What we’ll do:

Our goal:

Everyone wants a short commute.  Everyone wants a great house in great condition in a great location.  No one has an unlimited budget.  Our job is to help you strike a balance between the kind of house you want, where you want to be, how far you’ll have to drive to work, the quality of schools you want for your kids, all within your available budget.  Is that a tricky thing to do?  Yes!  Can we get it done?  Yes!  We do it every day.

The nuts and bolts of what we’ll do for you as a buyer:

• Help you learn your way around the area.
• Help get you pre-qualify for a loan.
• Inundate you with searches for homes in all the areas that might interest you.
• Take you shopping anywhere you want to go.
• Advise you on highlights and shortcomings of the homes we find.
• Thoroughly analyze your favorite homes, similar homes and the surrounding area.
• Help you devise an offer and negotiation strategy.
• Prepare and explain contract documents.
• Negotiate the deal for you.
• Coordinate inspections.
• Help you navigate the loan and title work process.
• Help you find insurance.
• Get you through the deal to a smooth and on-time closing.
• Remain you friend and real estate advisor LONG after the deal is done.

How we’ll do it:

Education

Let’s get educated together before we head out to look for a home.  Whether you’re coming in from out of town or already local, we’ll start out by inundating you with lists of available homes in the areas you’re initially considering.  We’ll step outside that box as well to show you what else might be possible that might not yet have crossed your mind.  Location really influences value so we’ll look closer in and farther out to see how that affects the quality homes we can find within your available budget.

Budget and pre-qualification

We don’t care how much you spend!  Wow!  What?  Really?  YES!  Our commission on the transaction is such a small percentage of what you’re spending, it really doesn’t matter to us what the purchase price is as long as what we get the best possible price on the most desirable home we can find for the money you have to spend.  Having a satisfied client with a manageable monthly payment makes you happy and then you send us more business!  We don’t advertise at all.  Previous clients refer the vast majority of our clients to us.  It’s critical to us that we keep that wave going!

We can get so much done ahead of our first shopping trip together.  We’ll help you get pre-qualified with a great lender.  We’ll help you tailor your finances in preparation for a purchase.  We’ll even work with you a year or two before you’re ready to buy to help you get your credit in order and savings in place so that when you are ready to pounce, we’ll be ready to go.

Lenders care only about your ability to service the monthly mortgage on a house as a percentage of our total monthly budget.   In other words, you can look at your home purchase like a long-term lease, like for a car.  You’ll own it for while, care for it, maybe enhance it, then you’ll pass it along to the next owner, hopefully for more than you paid for it.  With this logic, the lower interest rates are, the less the payment will be and the more house you can qualify to buy.  Do you need to max out your qualification and buy as much home as you possibly can?  NO!  Don’t become house poor.  You’ll hate yourself (and us) each month when you write that mortgage payment.

We work with several great lenders who bring to the table the same level of professionalism that we provide.  We’ll help you find the best rate and terms for a loan, tailored to your financing needs.

Shopping

We want you to see everything you could possibly be interested in before we pounce on your favorite property.  Doesn’t it work that way with everything you shop for whether buying a new TV, a kitchen appliance, or a car?  Homes are such a big purchase; we MUST know that we’ve exhausted every avenue to find the best one.  We’ll sort through our lists of homes, prioritize them, make all the appointments and hit the pavement.  Homes have two parts you need to examine carefully.  You’ve got bones and lipstick.  We’ve seen horrible homes with bad architecture, shoddy construction, that have gorgeous kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, fresh paint and flooring, with designer light fixtures.  That’s all lipstick on bad bones.  Likewise, we’ve seen beautifully designed homes assembled by skilled craftsmen that have been neglected over the years and don’t show well at all.  A few modest updates and they will be gorgeous once again.  It’s our job to help you see past the surface, evaluate what a home really has and needs, so you can decide if it could be the dream home you’ve been seeking.  My background in architecture and custom home building gives me a unique perspective that you will find very useful.  We’ll help you see beyond what your home is to what it could become after you own it.

We’ve found it

We’ll reach a point where we think we’ve found your next home.  If we’re early on in our search, let’s keep looking just to be sure.  Maybe we did find the best home that first or second day but are we ready to pounce?  Here’s the beauty of continuing the search, at least for a bit.  After finding your favorite, every home we’ll see after that will either remind you that you’ve already found ‘the one’ or it will open your eyes to new possibilities and we’ll keep searching.  Remember, we want to know we’ve found the best home before we decide to write an offer.  We’ll examine our home of choice very closely, call it our pre-home inspection, research the immediate area, look at active, under contract, and sold homes to help us determine value.  Then we’ll devise an offer strategy and go for it.

Game time

I love the art of the deal.  I help friends and acquaintances buy cars all the time too.  I’m known as the ‘spending consultant.’  Negotiating a successful deal on a home is also like a good game of chess.  The best way to win is to think several moves ahead before you make each move.  Anticipating how the party on the other side will respond, and making a strong case for our side, is how you win in the end.  I’ve done this so many times over the years and, each time I navigate the process, I learn that much more about how to play the game.  In real estate, practice definitely makes perfect!

Got it!

Once we’re under contract, we’ll perform our inspections, further negotiate any corrections that need to be made, arrange for the appraisal, and get quotes for insurance, all while our lender and title company are processing our loan.  If we stay on top of our game right up front, it’s a smooth sail to closing.

Home shopping should be a fun and exciting time in your life.  We’ll do our best to make sure it is exactly that.