Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Who typically uses your service?
Q. Are Clients required to take one of your courses?
Q. You say you refer us to screened professionals. How does the referral process work?
Q. How did you screen your agents?
Q. You also provide the names of lenders and inspectors. How are they screened?
Q. Is this a large network?
Q. What if our friends know an agent they really like?
Q. Clients must wonder if these agents and others aren’t just friends of yours?
Q. What if we’re unhappy with an agent?
Q. So this program is free?
Q. Isn’t there a possible conflict of interest if you are trying to advise us while being paid by someone else, someone who might not get paid because of what you have to say?
Q. Do agents routinely pay referral fees?
Q. Why would an agent pay you a referral fee, especially if you might give us advice that conflicts with what the agent has to say?
Q. Could our friends ask for a referral fee if they send us to an agent they liked?
Q. I think we thought that “good agents” just had plenty of Clients. Not so?
Q. Do you favor any particular real estate companies?
Q. Don’t some real estate companies offer advantages?
Q. If we want to work with the agent our friends liked, can we call you for just the names of inspectors and lenders?
Q. Can we just hire you for an hour or two?
Q. Can you tell us more about the consulting portion of your service?
Q. Are loan costs the only portion of the loan process that you address?
Q. So the service is “life long?”
Q. How many hours of consulting are we entitled to?
Q. Does anyone ever ask you this: why doesn’t every buyer and seller use your service?
Q. How do we get started?

Q. Who typically uses your service?
A. The largest group is made up of first-time home buyers, most of whom have taken one of the courses we teach on the University of Washington campus or at the Phinney Neighborhood Center. Then come sellers and investors. Our typical Clients are young professionals who place a high value on education.

Q. Are Clients required to take one of your courses?
A. By no means. But if the timing works, we will recommend it. We have taught almost 10,000 students since 1984, so we have a pretty good idea of which topics are important to cover, and what to emphasize. Our courses have always been the most thorough of any offered in the Puget Sound area. They really do boost your confidence and provide insights to understand the language and strategies of real estate transactions.

Q. You say you refer us to screened professionals. How does the referral process work?
A. We have lists and resumes of agents, lenders and inspectors we have known and observed for years. You are provided the details about those individuals and then you decide which ones to work with, usually after meeting with or calling them.

Q. How did you screen your agents?
A. In the beginning, we gave the agents written tests, interviewed past Clients, examined contracts they had written, and even did criminal and civil background checks. But the one thing we learned in our beginning years was that the best screening always proved to be a few years of observing how well they did in the field.  We’ve watched over the shoulders of some of our agents for over 10 years.

Q. You also provide the names of lenders and inspectors. How are they screened?
A. The agent gets the most scrutiny because he or she is usually going to be the most important player, the one person who can make or break the outcome. Lenders are actually easy to screen because they have no choice but to provide written loan costs before the transactions close, and so that has always given us plenty of opportunity to observe their promises and their actions. Inspectors are more of a challenge since every house is so different. One inspector may be the best for a situation where wiring is the focus, whereas another inspector might be the best for a foundation question. Since we can’t perfect this process, we strive to find highly knowledgeable inspectors who can deal well with practically any situation. Of course, there is no way to test them, so we simply have to rely on field observations and past experiences. In a typical year, the approval rate for these different professionals runs between 95 and 100% satisfaction.

Q: Is this a large network?
A: We started with a large network but over the years we’ve found that a smaller group is best. The more PRESS business each professional gets, the more devoted that professional is to our Clients.  As a result, you get even better service.

Q. What if our friends know an agent they really like?
A. See the above answer. Your friends may have had one or two experiences with someone they liked. We have had dozens to hundreds of experiences with our professionals.  It takes a long time to reach the level of confidence that we desire before we refer someone. Did your friends perform a background check?  Review their agent’s contracts from other transactions?  Make them take a written test?  Review their state licensing record?  Of course not.  Not to insult your friends, but they are probably basing their recommendation largely on bedside manners.  While bedside manner is one of the hallmarks of a good agent, we are also looking for in-depth expertise, and few consumers would know how to determine that.  Still, we do like to learn of well-liked agents.  And we occasionally evaluate new agents to add to our list from these recommendations.  But to use the PRESS service, Clients must use a PRESS real estate agent. 

