Using a trades contact as an out-of-market inspection sub, flat fee versus contingent

Someone with a construction background who has never had to outsource looking at a house may still end up doing exactly that when the deals landing are 600 miles away and not worth a drive for a maybe. A common workaround: pay a trusted sub who's relocated to that market a flat fee per walk, say 150, with the sub sending 30 to 40 photos and a rough number on scope. Say four walks produce one contract at 96,000 with a buyer expected to land around 105,000. Two issues tend to surface with this setup. First, rehab numbers coming back as a single rough figure, like 55 to 60 all in, is normal shorthand between tradespeople but isn't something a cash buyer will trust without more detail. Second, a flat fee gives the sub no stake in whether the deal closes, and schedule slippage becomes a real risk once other paying jobs compete for time. A reasonable adjustment is dropping the flat fee somewhat and adding a bonus tied to the deal assigning, say 100 a walk plus 500 on assignment. The tradeoff worth watching is whether attaching a bonus to a yes makes the photos and numbers quietly more optimistic. Worth asking whether others have run boots-on-ground inspections with a trades contact instead of an agent, and whether they kept it flat or made it contingent.

gregpowell66 AC4BPRO 19

Answer

karen_whitfieldPassivePRO

Keep it flat. The moment his pay depends on the answer, you are paying for an answer, and you will not be able to tell which walks were honest. I hold land and I have the same problem in reverse, my guy who checks access roads gets a flat fee whether the parcel is buildable or a swamp, and that is exactly why I believe him.

If you want him faster, pay more per walk, not more per outcome. $250 with a 48 hour turnaround written down is cleaner than $100 plus $500.

On the single rehab figure, ask him to split it into three or four buckets with a range on each. He already thinks that way, he just compresses it when he talks.

karen_whitfieldPassivePRO

2 replies

carlos_nunez AA4APRO 12

Orchard is right on the flat fee, and the boring fix worth adding is on the photos. Stop asking for photos. Ask for one continuous video, phone in landscape, the walker talking the whole way, starting at the street and ending at the back fence, plus a slow pan in every mechanical room. Photos are chosen. Video is what was there. It's common to see walks where the still shots looked fine and the video caught standing water in a crawl that never made it into the notes because it didn't seem to matter at the time. A flat fee like $150 tends to break eventually, not because the person doing it is greedy, but because a tradesman with real work will let the walk slide when a job runs long. Keeping two people lined up in every market covers exactly that gap, and windows still get missed even then.

carlos_nunez AA4APRO 12

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