My wife and I had moved to Long Beach a year ago for a new job opportunity, so we decided to rent for a year to see if we liked it here in SoCal. After renting a home for a year, our lease was up and we decided we were going to make the move to SoCal permanent by purchasing a house out here. Since we were new to the area, we did not have any contacts for a good realtor in the area. We interviewed and spoke with multiple real estate agents and then found Jack at Beach City Properties online. Although we were skeptical about finding our realtor online, we decided to meet with Jack in person to discuss our situation. After considering all of the realtors we met, we decided to go forward with Jack as our buying agent. In retrospect, we definitely do not regret this decision!
The housing market in our search area was very competitive at the time, and we were very picky as to what we wanted, so we were okay with holding out for what we wanted. The first house we found that met all of our requirements turned out to have 68 (not a typo) offers, so like I said, it was a very competitive market! Then, a short time later, on a Tuesday, a new house got listed in our top neighborhood area and it was listed at a price that seemed on the low side, so we didn't know if the sellers were looking to set up a bidding war. As soon as that listing came up, Jack contacted us immediately and we went to look at it that afternoon. It turned out we were the very first people to view the property. We loved the place! It had more than everything we wanted and was even larger than what we expected to afford! Jack quickly got everything in order, and we decided to put an offer on the house the very next day. Jack suggested that we should present the offer in person, "old school style," so we agreed and met with the sellers and their agent. So, we actually got a first hand view of his offer presentation and negotiating skills...he managed to get the deal done on the spot WITHOUT a counter-offer on the initial price we offered. Pretty impressive! It turned out that there were 6 people scheduled to look at the place later that day, and probably many more would have come in the next few days, so we beat any others to the deal and avoided any bidding wars!!
Throughout the remainder of the escrow and closing process, Jack was always available to answer questions and get things done for us in a timely manner. He even took time to come to the closing signing for us, to make sure all the numbers and everything looked good. We shopped around with financing lenders and insurance, and Jack's referrals always turned out to have the best deals for us too!
Basically, he got us in to look at the house first, he got our offer in first, and we truly believe that if we had not chosen Jack as our realtor, we wouldn't have gotten this house (bigger and better than we expected, in our top neighborhood, and at a price less than what we expected)!! We couldn't have been happier with the whole process of working with him!!
Thanks again, Jack!
- Chris & Nancy (and little Allison too) read more