About

I hired two agents. Then I became one.

I did not grow up planning to sell real estate. I got into it because I had to sell a house and buy one at the same time, and the people I hired to handle it did not do it well.

Why I started

The move that made me do this.

A few years ago we had to sell our townhome and buy a house at the same time. It was not a move we planned and it was not on a comfortable timeline.

The first agent we hired to sell it did a poor job. I will leave it at that.

The second time around we used the listing agent of the house we wanted to buy, and we gave him our townhome to sell too. He did better. It still was not what it should have been, and the whole way through I had the feeling that nobody in the deal was working only for us.

We closed. We got where we were going. But I came out of that move knowing exactly where it had gone sideways, and knowing I could have run it better.

Before this I spent my career in customer service, sales and account management. Different industry, same job really. Somebody hands you a problem they cannot solve on their own, and you either handle it properly or you do not.

So I got licensed and started handling it for people in the same spot I had been in.

What it taught me

Three things I took out of it.

Selling and buying at once is the hard one.

A contingent move is two closings, two sets of deadlines and a gap in the middle you are standing over while both sides shift. I have done it as the client, with my own money in it. Most of my sellers are doing exactly this, so it is the part I plan first instead of last.
Most deals that fall apart were readable in advance.

The termite finding, the addition that was never permitted, the deadline nobody calendared. It is almost always sitting in a document somebody skimmed. I read them line by line. That is not glamorous and it is the reason my escrows are quiet.
You should always know whose side your agent is on.

In our second move the agent represented the house we were buying and our townhome at the same time. That is legal in California when everyone is told, and we were told. It still showed me how it feels when nobody in the room is working only for you, and it is why I say plainly where I stand in a deal before we start.

How I work

What that looks like on either side.

Buyers and sellers want different things from an agent. These are the ones I will actually be held to.

If you are selling

I will give you the number the comps support, not the number you want to hear. If I think your price is wrong I will say so before we list, not after sixty days of silence.
I read every disclosure and every report in full. I would rather find the problem myself than have a buyer's inspector find it for me.
I negotiate on paper. Comps, reports, written terms. The loudest agent in a conversation is usually not the one holding the better position.
I do not go quiet once we are in escrow. You will hear from me whether or not there is good news that week.

If you are buying

I will not rush you. There is no urgency I am manufacturing and no script I am running on you.
I will tell you what is wrong with a house you have already fallen for. That is most of what you are paying me for.
If you have to sell before you can buy, I have been in that exact position with my own family on the line.
Before we walk into a multiple offer situation we set your ceiling and your terms in advance, so the deadline is not the moment you work out what you are willing to do.

The practical part

Where I work and what I am.

Area: The 210 corridor between the 710 and the 15, Pasadena out to Rancho Cucamonga.
Home: Glendora. I do the school run here, so most of what I know about these towns I did not learn from a market report.
Languages: English, Cantonese and Mandarin.
Brokerage: The Foothills Collective, brokered by eXp Realty. CA DRE #02118479.

Get in touch

If that sounds like what you want.

Call or text. No presentation and no pressure. Tell me what you are trying to do and I will tell you straight whether I am the right person for it.

Call or text (626) 500-5211 Run your own numbers first

Or email [email protected].