Brenda was actually not our first realtor. The first showed up at our door with an interested buyer…read moreat a time when we weren't ready to sell, but was polite and kept in occasional contact for months until we were. My wife had mentioned to the gentleman that it would be nice to be able to sell to the buyer they had and not to have to put the house on the market, but at no point did the realtor suggest that it may not be in our best interests monetarily to sell without putting the house on the market. When it came time to sign the contract retaining the realtor, I had a couple of days before fallen and would later find out fractured two of my ribs. I was in a lot of pain and not exactly thinking clearly, but the realtor made my wife and I feel pressured to sign on the spot before going to urgent care that day. We were also shown a CMA that estimated the value of our house more than 15% below what it would ultimately sell for, but "coincidently" was the amount the buyer they had was willing to pay. The relationship quickly soured and after a couple of weeks of back and forth which included the realtor's very condescending superior telling us she had worked on the CMA and our house was actually worth even less and that they had valued it generously, they finally let us out of the exclusivity contract.
I only bring that all that up in our review because working with her was an absolute night and day difference. At no point was she ever pushy like the other realtor or condescending like his superior, and she just had a trustworthy vibe that the previous realtor, although polite, did not.
Brenda came and took a look at our house, worked up a far more comprehensive CMA that came in much higher than the other realtor's CMA, and after having some other members of her team come take a look at the house actually suggested we price it even higher than the CMA indicated. We were a little bit nervous that maybe things had swung too far in the opposite direction and we were asking too much in the current housing market, but it turned out Brenda and her team had nailed it. The house went up on the market, we had a few showings, and offers came in very quickly; several which were quite a bit higher even than the already raised asking price. We went with an offer that wouldn't close for a couple of months thinking it would give us plenty of time to find a new house to move in to.
During this time, Brenda's colleague Leslie was our buyer's agent. We were using the internet to find homes we were interested in, so we didn't need that part of her services but still wanted an experienced agent to help make sure everything went smoothly and it turned out we would have been in big trouble without her!
In the process of finding the house we would buy, Leslie drove well out of her (as far as I can tell from a quick web search at least) normal service area on at least one, maybe two different occasions to view houses with us. She never complained or even mentioned that she usually doesn't go out that far. We settled on a new construction house that required non-refundable earnest money. We had no reason at the time to think that there would be any problems, but just three days before closing the person buying our house backed out with no warning and by then the other offers were no longer on the table. It was obviously not Brenda's fault, but we were absolutely crushed because we couldn't imagine getting such good offers again, especially since we would have to sell very quickly to close on the house we wanted to buy. On top of that, we would lose the earnest money. Brenda and Leslie sprang into action, with Leslie managing a very busy open house and convincing the notoriously inflexible new construction company to agree to push back the closing date not just once, but twice, and Brenda lining up several private showings in a very, very short time frame. Once again, we had several offers above asking price. In the end, we came out with almost just as much as the initial offer that had fallen through and were able to get the house we wanted.
Throughout the entire messy process, both Brenda and Leslie were very patient with our constant questions and always got back to us very quickly even on weekends and at times we would not have expected such quick replies. They went above and beyond and treated us like family in a way that may have been more common decades ago but seems very rare these days, and their supportiveness and quick action really got us through the period where it felt like everything was falling apart. I honestly can't think of adequate words to express how grateful we are and can only hope that this review will bring some business their way because they deserve as much as they can handle.
