|
|
Review 11/13/2011
|
My home buying experience with The Shenbaum group has been exceptionally good. I represented myself with no agent. She and her team willingly showed me the house multiple times to make sure our family really liked the house before we made an offer. My initial offer was an email offer. Jennifer accepted the offer with a condition that I cross qualify with her mortgage agent. The mortgage agent was also exceptionally good and accepted a credit report that I had taken a day before to check my credit history. I wanted minimum hard inquiries as possible in my credit report and did not want her mortgage agent to run my credit report. Once cross qualified by her mortgage agent with credit report and salary slips, Jennifer wrote me a formal offer using California real estate forms (Zipforms is the software, if you want to make it yourself). I validated the offer with offer that I had while buying an earlier home and went ahead and signed it with 10K as an earnest deposit.
Now with a signed offer, Jennifer opened an escrow with Peninsular Escrow, a reasonable charging escrow office. I considered her mortgage agent, but shopped around and felt Wells Fargo was better for me on that particular day. The mortgage banks these days give a real run for their money and luckily for me, I had all paperwork and got it over in 2 days. Wells Fargo then initiated the appraisal process and it took couple of days for the appraisal and appraisal report. During this process, Jennifer and her team were always co-operative and was ready to keep the house open for appraisal any time. The appraisal was completed within a week and the house appraised to my offer price. But since the house was bought and sold with in last 12 months, Wells Fargo ordered a second appraisal. In the meantime, I wanted to wait for second appraisal and be sure the home appraised to my offer price and then go for home inspection. But since time was running out, I decided to go with home inspection and roof inspection before I knew the results of second appraisal.
I requested Jennifer for a scanned blank C.A.R form RR (Request for Repair) which she readily emailed me. I formally made a word document with all the repairs that I needed and converted as pdf document (pdf are non-editable documents) and forwarded to Jennifer through email along with updated C.A.R form RR. Jennifer accepted all the repairs and did each and everything that I asked for. In fact I had missed chimney door in form RR and request her to do orally. She compiled gracefully. Most of repairs had been completed before close of escrow and she gave me a proof of invoice copy for each of the fix. The only 2 things that were done after close of escrow were an electrical repair and fumigation and those were mutually accepted before close of escrow.
For a week after escrow, she had her Gardner take care of my garden and graciously allowed me to keep Gas, Electricity, Water & trash for a week until I moved in and transferred to my name. Working with her was pleasant and a good experience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|