When we decided to move back to Durham we knew we wanted to work with an agency that had strong connections to the local community. With that in mind, Urban Durham Realty was the obvious choice and we are so happy with them, in general, and our agent, Marcelle Thomas, in particular. It was not our first time buying a house, or buying long distance, but it was the first time buying a house in NC, with its unique real estate customs, and Marcelle walked us through it all with patience and grace. She listened carefully to what we were looking for, even as we knew that finding the full package - our unicorn house, we called it - was going to be a long shot. We came up for what we thought would be the first of several weekends house hunting and by the end of that first day had found our new home. Marcelle guided us through the offer, the contract, and the few hiccups with the out-of-state closing and was very responsive whenever we had questions and made sure to keep us up on where things stood at all times. Marcelle was an absolute delight to work and tour houses with. Highly recommended. read more

We've had two wonderful experiences working with Susan, both to buy and to sell. Susan's an amazing realtor - she's incredibly knowledgeable, responsive, thorough and professional AND she is deeply rooted in the Durham community. Durham is her home and her love for the community shines through in her commitment and care to her clients. Susan worked with us to to buy our house and a few years later to sell our previous house. I also recommended Susan to help my dad buy when he relocated to Durham, because she's the realtor we trust! read more

New year, new house! My husband and I have been wanting to get a little closer to downtown Durham -- the heart of all the action! We've loved calling Durham our home and it wasn't hard to choose it as the place we want to start nesting in. When we bought our first home a few years ago, we worked with Jessica Sadler who was then with Fonville Morissey. And we decided to continue our relationship with her at the new boutique realty firm that is Urban Durham. Honestly, if you are buying property in Durham I don't think you should even consider an alternative agency. Urban Durham is made up of real locals who are passionate about living in Durham and very involved with the community -- they've hosted artists during Durham Art Walk, held fundraisers for local NPO's, and are even friends of DPAC. Their knowledge and love for the area is second to none. When we made an offer, Jessica provided sound advice but did not overstep in our deliberations about price, etc. After the offer was accepted, she assisted in everything from inspections to soil tests, and helped dig info to answer our questions on historic home tax stuff and beyond. She even made herself available the morning of a piano recital in order to show the home once more when my dad was in town and hoping to see it! Looking for a seller's agent? I can recommend them on that front too. As Steve W mentions, they have several nice touches: twine-tied treats for potential buyers, a chicken hunt game that rewards finders with gift cards to Gugulhupf, a professional photographer. With Jessica's help, we got on offer on our house in just two weeks -- despite competing with an identical floor plan priced lower and on the same street! read more

Urban Durham Realty - Real Estate Agents Near Me - Durham, North Carolina

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I had great experience buying a home with Shari Williams! - It was my first time buying a house, so I asked her millions of questions. She was very patient and explained every step very thoroughly until I was comfortable enough to do it. - She took care of so many things. Finding similar real estates to check if the asking price is reasonable, creating all the documents, finding inspectors, getting quotes and such. - I bought the place while living in California. Shari made it very easy for me by going to showings and showing the place to me on FaceTime, going to the closing and such. I only flew there once to see the place before closing, but it was because I wanted to. She made the process of buying a house so easy that I didn't even had to be in the state! She's extremely helpful and friendly and I'd definitely recommend her! read more

Still love these guys. They helped us sell our house this summer, and it was such an easy experience (sold in a week!!). If you live in Durham, these are the people you want to work with, for sure. read more

We've had a great experience working with Eila from Urban Durham Realty, she is very professional, knows the market well, she is kind and patient, also very communicative and reliable, while searching for a house, the time line matters and we were very pleased how fast she responded to us, made sure everything is handled on time, she walked us through the process from the beginning till the end, dedicated to our dream to get our house. We felt we have a partner and a friend when working with Eila. read more

I worked with Eila Voloshen to sell a house and buy a house. She was fabulous in both processes, and found and helped me buy my dream house. She knows her stuff, and was highly responsive, reliable, and supportive throughout the process and beyond. She also has an excellent sense of style, knows the area, and has strong relationships with great service providers. I highly recommend her and her wonderful team. read more

