Wendy & Nicola –
Ines Hegedus-Garcia is like a force of nature!
After a false start with a realtor who was, in truth, a nice guy, I can’t tell you how much we felt like we had hit the jackpot after Ines agreed to become our Buyer’s Agent. Knowlegeable, motivated, personable, shrewd, funny, passionate about mid-century modern MiMO architecture, tech savvy, and with superb communication skills (something that, I feel, reveals a lot about a person’s attentiveness). There were so many times when I would say, “Wait ’til you SEE what Ines forwarded today!” You could not want a better ally. We were high-fiving over our good fortune.
And talk about integrity. An agent’s commission is a direct percentage of the sale price. We were honest with Ines about the fact that, to us, the house we wanted would be worth $30,000 above its asking price. By the end, she had negotiated a price $10,000 LOWER than the asking price. Something else worth thinking about is the fact that the Seller’s Agent was from the same agency as Ines and Rick. It would be logical to worry about a conflict of interest; after all, what’s good for the Seller would be good for the agency and literally good for both agents. But Ines was relentless in looking our for our interest, challenging the Sellers on many things where she could have chosen not to bother and we would never have known the difference.
We certainly knew from our communications that she was arranging, smoothing, and negotiating tons of things to make the deal happen. But I was impressed, also, by several occasions where we found out, in some oblique way, about other things she had going on (for our sake) above-and-beyond what we knew from the email communications with the Sellers and their Agent. I had several conversations with or emails from people (involved in the transaction in some peripheral way) that just confirmed what we already felt. People in the business who went out of their way to let us know that they found Ines’ engagement and professionalism exceptional. In their various ways they were saying, “I deal with home sales every day and you should know: you guys are very very lucky to have this woman in your corner.”
Is it an advantage that with Rick and Ines you get top-notch realtors AND the benefit of their background (as an accountant and an architect, respectively)? Well, YEAH. You bet it is.
How they have time to maintain their amazing web resource in addition to everything else I don’t know! Miamism.com is tremendously helpful (and fun) if you are investigating the Miami market.
I know that Ines and Rick service a mix of properties. I can honestly say that, although ours was a mid-priced home, we neer felt like less than million dollar clients.