Why Every Buyer Needs a Home Inspection | Pat Beets

Pat Beets (00:00)
I feel like it’s a great combination to be able to see houses.

Look at them, identify issues, explain it to people, but explain it to them ways that they understand it, that they’re not threatened by it, they understand the issues, know what to do to correct it, and not scare them to death. But let them know what they are buying at the same time.

Quentin (01:58)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the DFW real estate pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m so happy to be here. I have another fantastic guest and I’m so happy to have him with me. And listen, this gentleman was 35 years into the real estate space, did a little pivot after he retired, got into inspection and he’d been in inspection for six years, two years full time.

And so I’m excited about this gentleman. He comes from a craft that I’m familiar with and I’ll let him tell more about that. I want to give all his business. I got to let him decide how much he want to tell y’all. But I’m super excited to have today with us, Mr. Pat Beets. Mr. Pat, how you doing today, sir?

Pat Beets (02:42)
I’m doing great. Do you coincide?

Quentin (02:43)
man, doing great. And I love that in you, my wife always say she like in you people. And so she’ll ask, how are you? And they’ll answer, I’m good, in you. And so you are that in you person. And so I appreciate that. And I’m doing well, Mr. Pat. And so listen, sir, I want to dive right in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. Mr. Pat, if you can give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to where you are today.

Pat Beets (02:53)
And.

Quentin (03:11)
And then also tell them where you are, G.A. Graff, I gave him a little hint, but just tell them exactly where you are. And so you got the floor, Mr. Pat.

Pat Beets (03:19)
Well, I’m in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I cover basically all of Dallas-Fort Worth. Always had my hand tied into real estate a little bit. I started college to be an architect. Did wound up working for the Postal Service for 40 years, nearly 40 years, about 39 years. But I always put flipping houses, remodeling, ⁓ piddling in real estate on the side. And as I got close to retirement, I was looking for something to do.

And my real estate agent actually is the one that suggested inspecting due to the experiences she had had when I would buy. so that kind of where I went, I looked into it, went to get my training and have been started out four years before I retired doing some evenings and weekends and retired two years ago and full time and loving every minute of it.

Quentin (04:13)
Absolutely. I love it, Mr. Pat. And I too, you know, did the post office. I could only do 15 years, Mr. Pat. After 15 years, I tapped out of the post office. So, hats off to you for making it almost 40 years. And you and I know the postal world. I mean, that’s a lot, you know? So, hats off to you. went to college for architecture, just in the real estate space, flipping houses, doing different things like that.

I’m a realtor told you, Hey, you should be an inspector. so you had, you know, different just iterations of life, you know, post office, real estate inspection. And so Mr. Pat, asked people this question. say the statement that destiny has no wasted moments, right? No meaning what we go through in life moments kind of build to the person that we are now. So I would love to know throughout the years, post office, real estate inspection. What is these moments?

taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline, humility? Like, what has these moments taught you, Mr. Pat?

Pat Beets (05:16)
Definitely taught me discipline. Through my time with post office, most of the time I was in customer service. It’s taught me how to treat people, how people want to be treated in business. It’s through the experiences I had outside the post office, I learned a lot of technical knowledge on homes. And put that together with my customer service.

I feel like it’s a great combination to be able to see houses.

Look at them, identify issues, explain it to people, but explain it to them ways that they understand it, that they’re not threatened by it, they understand the issues, know what to do to correct it, and not scare them to death. But let them know what they are buying at the same time.

Quentin (06:52)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Thank you, Mr. think what you do is so vital to homes inspection. even heard people, and you can ask me if this is a good thing or not, but I heard people that, I heard inspectors say even before you’re about to sell a home, you should get an inspector before you put it on the market. Cause know a lot of people want to get inspections when they’re looking to buy, they want the inspector to come in, but even people that’s looking to put houses on the market, they should hire an inspector. Is that true?

Pat Beets (07:20)
Pre-inspection. Yeah, pre-inspection. That allows you to get ahead of the inspection that you’re gonna probably get at closing. As I tell people when I inspect a house, I said, you can get me and you can get two other inspectors to come. We’re probably gonna see a few different little things. So pre-inspection may not identify every single thing that the inspector’s gonna find, but it’ll get 95 to 98%. You already know.

then kind of what you think you can repair, what you don’t wanna repair, what’s cost effective for you to repair. ⁓ you can make your, you kind of have a knowledge ahead of time before you get hit with those repair addendums to know what you’re willing to negotiate and what you’re not.