We love Urban Durham Realty. In particular I would highlight our experience with Susan Herst who first worked with us when we moved to the area several years ago. Susan spent long days with my husband and me since we were only here for a 4-day stretch to find a house. We left without finding a home but she doggedly continued to look at homes on our behalf, ultimately encouraging us long-distance to consider the home we now live in which was perfect for us. More recently we thought about downsizing. Susan took us to see many homes and listened to our needs and reasons for considering moving. She made the unselfish recommendation that staying might be the best option for us and after consideration we completely agreed. Susan studies her clients and learns what matters most to you and works to find something that's the right plan and fit for the individuals. She has our best interests in mind. In addition, we regularly refer to the Urban Durham website for the "People we love" recommendations. These references are invaluable and none of them have disappointed us. It is a well appreciated service. read more

I love Urban Durham Realty, specifically Shari Williams. She has really put in a lot of man-hours, showing us homes in Durham (which is a very hot market). She never complained and ultimately, found a house that we somehow overlooked, but is absolutely perfect for us. We recommend! read more

Susan H worked with my husband and me to help us find our home. We found her to be a pleasure to work with and appreciated her insight, perspective and patience. She has an eye for assessing the true bones of a house, inside and out, which is exactly what we needed. read more

Wow. What can I even say about Susan Herst that will do justice to the essential role she played in our newfound happiness? We were first time home buyers, so I can't really say I have much experience with other realtors (except that guy who swindled me into that awful apartment with no windows in Brooklyn), but I am convinced that without the level of dedication and professionalism that Susan demonstrated, I would not be typing this review from the comfort of my new living room. We came to Urban Durham Realty and Susan after a referral from friend, having looked at places online and not knowing much about the home-buying process (they don't teach you this stuff in liberal arts school). Susan walked us through the entire process from start to finish and was patient in re-explaining time and time again. I can't speak for the other realtors at Urban Durham, except to say that one of them was having a party for her clients one day that we stopped by, and we got to eat some of the cupcakes. Which is pretty rad. Susan is on the ball. We would email her at all hours and she would get us appointments as soon as the next day (sometimes even within the hour). We were looking for a house with a little charm that we could fix up a bit but would be move-in ready. On an extremely tight budget. With a newborn. But Susan made it all happen. Our fearless realtor took us to a number of houses, braving some pretty sketchy neighborhoods. We moved down here from Brooklyn, so we were ready to rough it a bit. When we looked at nasty old homes that had been boarded up Susan kept a positive attitude, laughed, and told us to bring a flashlight. She was never condescending and when we started to get overwhelmed she asked us questions to help steer us in the right direction ("How about the street?" or "Do you see yourself baking pies in this kitchen?" or "How would this house rank in comparison to the others we've looked at?") She kept our baby in mind, looking for kids biking or playing (or for people drinking 40s in their front yards). It really felt as though she were looking out for us the way she would look out for her own kids (no, she's not that old, we're just that young). When we did put an offer down, working with Susan was like having a personal assistant. She was on top of every step in the process, making sure we got everything in on time, helping us time all the inspections and even making some appointments for us. She and Urban Durham even had a list of recommended people from lawyers to plumbers to pest control people. This was a really tricky process, there were a couple of times when we were fairly certain the deal would fall through. And I'm pretty sure we ran into far much more difficulties than a normal home purchase, but Susan didn't let it show, she made it look like a walk in the park. Now we have a wonderful home right near Downtown Durham that has everything we wanted and more. Someone give this lady an award- I didn't think it was possible! And as our friends start looking for their own places we will be sure to refer them to Urban Durham. So go there! read more

If your going to buy a house or an apartment in the Durham area please contact URBAN DURHAM REALTY like I did. The experience was the best! I was able to find a new apartment in the downtown part of Durham thanks to Courtney James. I would highly recommend this company! read more

Great agency! Extremely knowledgeable and very friendly. They go beyond the downtown area of Durham, as well. We implemented their staging advice and sold our house in two weeks in southwest Durham. I especially liked their marketing efforts and ideas, with unique games to engage the buyers such as "Chicken Chase." They also seem to do a lot of local support and are intertwined with many other local businesses. A highly professional and up-and-coming agency, to be sure. I am very pleased with our agent from both a selling and buying perspective. read more

