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| - Wonderful presentation, but with uninspiring substance. We bought our first home in May 2015 and had a mixed experience with the Winzenried team. Here's the summary:
The good:
1) A great first impression during a meeting with Matt. We described what we were looking
for and we had an engaging conversation.
2) Paperwork was easy to sign and was ready on time.
3) Matt's team got us in the door of every property we requested to see, and did so quickly.
Even his office staff helped out during some home visits (including the home we bought).
4) Gifts, baked good, and event invites from Matt and his team.
5) Hannah was very helpful and was a lot of fun to look at homes with. If she becomes an
independent agent, I'd recommend her.
The bad:
1) We did most of the work of looking for homes ourselves and found the home we wanted by looking at the MLS ourselves. More often than not, we were trying to track down our agents to let us into the houses we found on our own. We did receive automated emails with properties that supposedly matched our criteria, but this automated system could not (or did not) weed out homes in neighborhoods we didn't want to live in. We were shown a few houses that were recommended by Matt, but I had some reservations about one of these (see point #2).
2) Conflicts of interest with the selling agent. We were shown one foreclosed home that was represented by an affiliate of Matt's parent company, which meant that this parent company was representing both the buyers and the sellers. When I asked Matt about this being a conflict of interest, he simply stated that this was standard practice and it was not, in fact, a conflict of interest. To be fair, this practice is not illegal; however, I felt that he didn't take my concern seriously and I was no longer confident that my best interests were being supported.
3) Some of the staff appeared new to negotiating with seller's agents. In one negotiation, we were assured that a particular bidding tactic would either win us the home or at least open up further negotiation--unfortunately, we lost the home without a chance to counter. To be fair, the buyer's agent seemed more disappointed and shocked than we were--I can only assume it gets dirty in the trenches of real estate.
The context: According to every real estate agent we came across, the Spring/Summer of 2015 was exceptionally busy. It was likely that Matt's team had more clients than they could handle, which may have explained the lack of individualized service.
At the end of the day, we had mostly positive or neutral experiences with the staff and we got a great home--we only wish we weren't the ones having to work so hard.
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