Early this spring, we decided that if we didn't aim to get into the Seattle housing market soon, we might be priced out forever. We started perusing Redfin listings, dreaming of home ownership. Sure enough, "the one" appeared online and we suddenly realized that we had no idea what we actually needed to do to make an offer/try to buy a house.
We'd had friends suggest giving Rob a call when we started casually looking to let him know we were interested in buying and what we were looking for, but of course, we waited until we were 5 days from a review date with no mortgage pre-approval and no idea how buying a house worked. So we got in touch with Rob with a "any chance we can make this happen... this week"? sort of question.
Instead of laughing in our faces, Rob got us on the path in the shortest amount of time possible. Over the next few days, we were pre-approved (and pre-underwritten) for a loan through Guild Mortgage (A+ to them as well), spent about a million hours one evening going through the offer contract where Rob detailed exactly what all those lines of legalese meant, visited the house twice, had the home pre-inspected (Ryan Brett at Chronicle - another A+ member of our home-search team), and got our offer submitted at the right time with the right info. Sadly, while we know were were contenders amongst the top few of (if I remember right) 13 offers on that first house, it wasn't to be. (The top offer beat everybody else by almost 5% and was all cash waiving everything - pretty hard to beat).
Over the next few months, Rob toured us through what, in hindsight, feels like countless homes; pointing out features we hadn't noticed that were great (extra insulation in the attic, really nice subfloors that don't squeak, a furnace that was only a few years old: stuff that matters, but isn't obvious), helping us learn to spot reasons why a particular house might not be "the one" for us (or were just generally a poor investment). He kept us level-headed about the process when it felt like the greater Seattle real estate market was skyrocketing out of control. He patiently answered questions, phone calls, emails, and dealt with our worries and anxieties like it was no big thing.
In the end, we are now a couple months into being proud homeowners of what we'd argue is the best of the bunch of houses we saw/put offers on along the way. Rob has an amazing knack for knowing what offers will be contenders, what is too much to offer (and isn't worth it/is a poor investment), and how to get the offer accepted and closed in the shortest time frame.
We're super grateful for his hard work and would recommend Bushwick to anyone buying. read more