Urban Durham Realty makes buying or selling a home as easy as pie. We first met Mary Hartzell at Urban Durham Realty when we moved to Durham in 2012 and started looking for a house. I wanted to receive listings to start seeing what was available and then meet with the agent once we had seen something suitable to us. Several brokerages refused to send listings or even begin discussing a purchase without an in person meeting in their office, which I believe to be a waste of time. I told the person who answered the phone what I was looking for with an agent and they told me that wouldn't be a problem and someone would get right back to me. I heard from Mary soon there after. We worked with Mary for a few months until we bought in May of 2012. Mary is well known around town and very active in the community so even though we didn't start looking at new properties for several years we maintained a relationship with Mary the whole time we were in Durham. Our second house hunting foray in Durham was most of 2017 as we tried to find a home better suited to our growing family. While we didn't know what we wanted or needed when we started looking again Mary was very patient and always had the answer to any question near instantaneously. We weren't ever able to find anything that worked, but ended up having any opportunity to move to a new location and of course we went with Mary. She was very helpful with preparing the house for showings and having things photographed to make an excellent listing. If we ever needed realty services in the triangle area again we would definitely go back to Mary Hartzell and Urban Durham Realty. read more

I almost never leave reviews because reviewing a person makes me uncomfortable but I feel compelled to write one because of the spectacular realtor Mary Hartzell is. I entered the home buying process anxious about the state of the market and in need of consult, guidance, and patience. Mary went above and beyond what I expected in every single way. She was knowledgeable about all steps of the process, listened to my needs in a home and my priorities, was attentive and responsive, and provided direct and candid advice. read more

My five stars are for Urban Durham and also specifically for Susan Herst, who made my homebuying experience fabulous! Yeah, so, I waited until I was in my mid 40s to buy a house. What can I say - I was ok with renting until then. I chose to return to Durham and wanted a realtor that knows the city in and out. Susan was that person. I needed a lot of guidance through the process, particularly post offer, and she handled it all. Including my incessant questions, and my worried emails when I was convinced that something had gone wrong (it hadn't...I was clueless). Totally unflappable and handled it all. Susan REALLY knows Durham. So on top of being a terrific realtor, she's a wealth of knowledge about the city itself - very helpful for someone relocating from elsewhere. I got an incredible deal on my house and really trusted Susan's guidance. Someday when I go to sell I'll only work with Urban Durham and hopefully Susan. read more

This review is for Susan Herst. My wife and I hired Susan to help us purchase a home last year and were quite dissatisfied with the job she did for us. I don't want to go into great detail about every issue we had with Susan. These were the main concerns: 1. Susan was not terribly responsive to our questions and/or concerns. On two occasions, I asked Susan the same question three different times over a two-week period before receiving a response. That seems like an unreasonable amount of time to wait for a question to be answered. 2. Susan was not all that helpful. Being new to the area, we asked Susan shortly after meeting her if she could drive us through some of the neighborhoods in our desired area of Durham and give us some information about them. Her reply was to read about the places online and drive to them ourselves. Ok, that's an option-- yes. But I have read tons of reviews of many agents and a lot of them do, in fact, drive their clients around to a handful of neighborhoods if the clients are completely unfamiliar with the area, as we were. Susan seemed uninterested in doing that. We also asked her to tell us a bit about the neighborhood we had just viewed a house in, and she told us to come back after dark and get a feel for it ourselves. She had no information about the area to share with us. 3. The biggest disappointment with Susan is that she did not appear to have our backs during a particular situation during the buying process. To be brief, my wife and I discovered what looked like a material misrepresentation by the sellers. When I brought it to Susan's attention, she said that if the house was, in fact, misrepresented in the way that it appeared, it would be a "very big deal" and that we would have a great deal of leverage to negotiate a price reduction. Great, sounds good. Fast forward to a few days later when we confirmed that yes, the house had been misrepresented by the sellers, and Susan's tone changed. Suddenly, according to Susan, we should not expect a price reduction and don't have a lot of leverage to ask for one. Seriously?! We ended up resolving the misrepresentation with the sellers without needing a price reduction, which was good because I doubt Susan would have gotten one for us after she turned pessimistic about the issue. That was really disappointing. There were a few other minor annoyances, but they are not worth mentioning here. Overall, Susan was not all that helpful to us, seemed disorganized at times when we needed her to know what was going on, and was generally disappointing to work with. On the positive side, Susan seems like a nice person. Then again, the vast majority of people are, right? And most would want a lot more than "nice" from their agent. I have talked to enough friends and family members who have bought a house in the past couple years to know an exceptional agent from a mediocre one. Susan, regrettably, was just mediocre in our experience with her. We will look for someone exceptional next time around. I recommend you do the same. read more

