We met Sunny and David via a recommendation from a family friend. They are a unique duo with different personalities and different expertise that work so well together. 🙂 Sunny is a realtor who is also an attorney who has a great sense of the market and great people skills. David comes with longer experience and a calm demeanor with the additional benefit of knowing a lot about home renovation and even building houses. And they both seem to have almost infinite energy and attention to detail.
We have dealt with a few realtors in the past but their approach was completely different. When we first met them last summer, they asked us to come in for an orientation. An orientation to buy a house?, I thought. 🙂 So we went in, and both of them sat with us for about five hours, covering everything about the process, the market, and even some of the early tasting of the closing process. It helped us a lot as we had a much clearer picture of what to expect going forward.
Then, we kind of stopped home search for the rest of the year. They were regularly checking in and asking how we are doing, without being pushy at all. Towards the end of 2016, we again decided to buy. Then the search began. They took us on a “grand tour” one day. We previously gave them the things we look for in a home and they came up with about ten houses on the market at the time, to show us the areas, price ranges, and the market condition but also to learn about us to really figure out what we were looking for. That helped immensely since it helped me to figure out what I want more clearly, and also see that my wife and I want vastly different things in a home. 🙂 After that, we started going to open houses on weekends (without them), while they were sending us email reports about the houses they looked at. The grand tour really helped us here as we had a good set of reference points to evaluate each house.
One day we met up to look at a few houses together, then stopped by a potential one that just lowered the price. We were still undecided but Sunny recommended giving it another consideration as the house seems to match what we have been looking for and also seems to be underpriced compared to the market. So we went ahead with the offer and thanks to Sunny and David working late into a Sunday evening, we were able to make a preemptive offer before the day ended and close the deal. It might be a bit too early to tell but so far it looks like we got a great bargain thanks to their timely advice to avoid a potential bidding war, looking at comps in nearby areas.
Throughout the process, they have been amazingly responsive and always had all the right information such as the list of contractors and specialists we would need, and all kinds of house repair and maintenance advice. We only had three days between the closing date and the move-out date from our previous place but the house needed fumigation treatment. Sunny and David even arranged that to happen, getting the bids and managing the work before closing, so that we could move in just in time. 🙂
If you are looking to buy in the bay area, please give them a call. You will not be disappointed.