I could not recommend Don highly enough! I'm so incredibly greatful that our paths had crossed prior to needing an agent. When the time approached for my husband and I to purchase a luxury home, I thought I'd interview several real estate agents and choose from them.
Our situation was that we were coming into some money and wanted to begin our search before we actually had the money. We asked to set up an interview with the first agent who specialized in luxury homes. She didn't want to meet with us until we had the money. Ok. She said she'd do an MLS search and send me some listings to look at in the mean time. I told her our dream neighborhood, Covenant Estates, and we both lamented that homes didn't come onto the market there very often. When she sent me the listings, she was trying to steer us to a different neighborhood further away. Fair enough. Listings didn't come up very much in CE, our target neighborhood, but the new neighborhood was further out of town and we worked in town. She had never bothered to ask about any of this.
That weekend, I noticed a brand new "under contract" sign in CE. I texted her and asked about it. She just had an attitude of "yeah, too bad." And no explanation of why she wasn't aware of it before it went under contract and I literally never heard another word from her after that text.
So, at this point I reached out to Don. I explained the entire situation, that we didn't have the money yet and that there was even an outside chance that we'd never get it. This didn't matter to Don at all! In our first conversation he laid out a plan to get us what we wanted. This included researching every agent who had sold a house in CE in the last five years and then contacting them to find out if they had anything coming on the market that hadn't been listed yet. Genius! By the end of or first phone conversation I knew he was our guy and we didn't need to talk to anyone else. It was night and day compared to my experience with the first agent.
While Don was working on that, we requested to just go see a home that we kind of thought was out of our league because it just liked so incredible and we wanted to see it in person, just for fun. Don obliged us and said he thought that it can sometimes be good to go see a house you don't think you actually want because it can confirm what you do want.
Well, it was the first house we saw, but we fell in love! Mind you, we didn't have the money yet. Don had so much wisdom and knowledge, he advised us as to the right moves to sort of stall until we got the money, while keeping us on the good side of the seller's agent. Simultaneously, he found a CE home that the owners had been contemplating putting on the market but hadn't yet! No one knew about it but us thanks to Don! We toured that home as well as another in a different but very close neighborhood.
Well, as much as we thought we wanted to be in CE, the more we thought about it and talked it over with Don, we knew that the first home was the one for us. It was about 10 minutes away from CE, but it was 10 minutes closer to town, not further away. Don played the game expertly and gave the other agent only the necessary info at the necessary time so that we were able to be in the running for the home and when the money came in, we snatched it up! We got it for over $150,000 less than the list price.
Don and Tina made the home buying process go so smoothly from that point. At one point Don mentioned something about having another closing scheduled and it hit me that all this time, he'd made us feel like we were his one and only clients, but of course he had other clients simultaneously. I'm willing to bet they all felt like they were the only ones.
We've been in our dream home for 3 months now and we can't imagine another home in all of Austin that could possibly be a better fit for our family, at ANY price point. Without Don's expert advice and guidance, this house could have been the one that got away and we would have "what if'ed?" for the rest of our lives.
I'll add that Don always made sure he was just advising us, but that the decisions were in our hands. He never made us feel like we were wasting his time, even when us getting the money was not a guarantee. I believe two of the seller's agents, luxury home agents, made remarks about how wonderful Don was to work with. On top of that, Don always had great recommendations for anything we needed outside of his job as our agent. We have been thrilled with the designer he recommended for us and even met with a financial planner he thought would be a good fit for us as well.
Don even helped me with a lease for my old home just last month and that experience was just as impressive and smooth even though he had nothing to gain from it. I could go on all day. Do yourself a favor and hire Don. You'll not be disappointed! read more