What a cute little place recommended by a local business owner. Note: this place is for buying or selling, not for rental. Nevertheless, the lady inside was more then happy to help refer me to places she thought would be worth trying out for rental or rental companies she knew. She took the time to help me out, even though it wasn't part of her job. Friendly service here makes me consider them if I ever think of buying a place. read more

Our home buying experience was smooth and as little stress as possible in a somewhat stressful scenario. We were lucky enough to have two agents helping us- Brandon and Mariana. Both were great communicators, friendly, smart and very tech savvy. Brandon would show up to inspections with his iPhone, pulling up whatever relevant document we needed to view at that moment. Their response time to our emails, texts, calls were super quick. We ultimately ended up with the house we wanted at a price we could afford. Can't be that! And the experience of working with Urban Durham made it an efficient and easy process. They really did everything for us and explained every little ridiculous detail of every question I could think to ask. And never once did I feel like they were frustrated with my lack of knowledge. Even after the sale, they continue to be a resource for us as we have additional questions or need help in different areas. They didn't just stop working when the sale was final. Their website of preferred vendors has been an incredible resource for us. And the cherry on top was that part of the commission went to a local non-profit of our choice. Urban Durham is a really progressive, smart, solid team over there. Highly recommend them! read more

Terra Claire VanBeek helped my husband and I find our first home in Durham. She was a pleasure to work with throughout our search, which took nearly a year, off and on. As first-time buyers, Terra was super patient with us and all of our questions about the process. She helped us navigate changing restrictions due to COVID and an extremely competitive market. She was very thorough during showings and we felt confident trusting her guidance. I appreciated that she stayed in regular contact with us throughout the entire process and had a solid referral for any work we needed. I would recommend Terra to anyone I know looking for a house in the area! read more

I worked with Marcelle at Urban Durham. She is dedicated, knowledgeable, and definitely went above and beyond for our very short house-hunting window. From the beginning of the process through to closing and afterwards, Marcelle was responsive to our requests, and was able to help guide us through the entire project. She was professional throughout, and I would highly recommend working with Marcelle on buying homes in Durham. read more

Just closed on my house sale and could not be happier with the result. I moved across the country before putting my house up, but my UBD realtor, the outstanding Mariana Byrd, made the whole thing as smooth as silk. If you are going to buy or sell real estate in Durham, contact Mariana immediately. read more

We worked with Susan Herst at Urban Durham to purchase a second home in Durham that we could rent to our daughter who was moving there and we were very happy with the experience. Susan helped us on short notice with tight time constraints and a limited budget and did a great job of helping us find and close on a property that fit our needs. She was unflappable despite having to respond to three of us being involved in the search process, and she brought considerable knowledge of the Durham neighborhoods, the quirks of older homes, and the purchase process to the table. Susan remained objective when assessing properties that we visited, but was able to be a strong advocate for us when it came to negotiations and getting things done. When there was one last house we wanted to see the day we were leaving town, Susan was able to get the sellers' agent to let us see the house before it was available for showings. When it came time for the house inspection, Susan was there through it all, and she was able to call on contractors that day who could help us more fully assess and estimate some repairs that were needed on the house, and then she worked with us to negotiate those items with the sellers. Throughout it all, Susan was very professional and her advice was always reasonable while looking out for our interests. We never had a feeling of being pressured by Susan so she could just get a sale. In fact, at one point when we thought we might not find a home that we wanted to buy, Susan gave us some suggestions for rental possibilities in the area in case we decided not to buy a home. We are happy to say that we did end up purchasing a home and our thanks go out to Susan for all her hard work in making it happen! read more