Q. Clients must wonder if these agents and others aren’t just friends of yours?
A. Of course. If we didn’t like them as people, they wouldn’t have the quality bedside manner required to be an effective agent.  What’s more, we have to agree with their ethics and integrity to refer them at all.  But what you might be surprised to learn is that some professionals we have considered very good friends were removed from our program because we weren’t happy with their level of service. You, our Client, come first. No Ifs, Ands, or Buts about that.  Our business would fail quickly if that weren’t the case.

Q. What if we’re unhappy with an agent?
A. About once every other year, the romance goes sour and we do our best to help out, and if necessary facilitate a change to another agent. Fortunately, our satisfaction rate runs close to 100%. But we do put our Clients first. We have kicked several agents out of our network for laziness or incompetence, even though a couple had been in the network for years. They never earn “tenure.”  We call this “permanent probation.” 

Q. So this program is free?
A. Yes, and no. The service is free to our Clients. It’s not free to the agents who support it with their referral fees. Our Clients don’t pay us anything directly yet every buyer and seller makes the sales commission possible. So this is one way that you get more than most consumers – namely outside expertise and advice – without adding any cost to the transaction. Say, did you notice how candid our answer was? That’s the way we do business.

Q. Isn’t there a possible conflict of interest if you are trying to advise us while being paid by someone else, someone who might not get paid because of what you have to say?
A. Absolutely. But to us any possible conflict of interest is just one more opportunity to demonstrate that we put your welfare above that of the professionals you work with. And it’s just plain smart business. Let’s say that we tell you the house you want to purchase is a very bad deal because of a problem you didn’t suspect. Your appreciation for that insight means you trust us all the more. And you grow more confident to stick with the process. In time, we get paid, so it doesn’t matter to us if it is today or next month. What matters is that you are safe and satisfied.

Q. Do agents routinely pay referral fees?
A. Yes. Stores advertise, whereas agents pay referral fees. It is so common in the real estate business that agents may even advertise what they are willing to pay in trade magazines. When Las Vegas was the hottest market, agents commonly offered to pay 35% of their commissions for referrals of buyers. By the way, we ask for what is probably the lowest common referral fee in the business.

Q. Why would an agent pay you a referral fee, especially if you might give us advice that conflicts with what the agent has to say?
A. Excellent question. First of all, we refer you to screened agents who from past experience have demonstrated that they generally give sound advice, reducing the chances of conflict.  As for why agents are willing to pay referral fees: agents are constantly looking for new Clients to replace the ones who have bought or sold and moved on.  Sometimes it’s difficult for an agent to find new business - at any given time there can be twice as many agents as there are buyers or sellers.  Referral fees offered to other agents are more common to this industry than probably any other business in America.

Q. Could our friends ask for a referral fee if they send us to an agent they liked?
A. State law says no. Only “licensees” are eligible. The agent might send them “dinner for two” but that’s about it.

Q. I think we thought that “good agents” just had plenty of Clients. Not so?
A. This is a different business from many others. Lots of agents only close six to ten transactions a year, so it often takes them years to have enough happy Clients who can send them much business. Even then we generally feel that as much as two-thirds of an agent’s time is spent looking for new Clients, from cold-calling to sending out flyers to holding open houses. You can see why they can be eager to be one of our screened agents; they can spend more time with Clients and less time marketing themselves. Some of our most popular agents get over half of their annual business from our service.

Q. Do you favor any particular real estate companies?
A. No, but we avoid a few firms due to what we consider low standards or anti-consumer attitudes.

Q: Don’t some real estate companies offer advantages?
A: One of the most common misconceptions is that you are working with a “company.” You actually work with an independent contractor who just happens to hang his or her license with that company. The agent’s personal characteristics and experience should be your focus.

