Rita is the best agent we ever met in our first time home buy. We spent two months together and went through a couple of offers, finally got your dream host settled. I do not need to say much how professional she is like other reviewers, the patience is what she impresses me most when I feel frustrated been bid out. She is not the kind of the person prefers to buy quick and earn quick, she would like to know what you really want first. According to our budget and needs, she had provided valuable recommendations when we do visiting house and review the disclosures. Thank you Rita, we finally got our house under the budget without any compromise on our original goal. Our family enjoys the house so much! We would love to recommend Rita to any new/veteran home buyers. read more

Highly recommend Rita. Rita stands out in the following areas: Professionalism: High knowledge of the real estate transaction process, will look out for your interests at every step. Good communication and coordination among all parties involved (and enthusiastically does this by default without you asking). Patience: Does not pressure you into anything you don't want. In fact, quite the opposite, Rita ensures you are 100% satisfied with the decisions you make. Rita is also patient and respectful towards other real estate agents, which is a huge deal as she is exemplary of the representation you would want in front of others. (Most of all) Customer 1st! : Rita spends a great deal of time understanding exactly what it is you want and need in real estate, and caters her service for your needs. She also shares her wealth of knowledge with you, so you have a better idea of the details in real estate (which I would have missed without Rita's help). read more

We strongly recommend Rita when you need an excellent listing agent! We have never met an agent so professional and efficient! We are the first-time home seller. It was quite emotional to sell the house that we had lots of good memories in it. When my wife and I decided to sell our house, I've never expected the transaction could be so smooth and stress-less. We were mentally prepared for a long and complicated process and we also knew that to choose a good listing agent would be most important. We found Rita on Yelp and she came to meet with us twice before we signed our listing agreement because she advised us to keep the house instead of selling it at our first 3-hours meeting. It was very helpful after she provided stats and reasons to keep the house. She gave us a much clearer picture in thinking of ALL options that we never thought of. After we decided to list the house, Rita immediately gave us the active and sold comps as well as the suggested to-do list. Her guidance and market information was very clear and helpful in assisting our decision-making and preparation. We have demanding jobs and kids so we rely on Rita to do most preparations. She always gave us at least 2 quotes for all jobs. It only took her 2 weeks to prep the house and listed on MLS for open house with NOT a single day delay. We went to the open house to meet with old neighbors so we got to watch how Rita interactive with visitors. She was professional, pleasant, well-prepared, energetic, and patiently answered every single question during open house. We really appreciate her hard-working and caring for our listing. She helped us to sell the house at the price that both us and buyers were mutually happy. Above all, we didn't loose sleep from day one until we close escrow. I still cannot believe the whole process was so smooth. We enjoyed the most in working with Rita was she always responded to our questions and requests either immediately or within an hour. It eased our mind so much! Thank you, Rita, well done!! read more

We just moved from Chicago to the Bay Area and I am pregnant, so we need to settle down ASAP. As the first time buyer, Rita really helps us a lot to find a dream house in three weeks. She was referred by one of our best friend who purchased his home with Rita also. I would highly recommend her to anyone expecting to purchase properties! * Rita is professional and very experienced. She teaches her customers "Real Estate 101" for three hours at the first meeting to let you get the basic understanding of house market in North California. She would teach you how to judge a house when you visit houses with her, and also write the best "clean" offer for you. * Rita is responsible and hard-working. When we lost our first bid, we were so worried that would like to buy a house, which has stayed in the market for 2 months. Rita persuaded us to think more about it and told us that house might be overvalued. Finally, she helped us to find and win the dream house among 12 offers. For our each bid, she prepared our introduction with pictures and presented our offer to the seller agent in person. She also spent hours to go through all the disclosure reports with us, explain all the materials to us and answer our questions patiently. With her help, we could feel confident on our each decision. * Moreover, Rita gives us lots of advices in remodeling, and recommend us the lawyer, accountant, contractor and even my maternity matron, which are much beyond the job of the agent. She views us as her friend and takes care of us from start to finish. Thank you, Rita, and hope this review could help more people to find their dream houses in the next year. read more

This rave review for Rita is long overdue! I'll start by saying I would not hesitate to recommend any one of my friends and family to Rita, she is really just that amazing. She manages to make home buying an educational and fun experience and by the time you end up with "the one" you are confident you made all the right decisions along the way. I would say the most important part of choosing a real estate is finding one that you trust and with Rita that is trustworthy 100%. She will give you her honest opinion on every property you see, she will not let you even THINK of putting in an offer until you are ready and she is willing to work with you for months and months until you find that perfect home. There is absolutely NO pressure...and in a world with pressure closing in from every direction, this is a big deal. Rita starts everyone off with "Real Estate 101" to teach you the basics of buying a home and then follows it up with 102 looking at houses every weekend and learning what to look for. I've been looking at open houses all my life (my mother is an advid amateur real estate fan) and I thought I knew what to look for but Rita opened my eyes to so many more things. When we were finally ready to put in an offer Rita invited us into her home, fed us and spent hours going over the disclosure reports. I have never heard of any real estate agent doing this! As a result I knew so much more about what we were getting ourselves into. When we did not get that house she confidently said "that one wasn't the one, you will find the one" and lo and behold, her words came true! Even after we purchased our home she recommended a reliable roofer and contractor for us to work with and when we had our first home catastrophe (medium level phew) she was the first one we called for advice! If you are looking to buy a home there is no doubt that Rita is the one for the job. And Rita if you are reading this, don't worry, you will DEFINITELY be invited to our house warming. Thank you for everything!!!! read more

