I first noticed Travis when I lived in South San Jose. I used to walk my dogs in the neighborhood and would see all of the For Sale signs - the same signs week after week after week - the cheap white ones with the photo of the real estate agent on it. Then this different sign showed up - it was classier and more prominent. No photo, and Travis' name was small at the bottom. He wasn't the focus - the house was. A month later, the sign said "SOLD" on it. I'd never seen anything sell in a month (or anywhere near that) in that neighborhood. When I received a follow-up letter describing that the place not only sold in a month but at above-asking price, I kept Travis' card - the only real estate agent card I'd ever kept.
About a year later, it came time for us to sell our house, so I contacted Travis. He came over to talk. I was expecting him to be there for maybe 20-30 minutes, but he was there for 2 hours. He'd already done all of the market research and brought it with him. He showed us what was going on in that area, he described his pricing strategy, and he did a complete walkthrough of the house and gave advice on how we should prepare each room for showing. We had planned on interviewing 2-3 agents before selecting one, but that clearly didn't need to happen - we picked Travis immediately.
We followed Travis' advice on staging and pricing. We had an offer in less than two weeks, at asking price - we lived in tract home neighborhood. Ours was the biggest model and our asking price was the highest for any home in that neighborhood ever. In that quarter, ours was one of only 5 homes that sold in that area (there were more than 400 houses on the market at the time). A month later we closed on the sale.
About six months later, we started looking for a new home in the San Ramon/Danville area. Even though this is well outside of his area, we asked Travis to be our agent and he agreed. We identified a number of homes we wanted to see that didn't have an open house scheduled, and Travis drove up for a day to take us through them. One of the homes was appealing to us, but we weren't sure. So we asked Travis what he thought. His answer blew us away - he told us what he knew of our tastes and needs, and compared those with the features of the house. He concluded that there were several key things about that house that we would end up being unhappy with, and advised that it wasn't the right house for us. He was right.
Soon after that, we found another house that we liked, and he helped us put in an offer, followed by more than a month of run-around from the seller. Travis worked closely with the seller's agent (who was equally frustrated with her client) to help us make progress. Ultimately, we had to give up on that house because the seller was impossible, but Travis did everything in his power and more to make it happen. That led to the house we ended up buying. Travis was able to negotiate a great deal for us on that, and the rest is history!
After having experienced Travis' services, I couldn't imagine ever using a "regular" real estate agent. Not to mention that he led us to our Financial Planner and Insurance Broker. If you're looking to buy or sell your home, hire Travis. Period. read more