PROPERTIES PLUS

I am a real estate investor and have bought or sold houses in California, Maryland, Virginia and Georgia. I know and have worked with a lot of real estate agents. I consider myself very knowledgeable about real estate. When it came to selling our personal residence, I wanted the very best. I got that with Cheryl and Jeff Fox, who far surpass me in knowledge. While we moved quickly, we knew that my wife would retire several years before she did. We just did not know when the opportunity to retire would arise. She worked for the Federal government and took advantage of "early out" retirement, a complex and unpredictable process under government rules. Still, I knew several years ahead that the time would come when we would sell our house, so I researched agents meticulously. Cheryl and Jeff have a well-established reputation for selling houses fast and at the best price the market will allow. I talked to several other agents over the years, including some friends and acquaintances of our family, but found no one who could match Cheryl and Jeff's expertise in all phases of the process. Cheryl is a dynamo. She works extremely hard for you and is 100 percent on your side. She protects your interests with total honesty and amazing skill and determination. She knows exactly what to do to get the best price for your property and how to keep the transaction from going off the rails. I had worked for three months before listing getting my property ready, and thought I had it in pretty good shape. Cheryl pointed out several things I missed and put me to work getting them fixed. She wasn't afraid to tell us when we were holding up the process, and her willingness to push everyone along, ourselves included, paid off very well for us. Cheryl and Jeff are masters of the California residential real estate purchase and sale process. That process has become extremely complex over the years, especially in California. The pitfalls and minefields have multiplied. Cheryl knows them all in depth, and can explain clearly why her proposed course of action makes sense. One factor that really moved our sale forward was the description of the property. We owned a nice house in a great location, but it was a challenge to capture the highlights and present them effectively and without exaggeration. In buying properties over the last three years, I've looked at tens of thousands of MLS listings, and considered myself fairly expert at preparing a convincing description. I gave Cheryl my draft description, and she and Jeff improved on it considerably. We were literally swamped with buyers in the first two days after listing, receiving 14 offers. We accepted one of the all-cash offers near the end of the second day. Cheryl's biggest problem was dealing with all the buyers who were so disappointed that they didn't get the house, but as always, she handled that with skill and grace. Another "save" she performed had to do with our spa equipment. The booster pump was not working, and about eight weeks before listing, I started the process of getting it replaced. A pool contractor that I had dealt with for 15 years failed to make three appointments over three weeks, then sent a total idiot out to try to do the work. I hired another contractor who replaced the motor, determined that the control system wasn't working, promised to come right back and fix it, and never did over a three-week period of followup calls and emails. I then called a company that runs the largest pool repair operation in California, and their technician told me he couldn't fix the problem, as it was an electrical problem, which I knew it wasn't. So now we were two days away from the inspection, and I had totally failed to fix a problem that would probably cost us a fair chunk of money in the negotiations. I called Cheryl with the bad news, and she said she knew someone who was a master pool troubleshooter. Her guy showed up later that afternoon and fixed the problem in about 30 minutes. At the end, Cheryl said that ours was one of the smoothest sales she had ever handled. That comment in itself speaks volumes, because from our perspective, there were several bumps on the road that Cheryl smoothed out, like finding a termite fumigator who could start a tenting operation in two days. What she was really saying is that she is experienced in handling sales with many more complications than ours, and managing them to a successful outcome.