My wife and I are very lucky to have Rita as our agent for buying our first home. * Rita is very smart and patient: looking back, I could tell Rita sent us to open houses just so that my wife and I understood the market. She never rushed us. She simply showed us what we can get with our money, and we learned much from Rita what the trade-offs are. * Rita is genuine: we could feel in our heart that Rita genuinely looks out for our interest. Rita would say NO when my wife and I want to offer because she doesn't think the house is in good enough condition. * Rita is very experienced: Rita knows what it takes to close, and she can close transactions with grace. Agents on the other side of the table like to work with her because they know they can trust Rita's professionalism. On the flip side, she knows what houses to go after and what not to. This isn't just about the house, but also about the chance of getting them. She is very good at assessing the outcome of the "battles" and can make the whole process feel less stressful by preparing you mentally so that you are just as spirited for the next attempt. The search ain't easy, but with Rita you know you will get your dream house eventually. * Rita would customize the search for you. It's not just your list of ideals. It's about your current needs and future plans. It's a holistic approach to life. A house is such an important decision. Elements such as work, family, kids, comfort, lifestyle, etc all play an important part. Sometimes even us the buyers haven't sorted it through, or simply don't realize. Rita may seem to talk a lot, but listen to her carefully. She may be repeating things that you need to think over. And she would wait until she is sure that you got it all sorted out in your head and between your partner. Did I mention I personally know 4 other buyers who used Rita's service? Rita is gooooood. :) Oh, and the after-sale service is just as good too. You can ping her almost anything house related; and she has a huge network of other associated professionals, all of whom are wonderful people that make one's life happier and easier. read more

My husband and I are so incredibly happy that we went with Rita as our real estate agent for our home buying needs. I couldn't sing her praises louder and highly recommend her to anyone looking to buy a home! The first differentiating quality that Rita has versus other agents is her level of trustworthiness, honesty, and care. It was very clear that there were many times where my husband and I were ready to put in offers to several houses that looked great, but Rita always took the time to make sure we understood the risks, read through each disclosure and inspection report thoroughly with us (rare for an agent!), and always talked us through the process. I can imagine where several money-hungry agents would simply push their clients to submit an offer ASAP! Once you work with Rita, it's very evident that she will treat you like family, and even makes you feel like you're the only client she has. (which is highly untrue! she is one of the busiest agents out there!) The attention and care we received far exceeded our expectations. We are so elated with the home that we bought, and we had an extremely smooth bidding and closing process. Rita shielded us from a lot of the intricacies with our seller agent, and we are deeply appreciative of that! She is someone who finds a great sense of responsibility to her clients. Thank you for being our guardian angel through this entire process, Rita! read more

I can't say enough good things about Rita. She was referred to us by a friend who purchased her home with Rita also. We were the first time buyer and searched for a home for close to three months, and couldn't be happier with her. Here are some highlights, besides what have been listed by other reviewers: - She's very knowledgeable. She patiently educated us on things to look for in a home, bringing up many aspects to consider and took the time to understand what were important to us. - She worked tirelessly to help us figure out what to offer for each house we were interested in and what need to be done in each case. - She never pressured us into considering/offering for homes we weren't sure about. She was honest and straightforward with us throughout the entire process. She helped us to stick to our budget, guided us on how much to offer for homes, and earned our trust in a big way. - After we closed, she has been helping us settling in, doing many things above and beyond what I would have dreamed an agent would do. She's made an effort to stay in touch and help us in whatever way she can. In summary, Rita is in a different stratosphere of fantastic. If you are looking for an agent in South Bay area, don't waste your time with anyone else, give her a call. read more

Our story with Rita begins from "Real Estate 101" at Peet's Coffee. We are first time buys, knowing almost nothing about the housing market except for browsing some fancy pictures at Redfin, Zillow, etc. Rita gave us a long instruction in which there are a lot of stuff we never though of. The most important thing we learnt from Rita is "LOCATION". Previously, what we cared most is how fancy the remodel is, we don't even pay much attention to the neighborhood, the school, close to big traffic or not, how easy to commute, etc. But after the Real Estate 101, it really helped us build up the ideas of the heated housing market in the Bay Area, as well as where we should look if there is an Open House. Rita will tell you everything she knows, and care us like her children. It made me feel more secure that we are going through the whole process with Rita. The buying journey took a little bit long, but Rita kept us calm down all the way. Rita is so professional and with great personality, she never pushed us a bit even it's 6 months passed, even we already wrote 3 offers. Rita kept on telling us don't buy something with half of our heart, otherwise it will take us years to suffer and regret. She made us believe our lovely one is on her way, and both my fiance and me truly believe it. Finally after 6 month team work with Rita, we got our one, the whole effort we previously spent got paid back. We bought our house two months ago, and right now we are doing the kitchen remodel. Rita still keeps in touch with us, caring how thing's going on, asking if anything she can help with. The tremendous care and attention she gave are so apparent and much appreciated.We always have an amazing feeling that having Rita being our realtor is like accompanied by our mom. Because she is alwayS there, ready to answer if we have any questions, ready to comfort if we lost our patience, ready to solve if there is any difficult case. 5 star is not enough to describe the amazingness of Rita as she is becoming the realtor for our life, and life-long friend. THANK YOU!!! read more

