Steve
Steve has been an excellent partner in our family's search for our dream home in Foster City. We came into this with a very negative experience with our realtor in our first home purchase and had a healthy amount of skepticism of a realtor which isn't uncommon. Well, Steve is uncommon! He is the best realtor in the business.
There are three stages in a home purchase where a realtor plays an important part. Steve scored top marks in each of those.
Discovery - In today's time, between Redfin and Zillow, home discovery isn't hard. Its pretty easy to find a listed home and its specifics and value and so on. Because we were very specific with our requirement, it reduced the pool of potential homes to a very very small number. Steve took this restriction as a challenge and went on the hunt for our dream home by talking to home owners who weren't really ready to list and ended up showing us several off-market opportunities. It was one of these that actually spurred us to move aggressively to buy the home we eventually did. His thoroughness in understanding our needs and acting on it sets him apart from others.
Offer and Negotiation - In some way, all realtors work for the seller; or the incentives to realtors on both sides of the table are geared to getting a deal done. Steve never made us feel that this was his primary motive in working with us. We extended offers on a couple of homes before we bought out home. Steve was very accurate in his prediction of the sale price in all cases. Steve is exceptional at reading the home, its marketability, the time of year and the number of interested parties and more, which are all very important signals that go into determining the selling price. This is the guy you want on your side! Now, while he was accurate predicting the final sale price of the home very well, he never pushed us to offer more than what we were comfortable with. Even when we offered less than his recommendation, Steve never demonstrated any frustration or loss in interest. He always kept us well informed and then carried through our asks completely. During our counter offer negotiation process, where you are so close to getting a deal done, Steve gave us very buyer friendly advice on how we should organize our asks, to ensure we came out with an fair and balanced outcome. This made us feel like we were always in control, which is an important part of the process for the buyer.
Closing - While underrated, the time after the offer is accepted to the time that you close is crucial, as it often impacts price and closing time, due to discovery of damage to the home and other contingencies. Steve was methodical in how he instructed us to waive contingencies in sequence. We never felt exposed during the process or risked any financial downside; we removed a contingency only when we were well in the clear. This again gave us a ton of confidence in Steve and his commitment to us. In his long tenure as a realtor, Steve has built a fantastic network of real estate professionals who are all A -Players! Everyone we met through Steve; contractors, inspectors, title agents and loan officers are people we would work again with. This made the closing process extremely easy and timely. This was the ONLY reason we could close in 30 days!
Overall, Steve has been instrumental in getting us into our dream home! We could have done it without him and we wouldn't never buy one without his help. I recommend Steve to anyone looking to buy a home.
Vijay Balan
Head of Global Publisher Sales, Facebook
Oct 31, 2016