Selling Our Fern Avenue Home

Can you tell us how you first met Kim and about your initial experiences?

I first met Kim when we were having our house reassessed a year before we actually made the decision to put the house up for sale. When she arrived, she had brought with her an enormous wealth of information that she was willing to share freely with us, knowing that we were not committed to selling yet. Then a year later we asked her to come back to do a reassessment because we were more serious about selling. She did another great job knowing that we may not decide to select her (we had interviewed 2 other agents as well), and she did not charge us an assessment fee.

What did Kim do to guide you in your market research when you were setting a price? How did you come to your final decision?

When it came to setting the price, Kim had a few tools and skills at her disposal: 1. A listing of all houses that were sold in our area that were similar to our listing, and an ability to articulate right away trends in our community e.g. real estate pricing, buyer's demographic profile 2. A lot of inside information on houses that were going up for sale and approximate timing of when. This enabled us to evaluate how other current and imminent listings could possible compete with ours. 3. Her own extensive experience of selling houses in our area, what I will call Kim's "sixth sense". I think these three combined elements with Kim's flexibility in allowing the buyer to put their own opinions into the mix, allowed us to arrive at a final decision we were very comfortable with

How did you prepare your house for showing and/or being photographed? What are your thoughts on how the open houses were handled?

I spent a good week full time, cleaning, de-cluttering and "fluffing" the house. I tried to imagine or create a vision of what a prospective buyer would want to see. My previous discussions with Kim provided us with a few suggestions on superficial changes we could make that didn't cost a lot but would make our house more attractive. I have to say I was completely impressed with Kim's patience, and the amount of time (and number of times) she was willing to spend with us to enable us to create this vision of what we wanted the house to look like so it could sell quickly and with a fair price. As first time house sellers (newbies you could say) we were very nervous about how quickly our house would sell especially in what was a changing real estate market. Kim did not blink at how many times we called before and during the open house period. Her associate, Tracey and her photographer, Russ were so efficient and skilled at what they do. It was painless and the brochure looked impressive.

How do you feel Kim handled the negotiation? How did the negotiations go and what had been your expectations?

Kim was calm, collected and clearly experienced. I could tell the other real estate agent was nervous and seemed "greener" then Kim. I thought, thank goodness we have Kim...really my sister and I did say that. When the first bid came in, it was not the original price we asked for, I was disappointed, we had a good discussion about it. There was discussion of waiting for another offer. Kim told us not to worry, asking for the listing price was a fair response, if the buyers had gotten to this point of making an offer then asking for the differential was not going to be a deal breaker. And, of course she was right. We left the table with a signed purchase of sale and the original list price.

How did the final closing of the sale go? Looking back is there anything you would have done differently? Is there anything that Kim did that you particularly appreciated?

We really did not have to do much for the final closing. There was a delay of funds transferred from the buyer to us, but I don't think Kim or her staff could have prevented that. What I really appreciate about Kim is her attention to detail and customer focus even after the house was sold. She left us a beautiful gift basket when the house sold, and 3 months later I found a Christmas package at my new home. I feel that Kim really does go above and beyond. Our street was buzzing with the quick sale of our home, and of course I was raving about Kim's service and support!