Rita was highly recommended to us by two different friends of ours (friends who don't know each other!). We have Rita to thank for finding us a beautiful new home, and for making the process go smoothly (despite the crazy Bay Area market). The house we ended up buying was one that I had thought not worth seeing, and Rita convinced me to look at it. Open houses I think some buyer's agents care too much about the commission and will downplay the negative aspects of a house. By contrast, Rita is incredibly honest about her opinion of each house. She would tell us outright if she thought the construction was well-done, point out when the floor is slanted, etc. Making an offer When we decided to make an offer on a house, Rita advised us to call everyone on the initial inspections and ask them directly what their opinions about the house were. She also gave us access to a few years worth of comps in the neighborhood so that we could see if it was possible a similar house would come up again, and walked us through many of the comps herself. Although we were nervous about submitting an offer, the knowledge about the house and the neighborhood convinced us that the house was worth buying. Rita spent hours walking through the contract with us, and explained everything that we had to sign. She called the selling agent multiple times so that we were on their radar, and got us the number of the initial offers so we had a good idea of what we needed to pay in order to win the house. Despite 16 other offers on the house, our offer was accepted without a bidding war. We expected that we would have to go through a lot more work to buy a house, given the COVID market, so we were surprised that our very first offer was accepted. After the offer Rita continued to keep in touch and made sure everything went smoothly so we could close on time. She even called the builder of the house to ask questions about the work they did and made sure they cleaned up and trimmed the grass before we moved in. read more

Rita is not your typical salesman type of real estate agent with a fancy car and monkey suit, which is what my husband and I love about her! She's down to earth, genuine, knowledgeable but at the same time professional! She will become your friend when you choose her as your agent! It takes us only 1 month total to find the dream house all the way to closing escrow! Rita knows the art of writing offers and she will "bring the dead alive" when she negotiate price/ term with the seller! No hassle, no stress when you have Rita as your agent. I will always come back to Rita if I plan to invest in property again and will refer to all my friends and family! read more

I have been using Yelp for many years and there is the first time I feel I need to write something. I am so glad my colleague referred Rita to me. I don't think I can find a real estate agent better than her. I am a first time buyer. I did not know anything about real estate before I made the first call to Rita. She invited me to her office and spent two hours to give me fundamentals of how to be a good buyer. She never pushed me to make offer. After a few open houses, I became sort of impatient because of sellers' market. Rita kept telling me that I should not push myself so hard and there would be a dream house out there for me. She helped me on learning how to find out whether a house is worth to buy or not. She spent the whole night with me to go through every detail on the contact. It is a great learning process for a first time buyer like me. I was once interested in buying a new property from builder such that Rita cannot get commission. Even though, Rita is still willing to help me analyze the pros and cons of the property and offered me lots of advises. I did not buy that property because I failed in lottery. I really appreciate the way Rita treats client. I don't feel I am her client, but friend. Btw, Rita's husband is so good at cooking steak. I ate the best steak I ever had in Rita's beautiful house. read more

As first time buyers new to the area, we never thought it was possible for us to get into contract within three weeks, especially in the crazy Bay Area market. We still think this won't be possible at all if we didn't have Rita. What we benefited the most is how much we learned through the buying process. Rita educates, but never pushes for decisions. She guided us to see clearly what matters the most for us and what we may be able to compromise. Rita also has magical negotiation skills. In the Bay Area market ~80% sellers choose the highest offer directly. Many of her closed deals are in the 20% category, us for example. I would agree with everything the other reviews said - super solid track records, highly ethical, professional, knowledgeable, patient, hard working, responsive, helpful, personal, kind, sweet, and always going above and beyond. We were truly thankful that we had Rita as our Agent. read more

I highly recommend Rita if you are serious about buying a home. Buying a home in today's world is very different than what it used to be. Most notably the amount of timely information available to both buyers and sellers in today's market. As a business-finance and data driven individual willing to "crunch the numbers" and analyze the information available to me, it was easy for me to ask myself why I needed a agent. But after multiple offers (some where I worked directly with selling agents) over a span of almost one year, I came to realize that I needed to take a different approach. I realized what I needed from an agent was knowledge depth -- market, city, neighborhood, street and house, strong relational skills (key in negotiations), and most importantly, having the best interest of the buyer in mind (me). I truly believe you can learn something from anyone if you find the level of humility to do so. Throughout my home buying process, Rita educated me on all aspects of real estate that I had questions on or showed interest in. But more importantly, she left me with a process to evaluate potential homes. With this process, I became very comfortable with being able to look at homes in a very different way. To understand the potential of various home structures, flow, cost of potential construction and when to know a house wasn't right for me. Rita is responsive, has relationships with selling agents, invests the time to help and do research about potential properties, protects you as a buyer (walks you through all risks and documents before signing in detail) and is never trying to just close a sale. During the close process, she is on-top of communicating with all parties (title, bank and insurance) to ensure a seamless process. Again, highly recommend Rita if you are seriously looking for a home to buy. read more

