Lucas has been an absolute pleasure to work with!
At a high level, Lucas is trustworthy, detail-oriented, knowledgeable, connected, direct, and responsive. His style is not pushy or "sales-y", which helped my partner and I feel comfortable throughout the entire process. We honestly can't recommend Lucas highly enough!
Lucas was very flexible with our process and strategy. We knew we wanted to move fast, make several offers until we landed a home, and be budget conscious. In total it took us 64 days from the day we met Lucas to the day we closed on our home.
Below we breakdown our process with Lucas and how he added value at each step...
To begin with, we needed help finding a flexible lender. We had a somewhat unique situation and needed a lender that could work with us. Lucas immediately helped us get connected to lenders that were more nimble and responsive. We ultimately went with a different lender, but it was great that Lucas had our back right out of the gate.
In terms of finding inventory, my partner and I really enjoyed searching for homes to visit. Lucas recommended homes as well, but was very receptive to deferring to us. We found it helpful to visit the first open house with Lucas during the weekends. This helped ensure we had a tight feedback loop between my partner, Lucas, and myself. Lucas always made time for us to visit homes we were especially excited about - oftentimes we were the first buyer to visit. Lucas was very patient with us since we visited our favorite homes three or four times in total.
While we toured the homes, Lucas was great about giving us the right level of space to "take it in". We never felt rushed and he respected how big of a purchase this was for us. During the home tours, Lucas also pointed out key positives and negatives of the property. This helped us have a more objective point of view when evaluating each property. He also helped us understand what it would roughly cost to improve certain parts of the home - renovating a bathroom, updating the backyard, new roof, etc. This really helped us get comfortable from a budget point of view. Lucas taught us a key lesson - to think really hard about the lifestyle that the home and neighborhood would provide us. Lucas did a good job on helping us think about the big picture without getting lost in the details.
After we visited homes, we'd share feedback, prioritize, and request disclosure packets. These packets are often hundreds of pages. Lucas would patiently walk us through each and every page to ensure we understood the details of the home and deal. We really appreciated and respected Lucas's attention to detail during this phase.
Concurrently, we'd also start to look at comps of similar nearby homes. Lucas did a good job finding relevant homes and estimating the home's value. Early on the estimates were ultimately too low, which made us realize the market was hotter than we had all anticipated. Lucas proactively created a spreadsheet to summarize the listing prices and closing prices of recent homes so we had a very clear picture of the market. This helped us realize we needed to be more aggressive with our offers. Lucas let us arrive at this conclusion on our own.
During the offer phase, Lucas deferred to us on setting the offer price. We never felt Lucas was pushy during this phase. We knew some of our early offers were unlikely to win, but Lucas still supported us so that we could learn from the process. This helped us have more confidence and conviction for the next wave of homes.
Once we had a signed purchase agreement, Lucas was great at helping coordinate the closing process. Closing is complicated because there are several parties - buyer, seller, agents, lenders, insurance companies, escrow company, etc. Lucas developed a relationship with each of these parties and was able to move things forward on schedule. Lucas did a great job over-communicating early and often during this phase.
After we closed on the house, Lucas continued to go above and beyond! Our home needs a fair bit of cosmetic work and a new roof. Lucas successfully connected us to a general contractor and roofing company that we are now working with. Lucas even joined the early meetings with contractors to ensure we were in good hands. It was the perfect balance of hands-on but also allowing us to take the reins when it made sense.
Overall, Lucas is an amazing realtor and person. You are lucky if you get to work with him.
