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Client Success Story: Brian and Debbie Green
Following their experience with the team, we caught up with Brian and Debbie Green, clients who bought a home with Andrew. Follow along in the interview below to see Brian's feedback, advice, and a peak into the home buying process.
Who are Brian and Debbie?
From Andrew: "I first met Brian and Debbie about 3 years ago when I helped their son buy a home on a quick turnaround. It had been the plan back then to eventually move to Madison and be closer to their kids and grandkids. We stayed in touch over that time and when they would come and visit, we would tour a home or two just to start getting a feel for different areas. Eventually, that plan went into serious action mode earlier this year at the peak of the sellers market. During the active search, I had the privilege to get to know Brian and Debbie on a personal level and then had the bonus honor to guide them through this market and find a home. We didn't hit a homerun on the first house we wrote an offer on - it took a handful of strikeouts to finally run all the bases - but we went through the heartbreaks together, grieved and commiserated together, got back out there together, made jokes together, had fun together, and most importantly: made a real and valuable connection with each other. I look forward to the fancy and expensive dinner Brian is going to take me on and can't wait for my kids and their grand kids to have their next playdate."
Why did you decide to buy? How did you know it was the right time?
“Well we lived in Illinois previously, and due to a lot of conditions in Illinois we were interested in moving. Our family (two of my kids) live in Madison, and my grandchildren so we thought this was a good idea to both get out of Illinois and move closer to our family.”
“As we’ve been looking for houses, we’ve actually been staying with my son, so we’ve had a lot of one-on-one time.”
What were you most nervous or concerned about in the process?
“We were most concerned about the timing of selling and then buying and whatever the potential gap was in between. And that’s turned out to be a legitimate concern.”
What you were looking for in a real estate agent?
“We were looking for somebody, first of all, that had a lot of knowledge of the area, especially specific neighborhoods and the values that went along with that. And also somebody that was very adept at listening. It was 21 years since the last time we bought a house so we had to do a lot of active thought processing so while we were looking at houses we were developing our thoughts about what we really wanted.”
Why did you ultimately choose Andrew to be your real estate agent?
“Well we had co-purchased a house with my son two and a half to three years ago and Andrew was the agent. I couldn't tell you exactly how we came upon Andrew. But that ordeal was consuming as well due to the situation that my son was in at the time. So it took a lot of patience and listening from Andrew at the time. He had to deal with not just what my son wanted but also what my wife was interested in since we were purchasing with him. He did a fantastic job during that. I think Andrew maybe be looking for a break from us, this has been a continuous period of about two and a half to three years.”
What stood out to you during the process?
“Just overall, the journey, I think Andrew understood early on that it was gonna be a journey. And that he had to be flexible and had to be patient. And had to make sure he was listening because as we amassed information, we kind of adjusted our thoughts about what we were looking for and had to be very sensitive to that. He kept asking questions, he kept listening, he kept seeing our reaction to different things, and he kept compiling that information to help us get where we ended up.”
“He was above and beyond. I mean the things we asked him to do at times, at times on short notice, and when we asked him we really didn’t expect him to do it because it seemed unreasonable and 99% of the time he found a way to accommodate us.”
How long were you searching for homes?
“I think we started this process before the end of the spring in Illinois. So we started doing a little bit of preliminary looking. So it's basically been since March.”
Does it feel good to be settling in now?
“Yes, it’s good to be done with the process and to move on. This market was extremely challenging and we ended up in a different place than what we started out with. But that’s fine, that was part of the adjustments we had to make.”
What advice do you have for someone who’s thinking about buying a home?
“Research. Research. Research. Understand they all have different dynamics. You can't call it a Madison market, it’s obviously a combination of multiple markets. Understanding what those mean and the dynamics of them, they all move in different cycles. There’s some consistency but not much. I don’t know if we had the time to do the research, but I’d just recommend it to anybody, so they understand what they're getting into. Who knows we may never see a market like this again but certainly we had to learn some new things we never anticipated."
Would you hire MWREP again? If yes, why? If no, why not?
“Absolutely. And obviously we’d prefer Andrew as our agent, but just getting to know Andrew (and we spent enough time together, we should've gotten to know each other), he learned things about us and we learned things about him. We got to meet his family. You get to understand what his principles are, how he conducts business.”
“I know factually that he wouldn't work for a company that wouldn't support his morals and principles. And that's good enough for me.”
I heard you had him and his family over for dinner?
“Yeah, we did. We still actually owe him dinner. I kept telling him when we kept putting him out, I started off telling him that we owed him dinner at a fast food place and as we moved closer and closer I kept moving it up. It actually worked out that we had an impromptu pizza party at our house. His son hit it off with my granddaughter, so we just said it’d be neat for them to get together again.”
“It became very personal.”
Do you have anything else you’d like to add?
“I would just say, Andrew’s style — he understood his role was not to be judgmental. He understood his role was to be an advisor. He did all of that.”
“I will tell you one of the things we learned at the end: the people we purchased the house from were represented by a discount broker and Andrew had pulled everything together. That would be the other advice I give people — I learned the difference between a discount broker and what you get with a firm like Winzenried. It’s not worth the amount of money people think they’re saving, that's for sure.”
Thank you, Brian and Debbie, it was such a pleasure working with you!
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