Rita came highly recommended to us through several friends, all who had seemingly too-good-to-be-true first-time-buyer experiences in this most-unfriendly Silicon Valley market. Though we went through our fair share of tribulations, we can safely say that, thanks to Rita's guidance, we could not have ended with a better outcome! When we began our search for our first home, we were innocently unaware of just how aggressive the market was, how unfriendly it is to first-time buyers, and how limited inventory was. We learned quickly though, thanks to both Rita's thorough research & experience, as well as to having faced a number of tough lost offers. The whole way through, Rita continued to coach us and train our eyes to be more discerning, to know when a high bid or counter-offer is worth it, and when it is just driven by irrationality. "Let the house come to you," was her mantra. There were skeptical times when we thought "our house will never find us," but looking back, we truly echo her belief that, for each offer we lost, that house just simply wasn't meant for us. When our house finally came along, Rita flexed those legendary negotiation skills of hers and got us into a contract we never thought we could win! Having worked with her over the course of several months, it's easy to see why listing agents enjoy working with her as well! What really set Rita apart for us was the way she genuinely cares for her clients. Whereas most buyer's agents go after volume and leave most of the legwork to you, simply helping you write the offer at the end, Rita was with us every step of the way, from teaching us the market background, to on-the-ground training (including houses we would never bid on, just for the sake of learning), to sitting down and reviewing disclosures with us line by line, to offer & bidding strategy, to really going above and beyond even post-close. The fact that she specializes in first-time buyers and only takes a handful of clients at a time shows that she's not in it for the money, rather she does it for the joy of helping others. We're proud to now consider Rita not just a wonderful agent, but a close personal friend! read more

Rita has made the first-time home buyer experience a wonderful experience for me. She is personable, honest, direct and witty, which lets her bond well with her clients and listing agents alike. This is very important as in this busy market listing agents want to work with the best realtors, and also the ones they like personally. She helps to make your offer stand out amongst the 5-10 offers you're competing with. Rita notices the small details - whether it's about the house or the person she's talking to. She also applies this attention to detail on the contracts, disclosures, whatever documents you'll see. She takes care of your from start to finish, coaching you about your options, current market conditions and ensures you find the right contractors after you close. I would recommend her to friends and family or anyone who is a first-time or repeat home buyer! read more

As the first time home-buyer and also relatively new resident in California for less than two years, purchasing a house seems to be a sweet but tough journey. At first, my lovely fiancé and I try to find the path on our own, but soon we are got flooded and distracted by all sorts of housing as well as mortgage information online. Luckily, we found Rita, referred by my colleague (Dameon C.), to help us out here, and it is really one of our wisest decisions made along the way! When we met Rita for the first time at Peet's Coffee, we felt very happy and rewarding because Rita is such a lovely and nice lady always caring and thinking from our standpoint. Instead of exaggerating the flourishing housing market in California as many agents did, she explained to us that we should always prepare for the downtrends and only make our move when we found the true 'ONE' for our long term happiness. This mindset get away a lot of our anxiety of uncertainty later! What's more, the unique perception and deep analysis from her more than decade of experiences towards the housing market in California enlightened us a lot. We are also really impressed by her confidence and professionalism during our discussion. All these aspects make us believe Rita would be a really trustworthy agent to guide and represent us! After getting on track with Rita for this journey, we all worked diligently to pursue our common goal. Rita always responds emails with encouragement and insightful information towards our questions and comments. During the open-house hours, Rita guided us to inspect both structural and detailed elements of a property and highlighted a lot on the importance of location. This helps us see a lot more than what's demonstrated online! Every time we want to submit offers, Rita always tried to calms us down and think if we truly love the property or not, and provide constructive suggestions from our perspective. This extra thinking both saves our time from writing unnecessary offers, but also could get us more focused on coming opportunities. Also, we really appreciated Rita for wonderfully demonstrating our offer to the seller agents, which greatly increases our chance to win in the competition. You could not imagine how excited we are when hearing from Rita on our offer is accepted! We landed our purchase 1-2 months ago, and even after the purchase, Rita will always come back and answer any questions we have along the way. Really grateful to have Rita by our side for one of our most important decision for long-time! I would highly recommend her to anyone expecting to purchase properties in bay area! read more

I'd strongly recommend Rita without a doubt. Rita is super helpful and knowledgeable, especially for us first time home buyers. For instance, she has her own home-buying methodology -- she taught us classes from 101 (high-level housing market analysis), 102 (first round of open house visit), all the way to more open house visits, reading and critiquing disclosures, making offers, etc. Rita does her homework very carefully, and is always serious about her recommendations. For instance, one time we saw a very hot home with great condition and neighborhood. However, Rita read the inspection report very carefully, told us the potential issues with the house, and advised against us buying it. We can always fully trust the home she recommended. Rita always goes above and beyond when needed. At the time we were about to make the offer to the house we ended up buying, Rita happened to be traveling in another time zone. But just to make sure things go well, she stayed up very late, kept her communication open 24 hours, and did all the paperwork in a very timely fashion -- as if she were not traveling at all :) We thank her very much for helping us buying our first home, and we think if you are looking for an amazing agent you should definitely work with her too! read more

Rita is an amazing Real Estate agent. I was referred to Rita by my friend and Rita helped her purchase a beautiful house in Santa Clara. I was also able to purchase a house in this competitive market with Rita's help! I can't be happier about the house I brought! I'm a first-time home-buyer and she is extremely helpful and patient. The whole process took about 5 months, along the way, she gave me 3 Real Estate classes in order to educate me on how to find a desired house in this crazy market in the Bay Area. Rita is very dedicated and responsive. She even follows up after I have moved into the new house. I highly recommend her! read more

