I wish I could say that I enjoyed working with this company but I did not. First, they charge you a $250 realtor's transaction fee, which they sneak into a contract that you sign and do not explicitly explain or otherwise point out to you. Yes, this is on top of their commission (which my agent didn't really earn as I chose the house myself and came to him saying "I want to buy this house"). While these fees are becoming more and more common, there are *many* realtors who don't charge then to the buyer and unless you feel so strongly you need to work with this company, which I don't recommend even if there was no fee, you should find another one of the hundreds of agents in the Cleveland area.
My agent was Brian, and to skip to the point he made several inappropriate comments about my body and maybe one lewd suggestion(?) while we were in house alone together when I was looking to buy it. When I brought this up and asked for an apology he said he was "sorry if I was offended" or something to that effect...which isn't an apology. I'm taking the time to write and share this because I want to make sure another woman doesn't have this experience with Brian. What is with men who think that they can comment on a woman's body? It's so highly inappropriate and uncomfortable.
Otherwise, even if you are a man, I don't recommend Brian. When I asked him if he could hear the dogs barking in the backyard when we were in the house (which you clearly can) he said no...aka a liar who just wants a sale because he lost his other job. Also, I contacted him asking about the final walkthrough time and him getting that set up with the seller's agent, and he said he hadn't thought that was necessary so he hadn't arranged one. This is unheard of, this isn't the agent's call as to whether or not there should be a final walkthrough, it's a right of the buyer and up to the buyer. I then asked why he thought that and if he had followed up with the seller's agent to make sure that the sellers fixed the one thing I had asked for and he said he didn't. He then did follow up, but it seems very silly he was discouraging me from a final walkthrough and wasn't staying in contact with the other agent. This was one of the many things I had to stay on top of for him to do, even though he had it pretty easy in my case as I had a 20% traditional loan offer and again, had already picked out the house. So he didn't need to do much to "earn" his commission but never really did anything without me having to follow-up. There are many similar type things that happened.
Finally, this agency recommends a lender that is horrible (mostly one star reviews on Yelp) and they did an awful job. Instead of helping me with the lender he recommended when the lender was doing incorrect things (e.g. added points without even telling me, got the earnest wrong in the contract by $1000), he was always making excuses for the lender by saying they were busy right now with low interest rates and everyone wanting to refinance. This was less than helpful and a bit unprofessional when these were basic, and pretty serious, mistakes the lender was making. It felt like the good ol boy club where they were both making excuses for each other instead of actually just doing their jobs. Needless to say, although I got the house, the whole process was a lot more stressful, painful, and quite frankly more inappropriate than it needed to be. If I didn't have my mother for guidance to know what Brian *should* be doing and providing me with I would have been very lost and missing important things about the biggest purchase of my life. I strongly urge you to pass. read more