By Alyssa Isenstein Krueger, June 11, 2021
By Alyssa Isenstein Krueger, June 11, 2021
Congratulations to my buyer Brooke on beating out 10 other offers to snag this perfect home in the Richmond neighborhood. Brooke found me because her sister’s kids attend the same school as my kids in SE Portland, and they were looking for an agent familiar with the area. Brooke is from Seattle and recently went through a divorce and sold her longtime home in Seattle with the intention of moving to Portland to be closer to her sister. Brooke has a daughter that has some disabilities and is mobility challenged, so the home she knew she wanted to purchase would ideally be near her sister, and have the right set-up for her daughter to be able to get around on the ground floor, and have a flat backyard. We spent a good 2+ months on the hunt, which meant nearly every weekend for 2 months Brooke drove down to Portland from Seattle to check out houses. She wrote offers on 3 homes and while it was brutal to go through rejection after rejection, in the end it was all good because like most buyers, the best house was the last house we saw and she wrote on.
The Richmond house is only 7 blocks from her sister, has the perfect layout on the main floor for her daughter to get around in, has a gorgeous bedroom suite upstairs that feels like a sanctuary with light and views of trees for days and bookshelves to fill. The whole house also has the kind of charm that Brooke was looking for. When we toured it, Brooke just kept saying, “this is my house!” And at one point she found the laundry shoot in the downstairs bathroom and squealed with joy. Like a lot of great homes, the home was clearly listed far too low, and while it was hard to stomach writing an offer for 30% over list price, Brooke was ok with it because this was clearly her house. Because the house was listed so far under value, it received 11 offers- with most of those offers well over 20% over list. But this was Brooke’s house and thankfully the seller understood and accepted Brooke’s offer. We did a quick close, no repairs and while the process of finding the right house and getting under contract felt like it took forever, once her offer was accepted on the Richmond house, it was a lightning fast process to close.