Rita is not a typical real estate agent, she is more like a family member has a ton experience in real estate area. She truly cares people, I know she keeps in contact with lots of her clients as a trusted friend :) We moved to Bay Area few months ago, as first home buyer, we shocked about the house market here, also have no idea what to do with very limited cash for downpayment...Luckily we found Rita through friend's referral, she guided us through the whole process: the very first time we met she gave us few hours long Real Estate 101 class, to help us build some foundation knowledge for the house market. Then she took us to several open houses to learn how to tell a good house or not, where to look at and how to check...all of these helped us a lot!! For us, I think the most important is not what she taught us in the beginning, I value more for what she had done for the past 6moths. As hot as bay area house market, we are getting impatient, we feel wanted something asap, no matter if it's condo or TH or SFH...She again and again made us calm down, let us believe to find the right place to live is the most important, she highly against us to buy something in rush as she knows it will be our biggest investment. She insisted us to find something really suitable for us. She will never recommend a house she doesn't like based on her experience, she also thought through a lot for us (for most of the times we don't even consider those items ourselves), then give us a ton suggestions to help make the decision. I also appreciate a lot she spent a lot of time every time before the offer, reading through hundreds of pages disclosures/HOA doc/inspection report etc with us. Also she present our offer in person to get a better chance for us. We finally purchase our house 2months ago, we feel lucky that we waited, didn't made a decision in a rush to buy a condo or some place we may not like in the long term...all thanks to Rita! Post offer Rita still keep in contact with us, gave us lots of suggestion about renovation, contractor selection, reminded us lots of small things we may ignore ourselves...Glad we have Rita as our agent and friend along the way we select and purchase our house!! :) read more

Rita has been an awesome buyer agent and also eventually became our realtor for life to us due to our long buying process... We have worked with Rita for almost 3 years as a first time buyer, starting early 2018 with insufficient budget after seeing the sky-rocking home price and then finally landed with more savings to get our dream home. Rita started with a 2-hour FREE RE101 about real estate history vs. current in Silicon Valley which provided us a clear understanding about how to to a savvy buyer in an extremely competitive market as a buyer. Then she accompanied us with the open houses/private visits (after COVID started) for tons of houses in a large variety of areas including north San Jose, Santa Clara, Willow Glen, Campbell, Sunnyvale etc. Whenever we adjust our budget, she could always advise a good candidate area for us which did save a lot of our time and kept us focused on the right areas. During the visits, if she saw any issues at the property, she would point them out immediately so we could decide whether to continue or walk away. When we would like to make an offer, she went through the disclosures carefully and provided us with comprehensive sold comps of recently sold similar properties in the area and helped to come up with a suggested offer price - which had been surprisingly accurate. After our offer got accepted, we had some small issues with our appraisal and she worked proactively with the seller agent to have our appraisal value corrected. She also helped to provide a lot of advice about remodel estimate, if we would like to do it, and how to maintain our future home which has been very helpful. She is never being an agent that pushes us to make an offer. She pressed on the brakes so many times when the market was over heated or she saw any deal killer factors on the property. She also continued her services after closed of escrow which were super helpful for a first time home owner like us. We are very grateful to her professional and personal, make us feel like we're her only client, service sand would definitely recommend her to anyone who needs an excellent realtor - indeed we already referred a few friends to her, one of whom brought the house before us lol. read more

Rita is so nice! I can guarantee you that she is the BEST buyer's agent that you can find in bay area! We were so fortunate to meet Rita at the very beginning of our house buying trip. We got our dream house in less than 6 months, in such a crazy market. We really appreciate Rita's help. Rita is honest, professional and very very patient. She is absolutely not the kind of realtors that are pushing and just want you to buy whatever house to get the commission. She dares to tell you the drawback of a house and sometimes she was even more picky than us. The market is crazy now, but Rita always comforted us and let us calm down. She was full of confidence about buying a good house for us. At first she gave us a 2-hour (actually extended to almost 4-hour) "class" called RE101. In this "class" she told us the basic idea of the market in Bay Area, and the factors that should be thought about before buying a house. Then during the next few weeks, she took us to view some houses and point out the problems, called "RE102". To be honest, you cannot find another agent that would like to do this. When you are ready to write an offer, Rita will spend many hours to review the disclosures and contract. We lost the first offer but we got the house with our second offer. We are chosen among 25 offers, and we are not the highest one. Can you believe that? Rita is so professional about estimating price, and the appraisal value was exactly the same as our offer, even though we increased almost 25% over the listing price. Rita also provides after-sale service! She helped us to contact home insurance agents, and recommended contractors to remodel our house. She gave us very valuable suggestions about buying appliances and furniture. She will help you until your house is ready to move in. We will definitely come to Rita if we have the chance to sell or buy another house in the future. read more

I would give Rita a 10-start review but 5 is the limit here. Rita is the best agent we've ever met and we are really grateful for her help in getting a single family house in today's highly competitive market. In the tough market condition today, it is very easy for buyers to give up, compromise and make some poor decisions. Yet Rita has a super high bar in house selection and always watches out for us. Along with the house hunting, Rita will also provides a lot of insights on how to remodel the house and improve the living condition, so that we know which house is worth buying and has good potential even before we write any offers. Thanks a lot Rita! read more

