Tarpoff and Talbert are the best Realtors that I have ever worked with, and the only easy experience with a sale I've ever had. They carried the weight of the process. They are unique in that they, as a company, concentrate on readying and selling only one house (your house) at a time. You don't get just a real estate agent, you get a team: Pat & Anet, stagers, cleaners, gardeners, whatever it takes. And they know the Rockridge-Berkeley market inside out.
Tarpoff and Talbert also write a column on real estate for the weekly, "The Montclarion." In the 1990s my mother, who was then in her 80s, wrote to them asking what she could do ahead of time to make the house easy for me to sell if something should happen to her. They responded with an article addressing that question and a personal, hand written letter, and they kept up the correspondence for nearly 20 years. One year they helped Mom with the pros and cons of removing a tree in front of the house. Later they helped her find a good painter -- he deserves a Yelp, too, for the quality of his work-- and suggested colors that would both meet Mom's ideas and keep the character of the house. Every time I visited her, Mom showed me a pertinent column by Pat and Anet and made me promise that I would use them when the time came to sell the house. Mom was a wise woman.
Mom, Pat and Anet finally met at Mom's 100th birthday party.
After my mother died this January, I faced a mountain of problems in selling her house: we had to sort through her things, clear out the house and clean the house, garage, and garden. The house needed extensive repairs -- it was Mom's age. And I live in Texas.
When Pat and Anet came after Mom's death, they walked through the house with me, explaining how they would prefer to present the house, asking for items to be left with the house and discussing different options with me. They suggested I pack and ship whatever I wanted to keep, and they would arrange to have charities, recyclers, etc. clear the house, as well as dispose of things in accordance with all the recycling and hazardous waste rules unique to the Bay Area . I
had felt overwhelmed just thinking how I would remove all the things my mother had collected in her 40 years living in the house, and they lifted most of that work from me. They were patient with me through several false starts, as one of my sons thought he would like to live in the house after a job opened in San Francisco -- and then later fell through -- for his wife.
They kept in constant touch with me by phone and by email and offered me several options for preparing the house -- from a complete reworking to selling as is, with the cost estimates and trade-offs of each option -- and promised their full support of whichever option I chose.
When the house was offered for sale, Pat and Anet were ready for potential buyers with written reports by certified inspectors for all the work that the house needed, bids for the repairs from contractors who had seen the house, answers for all the questions any potential buyer had and the cost for the solution to the problem.
All the paperwork was done over the Internet, save for one FedEx'ed document. We closed on the sale eight days after the Open House for far more than the asking price.
Tarpoff and Talbert is an efficient hardworking realty business knowledgeable, competent, trust worthy, easy to work with. Pat and Anet are special people who befriend and help an 85 year old woman living alone, who respect a house's history, care about the quality of the work, and offer their expertise and experience to benefit their clients. I wish we had their clones in Texas. read more