A home buyers experiance with Brian Santilena

July 15th, 2009

To anyone considering purchasing a home in the Oakland or Berkeley hills areas,

My wife and I are first time home buyers and the prospect of finding and purchasing a home was more then a little intimidating. After driving aimless through areas in several cities we thought we may like living in a friend and coworker recommend we contact Brain to help us out. Right away Brain helped us to understand the basics of the loan process, escrow, inspections, and clarified his processes to help him understand the type of home that would make us happy.

Brain was an absolute pleasure to work with. His familiarity with each neighborhood in the cities we looked in was an incredible help. Not just with esthetics like the quality of the school district, and local attractions, but he had a good sense of natural hazards, building ordinances, and traffic conditions that might effect quality of life in the area and potential resell factor of the homes. More then a few times he helped us to see below the surface of a fresh paint job and a remodeled kitchen and provided us a great education on building structures, and construction techniques as they affect regular maintenance or even insurance premiums. Brian is a wealth of information on existing building codes and which ordinances were coming into effect within the year. He showed us how to spot termite infestation, and even helped us envision the potential of a property that needed a little work. I’ll admit I am not one for home repair and having Brian to help us determine the difference between inheriting a huge problem from the previous owner and addressing a cosmetic fix made a very big difference in our choices.

Brian was incredibly attentive to our needs and diligently responsive to our questions rather they came via email, voicemail, or text message. He supplied us with numerous resources to help us find that perfect home and made it a point to make us happy, during our searches, though the bidding process, negations and sale. He never rushed us to a decision, and he did not want us to settle for less so he patiently walked through our check list of wants and needs at every site we viewed or any that we asked his opinion on. In the end we found a great place in a neighborhood we had previously never been to and got a great deal on a beautiful home with great neighbors and easy commute in a some what secluded clean an natural park like environment.

At every point Brian wanted to make sure we were happy, he brought replacement bolts for the garage door, which were damaged when the seller moved out, and checked up on us several times after the sale to see if there was anything else he could do to help us out; he just make sure we were still excited about our new home.

We felt truly fortunate to have Brian working for us; we would recommend him to anyone looking for a new home.

Sincerely,

Ken Toley and Ann Ninh

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