renovation. The large windows in the atrium were double pane, but they had used exposed, construction-grade 2x6s to frame them in, and the installation was shoddy at best. Several other items were added to the list to make this house a potential nightmare for my clients.

What my clients saw on the first visit was this neat-looking atrium, a large primary suite in the back, and a large lot in a nice neighborhood with a great deal of potential. It took a second visit with a severe look at the flaws in the house to make them see what a fundamental mistake this house would be for them to buy. The cost and work for these first-time home buyers would have been prohibitive. They are willing to look at a fixer-upper, but this one would have gone beyond their means or abilities. This is when you see the value of working with an Exclusive Buyer's Agent.