Laura Scheper from Anne Lafferty was the real estate agent my husband and I used to sell our house. We wanted to use someone local, who really knew the area so would know the worth of not just the house and property but the area. Anne Lafferty's office did not come up online during our initial search for a local real estate agent so we first tried going with a different one. That first one gave us a suggested asking price that it turned out was off by about a hundred thousand dollars. Also, it took days for them to return any phone call or text. Laura Scheper responded the first day I contacted the Anne Lafferty office. After that she gave us several ways to contact her, and always responded promptly. (At one point she was on vacation in a different country and made a point of contacting US to keep us updated and make sure we didn't need anything!)
The initial tour of the house and property was exceptionally thorough. Laura walked through and examined almost every inch of what we owned - from stooping through our crawlspace to walking our trails. She told us how we could easily solve a problem that we thought would bring the value of the house way down, and immediately had in mind some of the positive aspects of our house and property to feature in real estate website listings. She also trusted our judgment and used some language and photos we had come up with.
She placed these listings on several sites covering a wide area and immediately starting texting us with questions from prospective buyers - which is why we could tell she would be good not just for sellers but for buyers as well. Any question a prospective buyer had she did not guess at but made sure she got the correct response from us - from the exact age of our roof to what kind of fish were in our pond. She also seemed to know a lot about financing, because for several of the offers she worked out ways for the prospective buyers to afford and pay for the house that we never would have thought of. (One of the offers containing what we thought was an innovative way to pay was the one we accepted.) She even knew about certain real estate laws that would pertain only to houses constructed like ours built in the time period when ours was built. Very impressive.
All the paperwork we had to agree to and sign told us how honest and transparent she and her office were to both sellers and buyers. A couple of the concepts we did not understand and she patiently explained them to us. What really and truly made her stand out in our heads, though, was the amount of time and effort she put in - well beyond anything expected. By the time we were ready to sell the house we had already been out of it and far away for two years. The air in it was stale, and she made the trip there several times to open the windows and turn on fans to get air circulating. When I thought there was something left behind that I wanted, she went there searching for it and found it. She let in various repairmen and then stopped in regularly to see how things were going and report to us. Although I can't imagine these chores were highlights of her day, she would always report to us in the most cheerful tones, as though it was a pleasure for her to see the progress and to chat with us.
Speaking of chatting, our only warning to you would be that you might have to get used to her way of talking. It's a touch fast, a touch excitable - not your average business voice, in our opinion. On meeting her we wondered if she would have the skill and knowledge to do the best job possible. Time and again she proved that she most certainly does, and we got to love her friendly, vivacious way of talking. At this point we recommend her with absolutely zero reservations and the highest level of respect. read more
