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Home > Our Buyer Brokerage System In Action

Our Buyer Brokerage System In Action

September 12, 2006 by idxcentral Leave a Comment


After careful research and analysis, have discovered that buyers are involved in 100% of the real estate closings!

Yet.. if you’ve ever attended a real estate seminar, the vast majority of speakers talk about representing sellers.

We have a superb Berkeley Buyer Brokerage in addition to our ourstanding Berkeley Seller Brokerage.

We love to work with both buyers and sellers… representing buyers helps to to know what’s important to buyers. This tell us how to better represent sellers by giving buyers what they want. And vice versa.

I received the following email from potential clients, and Carol and I met with them.

My husband and I have been consulting your great website to browse the Berkeley homes market for a couple of years, and we have also been reading your book. We are finally ready to buy and would like to act within the next 90 days. Are you looking for buyers to represent? How would we go about retaining you?

Carol and I met them for an initial consultation… they were both very busy, and really liked the detailed information we provide our buyer clients every week. We preview 15-20 homes each week, create maps, take lots of photos, and report back to our clients with detailed comments and notes.

We knew we’d enjoy representing them. Interestingly, they both were attorneys… and we’ve found that attorneys are great clients to work with… all they want is detailed information and analysis so they can make the right decision.

We sent them daily updates whenever a suitable home came on the market. They were intrigued by several.

It looks as though a few places in our desired location have recently come on the market. We were curious about the following houses:

1600 Virginia St, 1738 Virginia St, and 1525 Keoncrest Drive.

We scouted out each of the homes for them, taking photos, writing up detailed comments, and showing them where the homes were on our tour map update.

That week there was another home on the market, and we said “If you liked those three, you really should check out this one”

They visited during the open house, saw how close it was to the BART Station, and Elmwood shops, restaurants, and cafes... and decided to write an offer on it. They lived in San Francisco, and didn’t know about Berkeley’s wonderful Elmwood Neighborhood.


We met to write the offer.. they competed against 4 other buyers, and we were able to get their offer accepted.

We also put in an inspection contingency… and effectively negotiated for them during the inspection period.

We’re just as diligent negotiating for our seller clients.

We know whose interests come first… you, our clients!

Today was closing day, and it was a treat to meet them at their new home to give them the keys.

To celebrate, Carol took me to dinner on College Avenue in The Elmwood (or did I take her out to dinner.. I forget)

And now our buyers are in a terrific home, easy walk to BART to San Francisco, Whole Foods Market, Elmwood’s Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, and Looking Glass Photo on Telegraph Avenue. Looking Glass Photo and Sarber’s on Solano in Berkeley’s Thousand Oaks Neighborhood are our two favorite Berkeley camera shops.

I just read in the Whole Foods Market web site that “Whole Foods Market/Berkeley is the nation’s first major food retailer to introduce solar energy as its primary lighting power source!”

We went solar a month ago.. and love it!

Ira, with support by Poudini… who is keep my recent quote in the Wall Street Journal warm!

Want to search Rockridge, Piedmont, Elmwood, Claremont, North Berkeley, Berkeley Hills, Northbrae, Westbrae, Thousand Oaks, Kensington, Albany, El Cerrito and Kensington homes for sale? We have a direct link to the Berkeley Multiple Listing Service (MLS) IDX Feed right on our web site, and customized each search so you can look for homes for sale by neighborhood.. or City!

Filed Under: Berkeley, Cats & Dogs, Elmwood/Claremont, Northbrae/Westbrae, Uncategorized Tagged With: Albany, Berkeley, Cats & Dogs, Claremont, Elmwood, Kensington, North Berkeley, Northbrae, Poudini, Thousand Oaks, Westbrae

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Ira & Carol Serkes
Berkeley Real Estate

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      Berkeley Real Estate
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      (510) 684-3334 Cell
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