Rita is our agent and she is really helpful on our house hunting. Before we started she gave us a thorough seminar on the housing market and what first time home buy should expect. We learned a lot about what we did not know from friends/other agents/online resources. Rita is very knowledgeable about the housing market and she has a very unique understanding of house searching process. The house searching process was also very enjoyable. She'll learn what you want and give you great advices. She also filters out a lot bad houses before the weekend hunting starts. When she presents offers, she'll always present it in person. She has great connection with the sellers agents and everyone seems to like to work with her. This gave us an edge and our FIRST offer got accepted after only 4wks of searching. After the escrow closes she'll stay connected and offer advices on remodeling. She's a good agent and a great friend. I highly recommend Rita. read more

We rarely writes review, but for Rita, we felt compelled to do so. My wife and I are so blessed to have Rita as our agent. We were new to Bay Area and wanted to find someone with experience and patience to work with us. We have a few house buying experience from other state and know how important it is to have an agent who is responsible, patient and honest. We started off going to open houses. At our very first open house, we met Rita. She was so nice and answered everyone's question with a big smile on her face. You could tell vividly how much she loved her job and how much she cared about her client and customers. At that moment, we both knew she was the agent we were looking for. We went back and read the yelp reviews about her, called her the next day and started our Real-estate 101 for 3 hours on a Friday night! The story unfolded exactly like other reviews, all the amazing things she does are true and more! Rita pays extreme attention to details in everything from selecting which house to see, reviewing disclosures, explaining fine lines of legal documents, preparing offer letters to how to maintain your new house. She was always there every step of the way for things you can't even think of. I don't remember how many late nights she spent with us answering numerous questions we had. I am sure a lot of them were beyond her job scope. She is so much more than just an agent. She is your personal housing advisor and a friend who really cares about you getting a dream house. Definitely recommend to anyone who wants an amazing agent. Without a doubt, she is the best one we've ever worked with from any industry period! read more

Rita helped me find my dream house in August 2017 when the market is a complete craziness. I am very happy with the location and also the relation with the original owner. Rita isn't kind of the realtors who just wanna talk you into buying whatever available. I could have made offers to some really bad properties on the market because of the rising competition in the market. She talked me out of it and made her point very clear: patient and the house will come to you. read more

Let's face it, buying your first house in this market is not for the feint of heart. It's takes work, luck and a level of risk that makes this a unique and very different place. You need someone that is not only very knowledgeable of the market but someone that will focus on the fundamentals and long term value. Rita walked us from Bay Area Real Estate 101 (and 102) to the purchase of our first home. She took the time to get to know us and she was able to make sure that we were in fact working towards our goals and didn't let us get distracted along the way. We worked as a team, we made it through the bidding process. Rita was always available and incredible helpful, patient and always full of energy. I cannot recommend Rita enough, this is someone we now call a friend. read more

We are experienced home buyers, and Rita is by far the best buyer's agent that we've worked with. When we were interviewing real estate agents, Rita came to our home in the East Bay to meet us even though we had offered to meet her in the South Bay. She spent several hours with us to understand our needs, explain the Silicon Valley real estate market, and describe traffic patterns throughout the South Bay and Peninsula. She also discussed strategies for making offers in the current seller's market and expected transaction costs. During the search process, Rita was always on the lookout for candidate homes that met our criteria or which she thought would provide ideas and reference points for neighborhood. While touring the homes, she would point out both the desirable and undesirable features of the home, neighborhood, and location. She would always talk to the realtors and often even the neighbors to get additional information on the sellers and the area. And, she always met us at the start of the tour day with some type of snack on hand! If we were interested in a house, Rita would take us back for 2nd/3rd looks. She would then spend several hours pouring through the disclosures and comps. Rita is not afraid to point out all the problems with a home, and let us know what kind of homework we might want to do before putting in an offer, which often was within a few days of the open house. Several times, we decided not to put in an offer. She would often tell us to be patient and wait for the "right" house. And, when we did decide to put in an offer, she would stay in contact with the seller's agent We are happy to say that we have successfully purchased and moved into our home even though there were many offers much higher than ours. We can only attribute this to Rita, with her advice on how to put together a strong offer package, and her reputation and relationships with other realtors. Even when she knew our highest offer was lower than many of the offers on the table, she would continue to communicate with the seller's agent. After the purchase, Rita continued to advise us of different approaches and costs to deal with some of the changes we wanted to make, along with suggestions for contacts. If we are ever in the market for another property in the South Bay, our first call will be to Rita. read more

My wife and I are both very happy to work with Rita. We bought our new house within one month. Rita is a very professional realtor who can always consider for her customers. She helped us to make a strong offer and showed very good communication and coordination skills while we were under contract. If there is a chance we would like to work with her again for our second house in the future. read more

My wife and I were introduced to Rita Chao by a friend who previously had also gotten his dream house through Rita. We were both property virgins so Rita took her time explaining almost everything we needed to know about buying our first house. She attentively listened to our preferences and must-haves, but would also provide her recommendations about certain things because, well, sometimes we didn't know better! So don't be surprised if the first time around she takes you to a house with a terrible condition. That's just one of her methods in teaching you how to tell if a house has a problem. So we found our perfect house right before Christmas holidays and this is where Rita had really gone above and beyond with her service. My wife and I went on with our vacation, but Rita stayed around and got busy right away with our offer. She patiently worked with us over the phone everyday throughout the holidays and successfully got us into contract. That is something you don't always get when you work with other agents! Some agent-client relationships can feel like it's strictly business, but with Rita the whole home-buying experience feels more personal and exciting. She really looks out for her clients. Long story short, we could not have found a better real estate agent and would totally recommend Rita to anyone in the market for a house, especially first-time homebuyers. read more

