This review is for both Meghan Fitzgerald at KW and her head of operations, Athena Dinh at Cunningham group. Without getting into too much detail about our specific situation, do NOT work with them if you want an agent and a team that's great at setting expectations, communication, providing education to first-time buyers, and fighting for what you deserve. If you're looking for someone to just close on a home, then feel free. The only reason why we are giving 2 stars instead of 1 is because they helped us close on our house.
So a summary of what happened to my husband and I- we signed a deal with the seller which included the appliances in the home (refrigerator, stove, dish washer). My husband and I were unable to attend the inspection, so Meghan said she would be there on our behalf, but she had failed to catch that the refrigerator was missing. Nonetheless, the inspection was completed, and my husband and I were moving along the escrow process at her urging, none the wiser.
When we did our final walk through it was US that noticed our fridge was missing. In fact, Meghan tried to argue with us when we said that we were supposed to have a refrigerator. We had to prove it to her by pulling up the MLS photos. So she contacted the listing agent, and we were told that it would be replaced by the seller before closing. There was a LOT of back and forth (I'll spare you the dirty details), but a fridge was installed before closing, although it was not the same one, and it was broken. It was SO broken that we had water leakage and damage to our new floor. Unfortunately the damage was not found until after we received the keys.
We immediately contacted both Meghan and Athena, and we had hoped that they would've been a little more helpful in communicating with us how to handle such a situation, being first-time buyers. Meghan and Athena made it clear time and time again that they were only responding to our frustrated questions as a favor, and that they were not contractually obligated to get back to us or help us at all since the deal was already signed, even though this was partly their fault.
If you're looking for someone to just help you close on a house, then she's totally capable. But if you're a first-time buyer, look some place else. Get someone with more experience who isn't just trying to push the close. A buyer's agent is supposed to represent the buyer, and go to bat for them. Once the fridge situation occurred, we were not supported and were given canned responses about how bad they felt, etc etc, but it never seemed like they were doing anything about it. It took us getting in contact with the listing agent directly for anything to happen- and we got a new fridge in 48 hours. read more