ZillowVERIFIEDThis home buying journey with Joe and Rolando has been such an amazing ride. Where do I even start? I guess I'll start from the beginning. Around October 2020, I came down on orders assigning me to Schofield Barracks, and being a previous homeowner, I knew that I wanted to purchase a home. To me, buying a home is an investment and owning property is one of the best ways to build wealth, thus began my search for a real estate agent. I quickly came upon droves of real estate agents with mixed reviews in my search, some good and some bad, but one team had perfect 5-star rating through and through. So I decided to give Joe a call. Within two rings, he answered with a enthusiastic "Aloha! This is Joe." Within the first 5 mins of our conversation I could feel his energy, motivation, and passion for his work. I explained my situation that I needed to sell my first house to reinstate my VA option, and he said that was no problem. He then scheduled a video call later in the day to go over our strategy and to explain the entire process broken down Barney-style. We then went into depth of what my priorities and must-haves were. Even though I wasn't arriving till three months later Joe regularly checked in to see how everything was going with selling my house. Once I finally arrived on island January, we immediately went looking at properties. Since I didn't have a vehicle and was staying in town, Joe picked me up from the hotel and took me to the showings. This was honestly my favorite part of the whole experience, because it didn't feel like I was working with my realtor. Even though on some days we saw around 7-8 showings, it felt like I was just cruising with my homie. I think 35 total showings over the course of a month and a half, but the entire time it was super chill. Now on to the offers.. Within the first week we put in an offer on a property, but it didn't get accepted even though we came in $33k over asking, which I wasn't upset about because it was in fact only my first. The second offer we put in two weeks later was also beaten out by someone who came in $50k over asking with a rent back contingency. Then came a dry spell of no inventory on houses, there literally were no houses that we hadn't seen already. At this point I was getting a little discouraged, because I was at the 30 day mark of living in the hotel, but Joe being a true homie consoled me and advised me to stay strong and kept working diligently to find properties to visit. So on the next house hunting excursion, one the last house on the list of seven... we found the ONE... and let me tell you it was perfect. Immediately we both had that look like "bruh, you thinking what I'm thinking?" And we went to work putting together a slam dunk offer. I won't break down the specifics, but Joe and Rolando both came through big for me... like above and beyond what any realtor did for their client. Anyways, we submitted the offer and the next day Joe hit me up on FaceTime, I had just gotten back to the hotel and was walking my dog Casper (a part of me knew that it was accepted already, but I'll tell the story anyway haha). Joe had a depressed look on his face and said "So we put in the offer and the listing agent just called... Apparently there were two offers that came in higher than ours.... so that means ultimately.... they decided.... to accept OUR OFFER!!" Lol. That was such a great feeling, Casper went crazy on FaceTime as well (see attached screenshot of that epic moment). Even though there were two offers that came in higher than ours, the personalized cover letter, plus the other specifics of our offer made the sellers want to go with ours because it perfectly aligned with what they were looking for. Sometimes money isn't everything. *Special shout-out to Eddie Akabane from Smart Money, who Joe introduced me to, for working his loan processing sorcery to make sure I got the best loan package possible. From advising me on what steps I needed to follow to sell my house and reinstate my VA eligibility to making sure that I got the best deal possible, Eddie had my back* After 45 days of waiting for the VA to close on the loan, it was closing day, and let me tell you it was EPIC. Joe and Rolando showed up early to setup the house for Casper and my arrival. They had the red carpet laid out with a big ribbon on the door, and a videographer ready to roll. He also had a bottle of my favorite bourbon, and not that generic cliche bottle of champagne that everyone else does, and they also gave Casper some goodies as well. All in all it was a cherry on top to an already amazing experience. My final thoughts... If you've read to this point you already know that it was a roller coaster ride of an experience, and I couldn't have asked for a better real estate agent, friend, or brother than my homie Joe along with the rest of the O-team. Hire them now, you won't regret it.
View All Listings