Of all the individuals who helped us purchase our home in Oakland, Josh stood out as a reliable, generous, and straight-up professional guy who clearly loves what he does and proved it to us at every opportunity.
In late 2014 my wife and decided that we'd finally outgrown our 500 sq ft apartment in Oakland and jumped into the highly competitive East Bay housing market. Through a twist of fate, I had known Josh from his previous job at the WateReuse Foundation, and when we moved back to California I was surprised to find that he had moved on to a career in real estate. We met for lunch to catch up, and I immediately knew that he was the right realtor for us. As you'd expect from somebody with a background in the sciences, Josh has great attention to detail, lateral thinking, and an objective point of view that are huge asset in the emotionally loaded real estate market. His confident and reassuring approach are the icing on the cake.
Josh was very supportive of our early attempts at checking out residential lots in Lafayette/Moraga/Walnut Creek, meeting us early on a weekend to check out one bad option after another, and was just as on the ball when we started looking at open houses in the Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, and other areas of the East Bay. He accompanied us on our first open house, pointing out key aspects of the house's structural, electrical, and other features; walking us through the disclosures; and offering insights into how each house fit into a quickly changing market. Once we felt sure about making an offer, Josh kept us up to date about every development on the sellers' end, even in the case of a nail-biter that went on well past 10 pm.
Josh's coup de grace was finding us a property that was being re-listed in the middle of the week, prior to it being put back on the market and opened up for walk-throughs the following weekend. The three of us checked it out that evening, and we placed an offer on it the following morning. After some of the longest hours of my life, our offer was accepted that afternoon. Miraculously, Josh was able to advocate for us to include a home inspection contingency with our offer (a situation which is, sadly, an exception in this market) and took the time to attend the home inspection. Thanks to this contingency, and due to the moderate amount of work the house will need in the coming years, we were able to successfully negotiate the price down to much closer to the asking price than would have been the case had the property gone back into an open bidding situation. Josh led us through this complicated, stressful process with endless patience, and we always felt like we were one of his top priorities.
In the end, not only did Josh find us a beautiful home that perfectly fits our needs, but he also did so with a lot of care and class. He has a passion for community development, from home buying and selling to local politics, and he's developed a network of mortgage loan agents, inspectors, and contractors that make working with him the total package when it comes to purchasing a home. On top of his qualifications, he was a pleasure to work with every step of the way. We really can't recommend Josh highly enough and will always be grateful for his dedication to helping us make our dream of home ownership come true. read more