I've bought 2 houses and sold one. Lauren and Ron have been my realtor for selling my first house and buying my most recent house and I would hire them again and again. People, please do not just go with whoever charges you the least amount of points! It is so so so important to hire a quality realtor, who knows the area, knows the majority of the other realtors (this comes in handy when negotiating), has a feeling for how far they can push the buyers/sellers, and can instantly have a good report with whoever they meet because of their genuine spirit and kind demeanor. This is what you will be getting with Lauren and Ron. We have close friends who are realtors, coworkers who are realtors, and even the original person who helped us buy who each wanted a crack at selling our house and to help us find a new house and promised so much but after much consideration we knew it would it was still best, despite possible hurt feelings, that it'd be best that we stick with the professionals. Let me tell you why...
First off, before officially listing, Lauren came in and told us what to fix up on our house to give it a pop and ultimately give us the most bang for our buck (a fresh coat of stain on the back patio, everything off the floors in the closets to make them look bigger, bulky items out of the house for staging pictures, etc...easy stuff). Then, somehow by them getting the word out or by connections they had a full ask offer before we every went live on MLS or had an open house. Once on, they pulled out all the stops when selling our house (Facebook, union tribune, craigslist, ads to realtors, had a fricken tour bus of realtors stop by at open house, etc.), within 48 hours we had 4 offers on our house for full ask (3 cash). Get this, Lauren had a baby the day of our open house...did that concern us???...oh no, Ron was there, looking all dapper and wined and dined (literally had gourmet ice cream sandwiches and the works out) everyone that walked in. Despite Lauren recovering she was still emailing me new offers and getting so excited for us and plotting with Ron how we were going to counter and negotiate...this is where it doesn't matter how much you could save on points with a different realtor...they ended up getting us $40,000 over what we originally wanted to get for our house that we would have been happy with from any other realtor. Possibly saving a point on realtor fees epically fails in comparison to what we made on going with Ron and Lauren!
Then, when it was time to buy again it was no question who we should hire. They fricken KILLED it! I could text Lauren/email her any hour of the day with a listing I wanted more info on and she'd get back to me with comments she saw on her end, previous inspection reports, whether she's shown ALREADY shown that house to previous clients or not and the feel the house had...we had a house we were dead set on within days of meticulous MLS searching. AGAIN, this is where it pays to hire an AMAZING team...they ended up getting us the house (which was turn key, gorgeous, spectacular, I could go on) for less than ask, negotiated repairs-HUGE negotiations (like replacing an entire roof) that I never thought possible but because of their experience they gave me confidence that we could make it happen. We had a smooth sailing 21 day escrow, although slightly stressful with the large issues we were asking the sellers to address (stressful on my end, they were cool as cucumbers-this ain't their first rodeo) but in the long run saved TENS of THOUSANDS of dollars! I know that I know if I would have went with any other realtor on my list there is absolutely no way things would have ran this smoothly. We wouldn't have saved this much money and the repairs needed would have been done out of the sellers pocket and not ours. When the inspection comes back that the roof is bad...what is your realtor going to say...(I was expecting Lauren would suggest we'd split it, or that it'd just get repaired in the certain damaged spots...NOPE...she said, the whole thing needs to be replaced otherwise we won't be moving forward...get em girl!). Tonight I'm sitting in my gorgeous new house so grateful to have this team because I truly believe this would not have been possible without them. I can't stress enough that you truly get the price of 2 for 1 with these guys and that it'd be worth it to even pay out more in points with them because they will save you money on so many other aspects of your buying/selling journey that it will be so worth it. I truly believe these 2 are the best in the business and owe my families happiness and pure joy in our new forever home to them! Happy house hunting! read more