Pat is incredible. Sit down with him and after the first ten minutes you'll know you've found your real estate agent. I could just leave it at that and call it a day, because honestly that's the long and the short of it. However if you need more conviction, then by all means please read ahead.
First off Pat came to me as a recommendation from a trusted friend, because nobody these days makes important decisions without first asking around a bit. With it being a seller's market (average house sold within 6 days of listing), and us buyers, we wanted someone with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Someone who knew how to navigate and could put us in the most advantageous position possible. So Pat - with 30+ years experience in the area, and coming recommended - was an obvious candidate. After getting in contact with him, my wife and I went down to his office to chat about our house hunting needs, and as I mentioned previously, we knew we found our agent within the first ten minutes. This was our first time buying a house, and going into it we were a little nervous due to our admittedly high level of ignorance in the residential field. We explained our situation to Pat, and he immediately set us at ease by walking us through a crash course in residential real estate. We got an overview of how everything works, as well as a very honest assessment of the current market. There was no arrogance or condescension, only patience - he deftly answered every question we could throw at him. By the end of that first meeting (which took a couple hours due to all of our questions) we had a plan of attack, and had already booked our first tour. Not only that, but he also recommended we talk to a few mortgage brokers, two of which he connected me with. After talking to a total of three, we ended up choosing one of his recommendations over the guy we originally were going to work with; the level of quality and professionalism in his recommendations were noticeably superior.
To respect your time I'll speed things up a bit here. We had assembled a crack team between Pat and Jay at Cornerstone Lending, and after several tours we found a house that my wife and I both had fallen in love with; time to take action. After a pre-inspection the next day, we sat down with Pat immediately after and assembled our offer. He walked us through every detail, and explained the options available to us in order to make our offer as appealing and competitive as possible. The following Monday we received the thrilling news that the seller had picked our offer over other, higher offers - needless to say we were elated. I learned after the fact that Pat had called Jay, and the two of them had independently called the seller on our behalf - working behind the scenes to help us into an even better position.
The story doesn't end there however, and we encountered a slew of issues all stemming from the listing agents' side. There were several times after signing the initial agreement when it looked like the deal would fall apart. At every dramatic twist and turn, Pat was on the ball, constantly keeping us informed via a combination of email, text, and phone calls. In the end when the dust settled, we found ourselves as homeowners and successful investors, as the house was already valued over what we paid for it.
TL;DR version: No matter if this is your first or fifth house, make it easier on yourself and go with Pat, you will in no way regret it. read more