I created a yelp account to write a review for Rita. I can't say enough about how awesome she is. She's the most responsible and professional agent I've met and I'm glad that we chose her as our agent. We bought our dream house with the help of Rita. She's always willing to share all her knowledge about how to evaluate a property. I've learned so much from her real estate 101 and all the home tours. Rita always hand pick potential homes using her strict criteria before each home tour. She looks at houses with a critical eye and can always point out issues that I didn't even think about. She's very patient and never push even after countless home tours. After so many home tours, we finally found a house for which we were willing to enter a "bidding war" for. Before making our offers, we got our pre-approval with her recommended loan agent Albert Lee very fast. Rita spent many hours going through all the disclosure details and home inspection report and she finished preparing all the paperwork way before the due date. She crafted a very strong offer and presented it to the sellers and their agent in person. We were very blessed to win the offer without being the highest offer. Since we are first-time buyer, we thought winning the offer is almost the last step before moving. But there were still so many things waiting ahead like closing the escrow on time, pick up/working with contractor on remodeling. She's just a phone-call away even after we closed escrow. She dropped by at our house from time to time toe check the quality of our contractor's work and we got so many suggestions on a lot of things. Without her help, we can't imagine that we can now sitting comfortably and typing in our dream house. More importantly, we are really happy to have someone like Rita and her husband John as our family friends. I would highly recommend Rita to anyone looking for a real estate agent in Bay Area. read more

Rita Chao was recommended to us by one of our close friend who bought a house through her and so we planned to have a meeting with her. She was very kind, patient and listened to our wish list that we were looking for our first home, and yes, we were First Time Home buyers. The first walk through we had with Rita was her own Sweet home where she explained on what things to look at in house hunting, what matters the most and the things that are just cosmetic. She also shared her strategy she uses for buying a home and provided us a very deep analysis of the current housing market, where we stand today, and the key areas we should target based on our needs. As first time home buyers we were far away from reality before we met Rita. She is very true in her opinion on the homes whether they are positive or negative and also on the factors that may potentially affect the home in future. Yes, this comes with experience and we could clearly see this in Rita after trying 4 different realtors in past who were just about getting us in contract. Although, we had a long journey on our house hunting with my frequent job related travel and the blooming house market with multiple offers, all cash etc. Rita eventually helped us to find the perfect house in an ideal location where the neighbor can't just stop bragging about the location and the purchase price which Rita helped us getting in contract in-spite of multiple offers. Of course it was a bidding war situation, but Rita managed to crack this and got us the house that we deserved which has now become our sanctuary. Rita was very supportive in the entire process and gave great attention to every detail on our transaction. We feel very blessed that we have such a great home and we love it. We couldn't have asked for a more honest, trustworthy and great realtor. I'm very happy to say that we are more like a family now and she is still there for us to offer any help and advice when we need it. read more

One of our friends referred Rita to us, which we believe is the best way to find an excellent agent to work with under such competitive market. And now, I am proud and confident to say, having Rita on the team would make your house hunting a wonderful and amazing journey! Rita is an agent that you can trust. Even before we went to open houses, she spent lots of time educating us, explaining the market, the bay area, the neighborhoods, etc. Her knowledge and patience really impressed us. And the lessons we learned from her helped us to be calm, confident, and supportive. Then Rita spent several weeks showing us open houses, where she taught us how to check the house conditions, how to know if the neighborhood fits us, and what details we need to pay attention to. I believe we would benefit from the knowledge we learned from Rita in our whole life. With Rita's enormous help, we were able to get the dream house within 2 months. But keep it in mind, Rita is not pushing at all. Actually she advised us to stay away from several houses we planned to submit an offer, due to various problems of the house she could see with her over 30 years experience. And that's why we even trust her more! It felt some blessed to work with such an sincere, knowledgeable and trust-able person! read more

As first time home buyers, we were referred by a friend to Rita. She was not the first agent we interviewed or worked with, but she is definitely the best agent we have ever met. When we just started working with Rita, we have already been housing hunting for a few month and was so exhausted by the whole process that we were willing to get any random places to get this process over with. Rita convinced us to be patient--she asked us to consider this to be the largest amount of money you could possibly spend in your entire life when making a decision. She also didn't rush us to make offers like most agents we interviewed previously; instead, she started with some education sessions to show us what are the things we should know about a house. She is assertive and knows her stuff well, which really helped to calm us down. She is very good at finding the hidden jewels in a neighborhood, and as a result, we end up getting an extremely satisfied place without having to pay premium price due to the hot market right now. She also maintained good communication and relationship with the seller's agent; as a result, our closing process is much smoother than we expected. We highly recommend Rita to all the future clients, as she really exceeds our expectation. read more

