The Importance of a Great Realtor

At the end of 2019, I met a new friend, Rebekah, who also happened to be a Realtor. She had just moved to the area for her husband’s job, and had started working with Coldwell Banker.

I owned a rental property that had just become vacant, and I was tired of keeping up the rental. She was new to the area, and I thought this was a great opportunity to sell the property. I asked her to sell it, and since then I’ve done four deals with her in a year. She has made the process of selling and buying so easy. She helped sell two rental properties, our primary residence and purchase our land. It feels a little weird not to have a real estate deal with her this year. Although, with me you never know, haha.

Having an amazing Realtor cannot only maximize your profit potential, but they can take care of a lot of unexpected things that come up during the selling or buying process.

When I asked Rebekah to sell the vacant rental I owned, she made the process a breeze. The house was sold in a couple months and we had to make minimal repairs (only expense was a can of paint and a few nails in the backyard fence). While the property was under contract, one of my daughters became ill and I wasn’t able to get some things done for the sale. She took over my tasks making sure the closing stayed on track. It took a lot of pressure off of me in a time when I needed to focus on my daughter. Normally, that kind of situation would have stressed me out, but she assured me she would get it done and not to worry.

We had had another rental property that Michael owned before we were married. While we had wonderful tenants, the mortgage was underwater. The property had been purchased in 2007, then the 2008 housing market crash hit. The property never recovered it’s full property value. It had been an anchor on our finances and mental health for years. We had been blessed with great renters the whole time, but it was an older home, which meant frequent repairs.

If you’ve ever owned rental properties, you probably know that they have psychic powers. That’s right, rental properties know when you need to repair something in your own home and then decide to break at the same time. It felt like every time we needed to repair our own home we would brace for a call about the rental. It was hard to have to take our money and repair the rental and leave our repairs for later.

When I asked Rebekah to sell the underwater rental property, I told her I didn’t expect much from it. We’d be happy with just not having to pay anything in, and didn’t care if we made any money from the sell. We just wanted the weight gone. To our surprise we walked away with a nice chunk of unexpected cash, even after an unforeseen major repair was needed after the home inspection (a parting gift from the house). She even was able to get the buyer to simply take the cash credit, and fix the issue themselves after closing as opposed to us being in charge of the repair. We were ecstatic the day the property was sold. Without the help of our amazing friend and Realtor, I’m certain we would have never achieved this outcome.

She also helped us sell our primary home. It was under contract within 24 hours on the market and we paid zero closing costs. In fact the house was sold, while we were on vacation. It was the easiest sell yet.

She also helped us purchase our land. Rebekah is very detailed oriented and paid attention to every minute detail when it came to writing a purchase offer for the land. One check mark saved us thousands when the Seller accepted our offer without countering. Rebekah had marked that the Seller was responsible for providing and paying for a land survey if it was required, and the Seller’s signed the offer. A recorded survey typically can cost $3,000 to $5,000+ for the amount of acreage we were buying. The closing attorney required a survey be completed, and because Rebekah had clicked that option, we didn’t have to pay for the survey. It’s just one of the many examples of how she’s helped us and protected our interest in every deal we’ve done with her as our Realtor.

When we started hatching a plan to buy property and start a farm, we had no idea how to start. Rebekah came into the picture and was the catalyst who got us to this point. She helped us maximize our profit on each sale, and negotiated the best purchase for our land. Can you buy and sell property without a Realtor? Of course, but there is absolutely no way we could have made as much profit, negotiated the best deals or completed all of these transactions within a year.

When you’re making these types of major decisions and purchases in your life…I can’t stress enough the importance of a great Realtor. I’m not sure we could have ever accomplished what we have without her.