Bottom line up front: Kristin and the Home Happy Group are OUTSTANDING and if you look anywhere else for your real estate needs, you will probably be very disappointed. I cannot say enough good things about Kristin, Ann, and the rest of the Home Happy Group. This is a very long review but I wouldn't be doing my experience justice if I didn't describe how happy my husband and I are with our experience.
Let me start by saying that my husband and I are (or, I guess now that we've closed, were) first time home buyers in the Northern VA area. For me, that newbie status conjured up memories of horror stories my friends and co-workers told me about buying a home in this area: "its competitive," "homes are so expensive," "you'll only be able to afford a tear-down anyway," and, my favorite, "our real estate agent was just looking to make a quick dime." YIKES. Needless to say, I wasn't convinced we'd have a great experience. Boy was I wrong, and I'm so happy to say that.
My husband found Kristin and the Home Happy Group on Yelp (thank you very much) and was very impressed with her ratings, so we decided to go for an in-person "get to know you" meeting about a year before we started actively looking for a home. Call me old school, but I love a good face-to-face meeting! At that meeting, Kristin was very welcoming, warm, and demonstrated very impressive knowledge about the area. She also provided us very helpful feedback on our process of saving for a home and challenged us to explore some different neighborhoods in VA that we didn't really know existed. Kristin read me like a book (no pun intended), offering to drop off an over-sized map book of Virginia (again, old school I know but I cant tell you how immensely helpful it was to thumb through the book and explore different areas). We kept in touch with Kristin over that next year when we came back to have her set up searches of the MRIS for us a few months before we purchased our home.
Fast forward to the home viewing process: Kristin took us out one evening to four different homes (we had narrowed down our search process tremendously by that point) and provided some very helpful and professional information about each. She offered to tell us what she would do to improve each home if she were buying it, which for us as first-time home buyers was very valuable. She even provided us names and contact information for electricians, plumbers, floor refinishers, etc....she is literally her very own Yelp or Consumer Checkbook website and everyone she recommends has done work for her before on her own house, so she is not being paid to speak kindly about companies she has never used (ahem, other real estate agents in the DC area...)
Once we put an offer in on a house, Kristin displayed prompt, timely, and excellent communication about the offer/negotiation process. She, and her newest team member Tim, even came to the house during the inspection, as my husband and I ended up putting an offer in on the house while we were on vacation. I cannot express enough how important it was that we had a strong representative there during the inspection when we couldn't be. After the inspection, Kristin helped us compile our "inspection ask list" of items we wanted the seller to fix. Coming into those negotiations in a strong position to barter was, I believe, part of the reason we ended up getting $$ back from the seller at closing.
Closing went extremely smoothly and, during that process, it became apparent to me just how many people Kristin is connected with in the DC area. Our closing agent at the title company and our loan officer (both purely by coincidence) Plus, in Kristin's own words, she "conveys with the house," so have not hesitated to reach out to her if we need an opinion or have a question...even though we've already closed.
Finally, Ann was extremely diligent and thorough during the period leading up to closing. It was easy to correspond with her and she answered all of our questions.
I will FINALLY conclude this review by saying directly to Kristin and her team: THANK YOU for helping us buy a home that we could have only dreamed about in another life. You are invited over for wine any time you'd like :). read more