Quentin (08:02)
Yeah, and I love that integrity from your standpoint to say, hey, know, get me as an inspector, get up and inspect this too. And I mean, that goes to show me that you really care about the people that you serve.

Pat Beets (08:14)
Right, exactly. I want them to understand what they’re buying. ⁓ Same thing on new homes. I definitely encourage people. We’re one of the fastest growing areas anywhere in the nation. They’re building houses fast. When they do that, it leaves a lot more room for error. I do a lot of new home inspections, a lot of 11-month warranties. Most people don’t realize their home has a years warranty on it. At that 11-month, once they hit that 12-month, they own any issue that didn’t get identified.

When I go do a new home inspection, take them out from a 50 % discount on their 11 month inspection. So that they, we have a baseline to know what it was when they started, we hit 11 months, then we can have something we can work with with the builders to correct it. So I try to look out for my buyers is what I’m in business. I want to make a living, but also look out for my buyers.

Quentin (08:51)
Yeah.

love it. I absolutely love it. So tell me what does adversity look like in your field, in inspection? Can they hide something from an inspector or can people often get in your way when you’re trying to do inspection? How does adversity look to an inspector?

Pat Beets (09:26)
Well, there are people, especially flip homes, people are, it’s a very tight market with flippers. They’re, I go into, when I see a flipped house, going, I know I’m either gonna go into something very clean and smooth, or I’m gonna go into something where everything in the world is covered and tried to paint over whether you don’t see it. It’s kind of one way or the other. And in their defense, it is a tight market, so they’ve got very tight margins, so they’re trying to make it the best they can.

Quentin (09:46)
Yeah.

Pat Beets (10:30)
But at the end of the day, that buyer needs to know what they’re buying. They need to know what they’re buying. I had a situation, one with the flipped house, was about six months ago with a new home that, and I still don’t know the ramifications of all, how much the person knew, but I’d inspected a home for an individual. They backed out over issues that I’d found in the home.

They went to buy another home and it was pretty far out of Dallas, so really further than I drive, but they liked what they had had with me as an inspector in the report I gave them. So they asked me if I could go inspect it it was a new home. I said, well, I would go inspect it for them. And I went to inspect it, got there. It was a peering beam. Don’t see too many new bill peering beams, but that’s okay. I went on through and beautiful, beautiful work.

got to go on, started to go underneath it. As soon as I went underneath it, I realized it was sitting on four before wood post, which is totally not acceptable. 4,000 square foot, half million dollar home. Then I looked towards the front of it and I see the front half was sitting on concrete blocks. I’m like, what is, why do we have one half one way and one half the other way? I crawl up to the front and what had happened, the person, the seller claimed he didn’t understand the rules.

They’d moved a double-wide trailer house in, wrapped it in new rooms around it, left that in the center, and he’d called it new construction. Neither realtor was aware. Had they not had an inspection, they would have been left with.

what they had gotten. So there’s things you find like that that you don’t expect, but they happen. That’s probably kind of an extreme one, but it just happened to me back this ⁓ past fall. And I was totally just didn’t know what to say while I was. And so, so you find that you find those things that they just totally, you know, whether it’s.

Quentin (12:25)
Brian just like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pat Beets (12:33)
I don’t know, know, their thought was they had totally built everything new, put new siding, new roof, they’d ripped the roof, know, all they kept was the walls. They felt like they had done new construction that don’t qualify for new construction, you know, or don’t even qualify financing for new construction. And so you save a lot of times people later down the road, it may work for them, but when they get ready to sell, it’s gonna come out at some point and somebody’s gonna get hung with it if they don’t get it inspected.

Quentin (12:45)
Yes, sir.

Absolutely. No, thank you for sharing that story. And again, I mean, this just sounds the alarm to people. You’re selling home, you’re buying home, get the inspection, like as soon as possible. That way you can, you can deal with things as soon as possible. So I love it. Mr. Pat, let me ask you this, sir. What is your next real goal with your business? What are you looking to solve at Scale Next?

