ZillowVERIFIEDKristina completely changed view of buyers agents for the better. We had viewed dozens of listings and written a handful of offers in the four years since our son was born. We had previously negotiated directly with listing agents and retained them to write offers. We knew where we wanted to live (Lamorinda or west Walnut Creek), property attributes and price range. We both grew up here, and with local inventory thin, we did not need help to select a neighborhood or winnow listings. I previously thought buyers agents offered little besides another hand in the till. Kristina changed that. After six months of shelter-in-place and remote work, the walls of our dark, austere 2BR, borderline dilapidated downtown Lafayette apartment began to close in. We had all but resigned ourselves to accepting that a 3+ BR home would mean a dated stack-and-pack condo with shared laundry, limited parking, or no outdoor space in a less desirable community. It was a hot August Saturday. We viewed a place where the listing price worked with our valuation model and that we both really liked. This 3BR end-unit townhouse in the Lafayette school districts was tastefully updated with elegant accents throughout, in-unit laundry, new high-end kitchen appliances and a huge private deck beneath a canopy of mature trees, all perched atop a ridgeline with commanding views across a downslope meadow to the valley below and Mt. Diablos prominence behind foothills in the foreground and soaring in the distance. The Sacramento-based listing agent said that there was a competitive offer on the table, and I told him we were ready to bid and asked if he would write our offer. He politely declined, offering instead to shunt aEURoerepresentationaEUR? to his colleague. Id met Kristina LinkedIn and seen her around town a few times, so I fired off an email asking if shed write the offer. She was enjoying pool time with her family and a few close friends, but she still pulled away to call the listing agent and worked out a deal that would be accepted without blowing the top off the price. Within an hour, I had the draft offer in my inbox, and it was accepted in principle the next day. Krisi Nina doesnt drink the Kool Aid. She gets deals done, regardless of market conditions. Aways level-headed, she knows the market and proved ger knack for ascertaining motivations and restructured the deal to recast potential conflicts as win-win opportunities'. Even after the ink dried, Kristina offered a network of trustworthy, local service providers to help us with the logistics. Now our kids are classmates at one of the best elementary schools in California and and we see each other at kids' birthday parties around town. I never managed we'd find a turn-key 3B in Lafayette with these views for under $1 million bucks, but Kristina helped us make it happen!
