• Advantages
○ Great marketing, network, open houses
○ Great team, works like a clockwork
○ Exquisite People management
• Results
○ Sold in 1 month
§ First offer in 2 weeks, sold in 1 month,
§ 15% higher than what I think are comparable home
A similar house on the block sitting for 90 days and counting
○ Made the home close despite BoA: Saved us from 2 week delay in closing
• How they compare
○ As best as they come, in any field
○ If everyone else is five stars, she deserves 7 stars
Details
Marketing, network & open houses
We met Dawn & the team (Jill and Ciera) at the open house for the home that we recently purchased. The home popped up on top of our search and the house on the website appeared 1.5X bigger than it really is. She has extensive talented network and they can fix anything that goes wrong promptly. Fixing pool pumps, taking out trash, staging home, everything was done well and promptly. They held open houses almost every weekend and followed up with the leads diligently.
Team, Clockwork
After we moved out of our house on Monday, the cleaning crew came that night to start cleaning, the staging crew came the day after, photographer came on Wednesday and we were on the market on Thursday and had realtors open house on Friday and Open house on Saturday & Sunday of that weekend. Our house looked better than model houses. The traffic on our website appears to be about 3X higher than neighboring homes on the same street.
Exquisite People Management
Dawn really knows how to manage people. Not just her crew but her customers (both sellers and buyers) and other stakeholders. When there were questions, she was prompt in response and knew when phone calls are needed and when texting is enough. Every encounter I had with her and her team re-assured me that we made the right decision in hiring her team.
Results
Feds were raising interest rates and the housing market was cooling rapidly. We felt that we really need to move fast before the market really goes south. Dawn and her team really moved fast and we got our first offer in 2 weeks. That offer didn't go through but we had two more offers after slight price adjustment. In the end, I feel that we got about 15% higher than comparable homes in the neighborhood. We have a similar home on our street sitting on the market for 90 days and they have lowered their asking price by 200K over that period.
The week before closing, I made the mistake of closing the home equity line of credit account. BoA said everything will close in 3 days. The account closed in 2 days but it took them 2 weeks to send me the letter that says the account is closed. Without the letter, title company wouldn't issue title insurance. It could have delayed the closing for 2 weeks but Dawn was able to do her magic and have the title insurance issued and we closed without the 2 week delay.
How They Compare
In my day job, I was in charge of closing some big business deals for few years. Many of the deals were in 9 figures and the biggest one was in 10 figures. I have seen some great presenters and marketing/sales teams. Dawn's team would fit right in this league.
We had a few realtor interviews lined up and Dawn's team was the first to present. 10 minutes into the presentation, I felt that we can't do any better than Dawn's team. I canceled subsequent interviews and hired her team the same day.
Coming from a country where realtor commission is 1% of the sale, I always thought realtor commissions are too high in US. Dawn's team earned every last bit and deserves bonus. They are couple of classes above the others, fully deserve 7 stars.