After talking to several realtor, we finally met Rita through a friend's referral and we decided to go with her in our first meeting. She is very focused and knowledgeable in real estate. We learned so many things about real estate and housing while working with her. Even after buying the house, she is very helpful to answer question on real estate. I would like to highlight few good things about her. 1. Very patient 2. Never pushes for anything 3. Handles any kind of situation very well. 4. Very effective in written and verbal communication with other agents. 5. Knowledgeable about real estate 6. Very positive. 7. Good at reading good/bad vibrations in house. 8. Always honest about her opinion. 9. Very friendly She finished the complete transaction with help of her financial adviser well with in the given escrow time. I highly recommend her as a great person and realtor. After 3 years from purchase of house, we still have good relation with her. Good job Rita. :) - Ashish read more

One of the most important decisions we made in our home-buying journey was definitely the first: calling Rita Chao. Rita is the most knowledgable, responsible, and effective professional we have worked with in any capacity -- and one of the kindest people, too! We were not first-time home-buyers, but our experience with Rita far exceeded our previous home purchases. Rita spent hours teaching us how to evaluate local market conditions and, on several Saturday outings, how to evaluate neighborhoods and individual properties. She took the time to really listen to what we wanted and needed in a home and -- this we especially appreciated -- to listen to our children, too, and include them in the process. They looked forward to going out with "Miss Rita" and were excited to "use their senses", as she taught them, to decide whether a house was a good prospect. Finding and then making an offer on a home in the Bay Area's highly competitive market is a challenging process, but Rita's calmness, her responsiveness, and her optimism kept the stress to a minimum. She counseled us that when we saw the right house, we would know -- and we did! During the offer phase, we came to value Rita's insight and skill even more: like many of her other clients, we were in a multiple-offer situation where ours was not the highest, but Rita had helped us craft such a strong, clean offer, which she presented personally (the only agent of seven who did so) that the sellers immediately selected us. The escrow went more smoothly than we could have hoped for and we closed on time and with no surprises. All throughout the process, Rita connected us with professionals of her caliber -- especially, Albert Lee, for our loan, and an excellent contractor for home repairs before moving in. She also helped us get to know the sellers so that they could share information on all the ins-and-outs of the property -- the appliances, the irrigation system, etc., which was so helpful upon move-in. In fact, our sellers were so impressed with Rita's work for us -- her professionalism, her expertise, and her accessibility, that they told us they plan to recommend her to their friends and, if they should move back to the area, will call her themselves. Two months after moving in, Rita continues to be just a phone call away with advice and recommendations on remodeling projects and other issues, home-related and beyond. We are in a home we love, and which we feels just right for us, and Rita and her husband John have become treasured family friends. We couldn't have asked for a better home-buying experience! read more

One of our best friends referred Rita to us. At first we were a bit suspicious but decided to give it a try. There are mainly two reasons we finally worked with her. Rita has been in this industry for several decades and is very professional. She may first appear to be a bit "opinionated" but I regard this as professionalism - only people who knows things have the confidence to speak. This is particularly useful for first time buyers like us. We learned a lot from her, such as crawl space, ceiling filling, base (didn't aware that house in US has so much trouble to take care of). When we visited properties, she guided us through different rooms and showed us what is good, what is wrong, and what can be improved. She even can give an estimate of the remodeling cost based on her experience. This is extremely helpful, and her estimates were later proven to be very accurate. Her document preparation was also very rigorous, professional, and extremely fast. I have sent document to her and received feedback within a few minutes during weekend. Rita has great empathy and understanding of our needs. Although she has opinions, she's not pushing us to just get the deal done. At first our goal was a bit unrealistic, but we were able to iteratively tweak our objective and budget during the process with her assistance and patience. I feel like she's treating us not just as customer but as friend. We finally closed our property and had the remodeling done on time. I would highly recommend Rita to anyone who's looking for a home! read more

Hands down the best broker we have ever worked with! We moved from New York to south bay a few months and did not know the area very well. Rita patiently showed us all the different locations that were suitable for our family in terms of school district, distance to work...etc. She had great insight to the market and came prepared with statistics and historical data. She had our best interest at heart and would give her honest opinions about a house, rather than just pushing for sales. She was a tough negotiator and was meticulous with the inspection reports. At the end, we found our dream home within our budget, which was extremely fortunate in this market. If you are looking for a broker who has your best interest at heart, look no further! read more

We were introduced to Rita through a close friend of Mine. She is by far one of the Best Realtors I have interacted and spoken to. The best thing about her is she does most of the Work for you as you would expect. For Eg, When we gave our criteria to her she had already narrowed down most of the houses that she thought we would like and we did. Also there were times when she would go to an open house with us and straight away say this is not good because of some of the minute details that we would miss but she would pay attention too. She is very Patient with first time home buyers like us. I highly recommend her expertise. read more

Rita was recommended by my best friend. After visiting her beautiful home, I asked for the number of her real estate agent. That turned out to be the best decision I've made during the entire house hunting process. Rita is the BEST! I've talked to many agents before I decided to work with Rita. The other agents are all about business and lacking sincerity, but Rita treats me with her heart. She is very patient, very knowledgeable and professional too. I was about to make an offer on a house, Rita came to see the place on short notice and came straight from the airport after a trip to view the property with me. Even though I decided not to go for that particular property, it was a very good learning experience and helped me to figure out what I really want and need. When I see my current home, I immediately know it is the ONE! Rita helped me with all the documents and explained everything very patiently. I made my offer with a peace of mind. I've moved in my new home for almost a month and I love love love my house. All my friends commented on how comfortable the house is and all quiet the neighborhood is. I can see myself living here comfortably for many years to come. I would recommend Rita to anyone who wants a stress free house hunting experience. read more