Q. If we want to work with the agent our friends liked, can we call you for just the names of inspectors and lenders?
A. Sorry, no. Some folks think we might then be paid a referral fee by the inspector or lender. This isn’t possible – lenders are prohibited by law from paying referral fees, and inspectors don’t earn enough on each transaction to do so.  Their referral fees wouldn’t even pay our monthly phone bill.  No matter how idealistic we are, we still have the same bills and needs as our Clients, so we have to work within a system that works for everyone.

Q. Can we just hire you for an hour or two?
A. This never quite works for both parties.  We often find people who want to pay $100 for $1,000 of insights and assistance, and so once again idealism may butt heads with reality. Clients who give us their undivided loyalty will always be the ones to get our undivided assistance. Tit for tat, and all that.

Q. Can you tell us more about the consulting portion of your service?
A. Of course, giving you candid advice about the professionals is consulting at its best, but we do take important extra steps. We generally attend your home inspection (if we are available and it’s not too distant) and give you our independent opinion, and share our own experiences with remodeling and repairs. That is a big part of our lives when not working with our Clients so we often know just how much an item is likely to cost, or know who to ask. But the portion of our service that many buyers seem to use and appreciate the most is our input on loans.

Q. Why so?
A. If an inspector says the chimney mortar is soft and loose, you don’t need any expertise to understand that, but if you are comparing three different loans and trying to discern which one is the best deal, your head may spin like that poor possessed girl in The Exorcist. The two most difficult documents (in the beginning) for most consumers to understand are Good Faith Estimates (loan costs) and title searches. We see them every week so they’re no more confusing to us than directions on opening a bottle.

Q. Are loan costs the only portion of the loan process that you address?
A. No, of course not. In a sense, we are doing “financial planning” with many of our Clients, explaining the pro’s and con’s of small and large down payments, early pay-offs on mortgages, and using equity for other purchases.

Q. Anything else?
A. One of the most under-appreciated aspects of what we provide is the advice we can give in the years after a transaction closes. We get calls and emails every week from Clients who now want to move a sink, take out a second loan, rent their property, or deal with a difficult neighbor. It never occurred to them when they first met us that this would be a long-term relationship that would be beneficial for years to come.

Q. So the service is “life long?”
A. Well, we do want to ask for one thing: your business, now and in the future. We have had Clients use us for one transaction but not the next one, but they still wanted our advice on the second transaction. We are devoted professionals but we don’t like to be used any more than anyone else, so we will draw the line at times, if just to avoid the legal liability on transactions where we are outsiders. Oh, by the way, some of those Clients who didn’t include us on their second and third transactions (assuming perhaps that they were experts after one successful transaction?) cried later and apologized when they found themselves way in over their heads after making truly silly mistakes. We say, “Never tell a consultant what you did and then ask, “Is that what we should have done?’” That’s all about barn doors, spilt milk and water over the dam. Ask before acting. To summarize: if you stick by us we will stick by you for years to come, but our services would end if a Client chose to buy or sell in the future without utilizing PRESS. We’re happy to report that doesn’t happen very often.

Q. How many hours of consulting are we entitled to?
A. When we started this business in 1994, we felt that we should put a limit on it, which for a while was twelve hours per transaction. But, in all these years we have had only one person want to talk that much so now we don’t watch the clock.

Q. Does anyone ever ask you this: why doesn’t every buyer and seller use your service?
A. All the time. Anyone who has worked with us is likely to ask that. They see, after the fact, how helpful it was. But when they try to tell their friends, they often encounter resistance that compares to a brick wall. It just sounds “too good to be true.”  But this is one time that something is as good as it sounds. Of course, as a small business, we don’t have an endless advertising budget and even if we did, it would be wasted much of the time. It’s really difficult to tell someone in an ad how a very unique business works, one unlike anything they have ever heard of before. Of course, the advantage to you is that we can give each Client a great deal of attention.

Q. How do we get started?
A. Just choose a method to contact us. Let us know that you’d like to get started and we’ll set an appointment to sit down and discuss your real estate objectives. Part of our job is to illuminate the process, so don’t worry about preparing anything in advance for the meeting. We look forward to hearing from you!