"Are you first time homebuyers in DFW? Let me tell you, this is a dream team to work with. Let me start by saying I work with a ton of real estate clients in my line of work. I also grew up in a family of successful real estate brokers, so I know a thing or two when it comes to picking advisors you c… an trust. This will be a bit of a long review, but I hope you find it worth your time to read.
We first met Joel and Suzanne back in late November. My wife and I are in our late 20s and have a 14 month old and two awesome doggos. We have been living in Addison Circle for years, but finally came to the realization the cramped apartment we love dearly has been outgrown. I have been watching the DFW market for years, and really connected with a listing I found. My wife and I have been wanting to move to Carrollton, specially over by H Mart. I’ll save a lot of time, but let’s just say magic was at work. The house was literally next door to the childhood home of a friend of a close friend, and the parents still live there today. Her mind was blown when I mentioned the address i causally checked out. Joel and Suzanne were the listing agents for the home, and I immediately got in contact. I have always been good at reading people and Joel and Suzanne were extremely transparent and down to earth, which is highly refreshing in the world of real estate. The house was originally listed a bit high and obviously needed many repairs, including foundation work. My wife and I agreed, “this price for this place is too high, but we have a great feeling about Suzanne and Joel.”
From there we kept looking, and decided from the get go Suzanne and Joel were our team. We eventually ended up getting that house under contract, but we had to walk as the sellers were unwilling to do any essential repairs. While it hurt us deeply, Suzanne and Joel agreed, we should not put ourselves in a financial position as first time buyers. I highly respected this advice. We walked and kept looking. In the end, we put multiple houses under contract, but walked on all due to a frankly arrogant generally attitude among the DFW sellers we interacted with. All wanted to dollar for their properties needing substantial repairs. Each time we came at a fork in the road, Suzanne and Joel advised us wisely not to give in to these sellers, rightfully so. We also were finalist in a bidding war that came down to an appraisal waiver. With Suzanne’s guidance, we declined to accept the waiver and lost the bid to another buyer. We lost the bid, but likely waved ourselves a lot of financial pain because of this wise decision, as I know all bidders were over bidding.
Eventually we worked with Suzanne and managed to get the sellers of the original house we fell in love with to come back to the table, and we got them to agree to foundation and plumbing errors we knew of then. In the course of foundation work, a dreaded thing happened; the cast iron pipes in the house cracked, requiring a complete repipe. For those who don’t know, this averages $40-60k. Thanks to brilliant wording and verbiage used by Suzanne in our contract, the seller was required to repair the pipes, and even used our contractor of choice. That is in addition to foundation work done on the entire left side of the house, and a ton of already done plumbing work.
Every contractor and real estate contact I’ve discussed our deal with has been amazed we got what we did from the seller. I work primarily with real estate corporations and I’m amazed we got what we did from the seller. Half might be due to us doing our homework and me being lucky enough to grow up and work in real estate, but a ton is due to Joel and Suzanne’s experience and outstanding advice. I will be recommending everyone I know to them, and I’m a client for life. In the end because we managed to get the repairs done by the seller, we likely saved $80k ish of our own money, which is amazing.
If you want rock solid real estate advisors who are transparent and down to earth, call White Rock locators and ask for Suzanne and Joel!"
