I had a realtor in mind when we decided to sell our house. When I called the realtor I knew on the weekend I reached his voicemail stating that he would return calls on the next business day, so I decided to investigate other options just to see if I should consider someone else. I found James on Yelp and based on his positive reviews, I gave him a call. It was 6pm on Saturday and he answered right away. I was surprised given that it was a weekend evening, but not only did he step away from a dinner he was having while out of town, he spent time on the phone with me getting a better understanding of our home and our situation. He told me that he was out of town but could have his partner meet with us the next morning. Within 30 minutes, we had an appt for the next morning at 10am.

Our meeting with his partner, Kin, was extremely professional and thorough. She told us exactly what to expect, what she thought we would need to do to ready the house, and even brought paper work and comps for the area. We were leaving to visit the area we planned to move to the following week (out of state) and told her we would let them know our timing when we returned. The following weekend we called and said we wanted to put our house on the market. Within two weeks, they had our house fixed up, staged, and listed. They reimburse for staging and inspections and they have a wonderful photographer who made our house look so amazing that we momentarily questioned selling:)

I am convinced that it was due to James' and Kin's excellent guidance and preparation that our Dublin home sold for 65k over asking, with no contingencies, and brought in multiple offers (some even higher than the one we accepted) in less than 4 days and overselling several comparable homes in San Ramon (which typically outsell Dublin).

Once we accepted an offer, James came to the house during the buyer inspections to make sure everything went well and that he could guide us on anything that came up. But since he lead us to run inspections before we listed, we had already made arrangements to correct anything necessary. There were no surprises. We cannot recommend James highly enough. I had friends who were selling at the same time and their realtor didn't make any of the recommendations that James did and their house fell out of contingency. We were happy to get a fast close (3 weeks!) so we could quickly buy a home in our new location. Our only regret was that we couldn't take James with us to the east coast to be our realtor there!

The best thing about James is that he doesn't talk like a typical realtor. The real estate vocabulary is full of euphemisms and vague, meaningless terms (e.g., "cozy," "charming," "deferred maintenance"). However, James isn't a realtor who got an MBA, he's an MBA that works in real estate. He uses clear, precise terms, Hard numbers. Data. If you want expertise, call James.

Plus, to give you an idea of how much of a good guy James is:

I was already working with another buyer's agent. but I also wanted to look in an area he didn't specialize in, so after reading his Yelp reviews, I called James. He didn't try to poach me as a client. In fact, he said I was probably already looking in the right area with this other agent. Furthermore, throughout the purchase process, he talked for me for a couple of hours total, giving me expert advice on the area and market conditions -- the whole time knowing he wasn't going to make a dime on whatever I bought, because he wasn't my agent.

I meant to send him some token of my thanks for this, but, like a jackass, I forgot. You know what's nicer than a card, though? Commissions.

Since then, I have conducted three more transactions with James. and he's been a consummate professional through all of them.

If you're reading this ad, do yourself a favor and just call him. (He'll probably pick up, and if he's busy, he'll probably return your call within an hour.)

“I chose James to help me sell my house this last summer and I could not be more happy with that decision. My house needed some tlc renovation work to get top dollar, and I went out looking for the best agent that specialized in that area. James and his team were able to quickly assess what work needed to be done while staying within the constraints of my renovation budget. His team are all top notch and the proposed renovation work came in on time and under budget. My house was listed on the date that we originally proposed and received multiple offers over asking price. Thank you James, Kin and the rest of the team for all of your hard work, and for guiding me through this process.”