My husband and I decided that it was time to live our dream by moving from a large urban setting in California to a small town country setting in Washington. I did a search for a realtor in the area who specialized in rural country properties and found Juliana. She spent time talking to us to get a feel for who we are and what our dream property looked like in our minds. Well, we sort of didn't exactly know what our dream property looked like because my husband and I had slightly different views of the concept of "rural" living. We both wanted a large property to have room for our dogs, a large vegetable garden, and possibly larger animals in case we decided to add them later on. However, my husband wanted to live in a very secluded and quiet area which I also wanted, but I wanted to be less than 30 minutes from a major hospital and not too far from a grocery store and gas station. This made looking for a property for us like looking for a needle in a haystack. My husband flew up to look at properties twice, each time being driven all over the area for hours by Juliana. She even picked him up and dropped him off at the airport. She did find a great property for us, but it was a short sale, which we found out was actually an incredibly long and treacherous purchase process. Juliana is well-versed in that very tricky area of real estate and she did warn us that many short sales either do not go through or can take many months or even a year or more to complete the sale. But we wanted the property anyway, so she fought tirelessly with the bank for months on our behalf, keeping us very well-informed at every step of the way.
To make a long story short, after about 6 months of fighting with the short sale bank, we had meanwhile put our California house on the market and knew that it would sell quickly. In about a month, we would literally become homeless. Juliana came to our rescue since she also knew the rental market and said that if we wanted to wait for the short sale, she would help us find a rental house until the sale went through. She also said that she would be happy to keep showing us more properties in case another one came on the market that met our requirements and could be purchased without any delay.
In our 7 months of working with Juliana, she helped us better define our requirements for a property so that we would know what our dream property looked like when we saw it. She never pushed her own ideas on us, only helping us figure out what we wanted. We decided that moving twice was too overwhelming, so we decided not to move to a rental, and let go of the short sale and try to find a property quickly so that we would have a house to move into after selling ours. Juliana quickly did the paperwork to get us out of the short sale and then we went on a rush trip up to Washington to find our dream property in a hurry. This did not faze Juliana. She devoted 3 days to showing us over 20 properties while driving hundreds of miles on country roads for 6-7 hours each day.
Juliana showed us one property that I didn't even want to look at because the pictures made the house look horrible. She talked me into it because she had actually seen the property and said that the owner had used his own photos which did not represent what the house actually looked like. Juliana said that she thought we needed to see it because she felt that it had some really special things about it that would make both of us quite happy and fill all of our opposing requirements. I reluctantly agreed to see it and lo and behold, it was our dream property and we have now happily been living here for a month! It has lots of room, both inside and outside, plus a shop for my husband, a barn for me, AND it is secluded and quiet, yet 20 minutes from a major hospital and 10 minutes from a major grocery store and gas station. It's perfect for us and we are thrilled to have gotten such a great deal on it, too, thanks to Juliana!
Juliana's realtor profile says that she believes that everyone should follow their dreams. Honestly, she was absolutely essential in making our dream become a reality. She is an honest and very hard-working person and truly listens to her clients so that she helps them find what is best for them. Many realtors are just out to sell properties, whatever it takes, despite what their clients want. This is not the case with Juliana. She has that rare ability to see the dreams of someone else through her own eyes so that she can lead you in the right direction and find what is best for you, instead of her idea of what you should want. I know this is really long, but Juliana deserves as many words of praise as possible. She is so much more than a realtor. . . she's a genuine dream maker! read more
