Blog & NewsFinding My Dream Home – You Complete Me
I would guess that there are probably a lot of different reasons people decide to buy a house. A place of your own. Room to grow. Getting a dog. (That’s my main reason!)
If anyone has been following my posts lately you may recall that I recently began the process of buying a home. Before we can buy a home we have to find a house that we want. We knew we wanted a Realtor to help us with our search.
How, you may ask, did we select our real estate agent?
I want to say something totally epic and cliché here like ‘We didn’t pick him, he picked us’, but that would be a real stretch. We definitely picked him and he wasn’t the first agent we’d met and evaluated.
That’s right, essentially, we interviewed Realtors. I honestly think that everyone should do this. I don’t know if there’s some unwritten rule of etiquette that makes this awkward or inappropriate. If there is, someone please tell me. I think you need to make sure that the real estate agent you end up working with is someone you want to work with – not someone you feel obligated to work with because you happened to meet them first.
So, when Levi and I first considered buying a house, we started attending Open Houses. This was one of the easiest ways for us to not only see the inside of some houses in areas we liked but also to get to know different Realtors.
Flashback to five years ago. We had just moved back to our home town after 4 years in Saskatoon. We were in the process of selling our home there and were contemplating whether or not we wanted to buy again or just rent. We met Chris Holm at an open house he was hosting in an area I always wanted to live in. The home itself wasn’t what we were looking for but we instantly felt a connection with Chris.
He was friendly, came across as completely genuine, was around our age, and as an added bonus was using a Point2 Agent Listing Brochure for his open house. (He gets extra points in my book simply for that!)
It turned out that we decided to hold off on buying a home right then and Chris understood. He kept in touch, sent cards, sent gifts, and called and emailed us from time to time just to check in and see how we were doing.
Fast forward to 2009 and now we are more than ready to leave behind our smallish 1 bedroom apartment for a roomier home, with a yard (for a dog). When we were pre-approved for our mortgage the first person I emailed was Chris. We were so excited to finally be able to work with him. Judging by his reaction, he was equally as excited to be able to work with us.
Feeling comfortable with our Realtor means we gladly shared our goals with him and he knows exactly what we are looking for in a house and, more importantly, in a home.
Chris isn’t a high-pressure salesman and that was something very important to us. Personally, nothing scares me away more than a hard sell.
He didn’t forget about us after we first met him. It was more than just doing routine follow-up phone calls and emails. He’d call or email with a quick ‘Hello’ and see how we were doing.
Our Realtor understands our situation. I believe he identifies with where we are at in our lives because he isn’t much older than us. Yet, he has experience, he knows his stuff, and he isn’t afraid to get feedback from his Broker if more information is required. That type of genuine openness and transparency is what really sold us on using Chris. I want my Realtor to be frank and honest with me. I want to feel like my Realtor is serving my best interests. We really feel that with Chris.
So now that you know all about our Realtor, we can get to the super-fun stuff – house shopping!
We have already started to look at a few places and have more lined up. I can’t wait to share with you our impressions of some of the houses we looked at.
Until next time…
Real Estate Sales | mlust | February 22, 2009
consumers, home buying, Megan's Home Search, open houses, Real Estate, Realtor, transparency
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Why would you start your search by attending an open house? 87% of homebuyers start their search online. I would start a google search.
Good point Chris.
I should have been more clear. We did look online first – that’s how we knew where the open houses were being held by the agents we were interested in meeting in person. I feel that in some ways there’s no replacing the face-to-face element.