Our Friendly Shark Realtor

Since we haven't blogged in ooohhhh, 2 months or so, I thought I pick up where we left off. But I'm going to be quick about it... I want to get to the good stuff! The house tour and pictures and more pictures!!! But I also don't want to torture you guys by not filling in the gaps. So here we go... Finding a good realtor is pretty darn important. You want to find someone who understands you and your needs, someone you "click" with. Allan and I agree that without our wonderful realtor, we wouldn't be where we are today. Our first experience with a realtor was a little over a year ago when my sister and her family decided to move back to Orlando from Chicago. My sister and brother-in-law were nice enough to let Allan and I tag along while they toured house after house. We got to see their realtor in action and she was great, very nice actually. And boy did she try to reel us in... she really did. Miss realtor knew we were thinking of buying our first home in the next year or so and she wanted to hook us early. Unfortunately for her, we didn't take the bait. Our house hunting affair with Miss Realtor Lady was not meant to be. It just didn't feel right and we couldn't make the commitment. We also encountered several other not so good realtors during our Open House adventures. One in particular sticks out in my mind. We were touring a house, well to be honest it was more like a dump. In order to be livable it would have to be gutted and possibly bull-dozed to the ground. You know how Allan said in this post that you could judge the a house by the number of good pictures? Well, the info sheet for this house had four pictures... all of the park across the street. Yes, it was that bad. It also had the worst floor plan known to man. You had to go through the third bedroom to get to the garage. Why would you do that? Why? Anyway, the listing agent of the dumpity-dump-dump house had absolutely no valuable information to pass along to us. She also tried to convince us that the house was worth twice as much as it was offered for. She also said there may or may not be some vagrants living on premise. I sure you can figure we did not choose that crazy lady. Fast-forward six months to a nice spring day. We had just toured and fallen in love with the little house that would eventually become ours. That lovely spring day, fate brought us our realtor. She was the listing agent and she came armed with boatloads of information on the neighborhood, short sales and all things residental. Most importantly we clicked. We knew she would fight for us, especially to get that double commission being the listing and buyers agent. She was definitely a shark, she wasn't gonna take no for an answer. But a friendly, very sweet shark. Without the guidance of our friendly shark of a realtor, we would not be where we are today. She fought to get us our little short-sale. And she didn't take no for an answer either. She was on the phone with the representative from the bank almost every day. When the bank countered with an unreasonable offer she said NO WAY JOSE! And when the sellers started dragging their feet she snapped them into shape. It took five months but we got our house. So I know I promised to be quick, but I just couldn't resist. And in case this not so quick post made you fall asleep or made you wish you could have 10 minutes of your life back, here is a quick summary. Find a realtor you love and who loves you back. xoxo Wendy