A lot of realtors can be kind of phony. Jenn is a real person to talk to who understands your needs and she's just such a compassionate person and easy to get along with. Jenn fit the bill perfectly. We were looking on realtor.com and went through a lot of bios. She made our shortlist and we asked a local friend as well and he said that he knew of her and thought she was the best option.
This is our 4th home so we knew the process and she helped us with the paperwork and she had it down pat. She helped facilitate a mortgage for us but we ended up not needing it.
Jenn definitely made it easy for us. She did all the leg work! I really thought for a while that realtors were overpaid but in our experience, she earned her money and she earned every penny. She set all of the showings up for us and was just very prompt with her communication by text and email.
We looked at a lot of homes, probably 30. It was stressful not finding what we wanted until the end. We saw a house early on and then it went off the market. We made one offer on a house and the sellers wouldn't budge and backed out. So that was stressful but luckily Jenn got us through it all.
The buyer should do their homework to find neighborhood or area they want to be in and then use a realtor to fine-tune and actually find homes. It's best to not rely 100% on the agent to start from scratch and guess what you want. You have to tell them so they know exactly what you want. Also, not every home is going to have all 30 characteristics that you want. Safety, neighborhood and aesthetics are the most desired characteristics. Jenn had a portal that would show us houses we may like. We looked at all of those and that was really helpful to have in our buying experience.