Some players are so good that they change the rules of the game. Well... Fay was such an agent for us. Fay is the third real estate agent that we've ever worked with. Before her we had minimal expectations from an agent: - To be flexible to show us homes according to our tight schedule - To tell us goods as well as bads about the house - And, to be trustworthy. Well... Fay changed our mind. Don't settle for a "just decent" agent if you want a chance in this crazy market. Here is our updated list after working with Fay. I'm not saying work with her only, but if someone is reading this comment, this is our honest opinion about what you should expect from an agent and our rating for Fay in each. The list is more or less in the order of importance for us: - Having a large network of past customers: we ended up buying our house off market. This is a huge opportunity that only few agents are able to provide. For this the agent needs to know the neighborhood very well and have a large network of past costumers and other agents to know who might want to sell their property before they officially put a listing. Fay is 10/10 with respect to this. - Knowing other agents (knowing them well, not just have heard the name!): obviously this is a big benefit when you put an offer. To get some insight from what's going on in the seller's mind and to be able to negotiate. Offering the highest price does not always win you a competition. We put three offers with Fay, for the two ones that we lost we knew exactly why we might lose before we heard back from the seller. This insight was something that only Fay provided to us not the previous agents that we worked with. Fay is more than 10/10 on this! - Being proactive in doing research on the house: Fay would not wait for us to see the house and show interest to start researching. You know for some houses you only have few hours to put an offer! From the moment we saw a listing she would first take an appointment for the visit and then start the research. She always had already talked with the seller agent more than once even before we visited the house. This is what sets you aside from other offers. Again 10/10. - Negotiation skills: Our road to buying a house was a very bumpy one. I don't want to get into details but it would be impossible if it wasn't for Fay's multiple sessions of negotiation with the seller. - Being %100 in your team: I just can say that Fay had much more stress than us to get this done, always she was pushing us not the other way around. She put a lot of time and energy for us. - To point out goods as well as bads about the property: Fay has tons of experience buying and selling houses and has lived and worked in the Kirkland neighborhood for a long time, but she wasn't the best in pointing out the small details in the house that might bug you after you buy it. This is the only flaw I can say about Fay. I'm not talking about major issues, but small ones, that probably won't really matter in our decision in putting an offer. But you still like to know them. We had seen so much homes that we would automatically point out most of the issues by ourselves anyway. I give her a 7/10 on this domain. - Being flexible: we didn't work with Fay for too long, but we were able to visit homes at any time that we wanted. She or her assistant would visit the place before us and FaceTime us in to save our time if the place had something obviously wrong. She would be 5mins late for most appointments though! So, 9.5/10 only for this reason. We are really happy about our decision to work with Fay. Fay has become a good friend to us during this process, but more than that she has something that set her apart from other agents, that she will get the job done.

- Nima Pourdamghani