Susan Herst was actually the realtor for the sellers, however she worked equally as hard for us. Many of our request were beyond the norm and yet she was responsive. Customer service was over the top. I highly recommend using this firm and we certainly will seek out Susan when we have future needs. Michael Lyon read more

Love love love UDR! And especially Kelly Garcia and Melissa Winters! Thanks also to Mariana assisting with the paperwork! Y'all rock!

I would award Kelly Garcia at Urban Durham 10 stars out of 5 if that was possible. I have never worked with anyone in any industry who is more dedicated to customer satisfaction. My case was a challenge from the get go but she never let on that she was frustrated and she never lost hope. I work about an hour and a half from where we would be moving to which meant I was only able to view properties on weekends. Kelly was able to line the appointments up to maximize the number of places we could visit in a day. It took 3 weekends of house hunting and viewing before we decided on the house I'm in now. The frustration came about as I was working with Quicken loans to get my mortgage and they kept asking for strange documentation and every time a document is submitted, they need 72 hrs to process. This would be fine if they started asking for those documents a few weeks before closing but they waited until the last days so despite my prompt response, we had to reschedule twice. Kelly was constantly calling them and emailing for asking for clarifications and updates. Things got so bad that she even suggested we considered rentals and provided us with some rentals around the area I was looking for. If we had gone with rentals, she would not have received any commission yet she showed the same amount of dedication to help us regardless. Eventually, I decided to drop Quicken Loans and go with a real estate broker she suggested. My wife was due in 3 weeks and we had to close before the baby arrives. The mortgage broker she suggested go us to help us closed in 20 days. Kelly worked with the sellers to allow us to "rent" the house from them till closing which meant that we were able to move in earlier and prepare the house for the baby. That helped tremendously as my daughter was born exactly one week after we closed. Getting 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks to prepare the house for the baby was a much needed blessing after the fracas we had to go through with Quicken Loans. I am afraid that Kelly Garcia as well as Urban Durham has raised the bar so high that if I ever have to sell or purchase a home using some other agent, I will be disappointed. read more

Made an appointment for a viewing with Mary Rae Hunter; got up at 6AM on a Sunday and drove 3 hours from Charlotte to see a house. 15 minutes after our scheduled meeting time, she finally answered the phone, having completely forgotten. Instead of owning up to her mistake, she tried to put us off of our interest in the property, claiming that there were 'multiple high offers' on the property already, implying that we didn't need to see it anyways. I work in real estate lending, and have never seen such unprofessional conduct. Keeping a calendar? Not difficult. The entire experience left me put-off in a way that I rarely am. I'm not happy writing negative reviews, but this realtor should not be working in real estate, nor should she be representing what appears to be an otherwise-solid agency. read more

There is no one quite like Courtney James! She is incredibly knowledgeable, professional and is easy to work with. She sets the standard by which all other realtors should strive for. If you are thinking of selling or buying a house, she is the person to contact. read more

I would not be alive to write this review if not for UDR. Seriously. They made the house selling process as easy as it could possibly be. I can't imagine surviving it all if not for them! As a working mama with 2 small kids, I had very little time to deal with the selling. Andrea Kubachko and Steve Artabane were amazing from start to finish. They helped us: decide on a plan for upgrades and improvements, hire contractors, select finishes, manage contractors, track timelines, execute everything, decorate, etc etc. I could NOT have done all that. Andrea was at the house EVERY DAY checking up on progress and contractors. She was amazing. She has a great design sense and surely helped us get top dollar. Steve had great instincts about repairs and what we should prioritize. They both helped us navigate the negotiations. They are pros! I loved working with them. I recommend them completely and enthusiastically, with zero reservation. If you have a house to sell, call them! And I'd bet they are great as buyer's agents too. read more