"5"^^ . "4"^^ . . . "5"^^ . "For most people, buying a new home and moving can be stressful. Doing that and moving 1500 miles from your \"lifelong home base\" creates a whole new catagory in that regard. After many, many years of motorcycle trips to the Southwest, my wife and I started our 5 year plan on relocating and retiring to this area a couple of years ago.\n \n5 year plans are great. However, real life has a way of making them need to be adapted to new realities. Such was the situation we found ourselves in two years ago. Realizing that at a point, time becomes more valuable than money, we reassessed our strategy and the 5 year plan became the \"new revised\" 2 year plan.\n \nNow, just how do you go about relocating to an area half a continent away where you have none of the benefit of the connections a lifetime of living in one area brings you?\n \nThis is where it became interesting. reviewing homes on various sites, I found a few I wanted to learn more about. Alas, after a few homes were viewed on any of the sites, I was left with the option of \"signing up\" or moving on to another site. I knew what that meant, here comes the sales call. Well, I really wanted to continue on with my search so I signed up, the call came from Stew.\n \nWhat followed was the most amazing purchasing experience I've ever been part of in my 56 years, either as a seller or a buyer of anything. The voice on the other end of the phone (Stew's) was the surprise of my lifetime. We made an immediate connection and I was completely put at ease with his reassurance that there was no pressure and that he was used to helping people make these major life changes, Stew told me this was what he specialized in because he had found he was great at it.\n\n\nUnderstatement of the millenium as far as I'm concerned.\n \nStew spent hours learning about my wife and I and what we were hoping to achieve. Next, he set us up on a home search portal allowing us to see any properties in the areas we had determined would be of interest to us. Tricky stuff as we didn't really know, Stew just helped us determine that by LISTENING to us. \n \nA few months passed and soon we realized it was becoming \"now or maybe never\" to chase our dream home as the market was changing again. We flew in to meet Stew and we had come to feel it was almost to good to be true in regards to the personal connection we had formed. Reality proved better than fantasy as we spent two days visiting various areas and crazy as it may sound, I felt like I had known Stew all my life.\n \nWe returned home confident we were on the right track with our choice of Realtor, now what? Can you really commit to a house over the internet on the word of someone, (no matter how much of a connection we felt) or do we have to fly down everytime something looks \"right\"? Houses were moving so fast at that point, that wasn't even realistic. We decided to go with our instincts. Some potential houses came and went and with every one, Stew went out and gave us a complete video tour of each property as well as his personal feelings as to the properites suitability for our goals, along with his own personal findings about the property and area. Stew kept looking for us and in a short time found the home of our dreams, so we made the commitment long distance to buy. Stew sent us a video of the home so we could see what we were buying. It was a great video that allowed us to \"feel\" the home. A month later before closing we came down to do our personal inspection and what we found was the house he had located for us was far more than the video or his descriptions could have ever provided to us. In short, if anything, he downplayed what a wonderful property it was. We signed the papers. I would also be remiss in not giving special thanks to his wife Angie Keene for working out our financing. Making a 5 year plan into a 2 year plan created some obsticles that she was a wizzard in helping us work through. Thank you Angie.\n \nOf course, that isn't the end. In the three months before we could move in, appliances needed to arrive, pools and property needed to be maintained. Guess who took care of all that? Stew\n \nToday I'm proud to call Stew my best friend. Anyone looking for as low stress an experience in buying a house as could be hoped for, much less doing it while being several states away, couldn't do better in picking a Realtor than Stew in my opinion. Thanks Stew, you ARE the MAN!!!"^^ . "2013-12-26T00:00:00"^^ . "0"^^ . .