Pat Beets (13:22)
Well, I’m still looking to grow. I’m not a sitter. I’ve worked since I was teenager and so I’m not a person that sits. I have to go. So I’d love to grow. I would love to actually gain an employee, maybe have a partner, get to a point where I need at least a part-time or full-time partner. And because I do like to travel a little bit too and I don’t want to be totally tied down, but I don’t like to be sitting still.

And I feel there’s a need for good quality inspectors in the area. We have so much growth, new homes, flipping homes, older homes, that we need people that understand real estate, understand basically from the dirt to the roof. Like I tell them, everything in between from the dirt to the roof, they understand it.

Quentin (14:13)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, I’m a love asking you this question and getting your perspective on this question because you did the post office for 40 years. Part of that was being in customer service. So dealing with people, obviously been an inspector dealing with people. So, and you just talked about even wanting a partner in the future. So I’m going to talk to you, Mr. Pat and get your perspective on relationships, right? Relationship within business, relationship within real estate.

How important are relationships to you and how do you go about cultivating relationships?

Pat Beets (15:29)
They’re very important. Saying that every realtor, just know I’m gonna tell it to their buyer when I’m meeting with them. I tell my buyers, I don’t work for you just today. Just probably a year two ago, I got a call from the very first home I inspected. The guy was changing insurance and they needed pictures of his roof. And he called me, would you happen to still have my reports? I know you took pictures. That’d been five years before.

Quentin (15:41)
Mmm.

Pat Beets (15:59)
15 minutes, I had him pictures everything he needed for his insurance. relationships are very important. I grow off of referrals from my buyers, from my realtors. And as I tell them, like I said, every realtor that has ever worked with them, they can tell you, I’m gonna say that to every one of my customers. I don’t just work for you today. You need me in the future. You have my number, you have my report. I’m always available to help you in any way I can.

Quentin (16:26)
Yeah, yeah. I love it. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Well, Mr. Pat, I love it, man. I thank you so much. I love your story. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for showing the importance of inspections. And you know, with us being a real estate podcast, I mean, you are very central to the whole ecosystem of what we do. And so.

Pat Beets (16:28)
So relationships are very important.

Quentin (16:50)
I appreciate you being here, sir. Is there any other thing, a topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about or any other words of inspiration, motivation, education that maybe you want to leave to people?

Pat Beets (17:02)
No, just be sure to get an inspection. It’s super, super important, whether it’s me, whoever, just, and ask questions. Ask questions of the inspector. Don’t ever feel there’s a dumb question. No, don’t, I mean, I get questions asked to me that you think people would know it does not buy. If you don’t know, it may cost you money in the future. If you don’t understand something, ask the question. That’s your time when you’re buying that house to know.

to understand and that person should be willing to spend the time it takes to explain what they found or what you don’t understand or something you may see why it is. Maybe it’s rat. You just don’t understand it. There’s never a dumb question that you should not ask.

Quentin (17:47)
I love it. I love it. Listen, Mr. Pat, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, Mr. Pat?

Pat Beets (17:57)
Typically, my phone is my easiest messenger text. I have a 903-617-3150. I’m on Facebook. I’m at eagleinspectionservices.com. It’s in Dallas, Texas. You’ll find me on the internet. I have a website at eagleinspectionservices.com. Call, text, Facebook, reach out to me, message me. I’d love to.

visit with anybody needing an inspector or just questions. Don’t ever hesitate to answer questions to help somebody out.

Quentin (18:33)
Yeah. Well, I love it. I love it. Let me say three things to you, Mr. Pat. First, thank you for your time. Thank you so much for being here. I greatly appreciate it. Secondly, thank you for your story, for planting seeds and people, for helping them realize how important inspections are. I believe that we may have literally course corrected some people that was listening today. So thank you. And lastly, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that perspective to this platform. I really appreciate you, Mr.

Pat Beets (19:02)
Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate your time and your willingness to let me on the podcast.

Quentin (19:07)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Pat, look into the show notes, get in contact with him. Those that’s in the DFW area, hire him. Listen, you heard him first. You heard his integrity. Reach out to him. Let him do your inspections. Also, make sure you are subscribed here on the podcast because we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Pat. So, sir, I just want to say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.

Pat Beets (19:34)
Thank you.