Krista Lombardi - Prudential California Realty

I was preparing my late parents’ house for sale and I had hired a contractor to help me determine how to proceed. I was assuming that I would want to make the house “move-in” ready for a family. After spending a couple of hours investigating, he suggested that we bring in Krista Lombardi, a Realtor that he had worked with to just to get her opinion on whether or not to do any work on the properly and if so, how much. The house was definitely in the category of a “fixer upper”. I was a bit skeptical at first as I had not yet thought of what Realtor to hire and I did not want to be pressured in any way. I agreed as the contractor assured me that she would just be happy to take a look and give her opinion. She came by and took a look and suggested that we hire an inspector to get a full picture of exactly what would be required to bring the house up to code to feel comfortable selling it for someone to move into which is what I thought that I wanted. There was still no discussion of her representing us in this sale in any way. Since I knew we would need this inspection anyway, I hired the inspector (she recommended someone and I followed up on his credentials). The day of the inspection, Krista showed up and followed him around, just trying to learn from him about the house and issues in general. Still there was no talk of us hiring her as our agent. After the inspection and subsequent quote of various repairs, etc., she suggested that we consider an “as is” sale which would require no output of money on our part and a quicker sale which was what we needed. She also mentioned that she had relationships with several investors that may be interested. The contractor also agreed that this would be a good move for us as the outlay of money to make the house habitable was $30,000-$50,000. After watching Krista through this process we realized that she was far from high pressure. When we decided to sign on with her she assured us that either parties could get out at any time if we did not feel comfortable with how the sale was proceeding. Since the house was in such bad shape, we were not hoping for very many offers in the ballpark of what we were asking. In the course of just a week or so (can’t remember exactly), she had 17 solid offers to purchase “as is”. This was in part due to her network of acquaintances that purchase and resell houses. We were able to settle with the 2 nd offer that we selected. Since this was also a painful and stressful time for me, selling my childhood home, I was concerned about all the paperwork, etc. Krista made this the most pain free and stress free experience that I could have hoped for given my state at that time. I knew that we would go to back to her when we were ready to buy. When my husband and I were ready to look for a house or condo to buy, it did not take us long to decide to go back to Krista. We contacted her to let her know that we were ready to begin our search but really had no idea where in San Diego County that we wanted to live. We started out with a reasonable price range that would allow us to pay less for our mortgage than what we were currently paying for rent. She was able to find lots of properties for us to look at and we quickly began weeding out neighborhoods that were just too far away or just not right for us. Krista reminded us that this would be a search not just for a house but for a location as well. She and her assistant Victor Zuniga continued to be patient with us over many weeks of looking at properties. We ended up scaling down our requirements, upping our purchase price a bit to get us closer to what we considered “home”. We immediately found a property that we thought would be perfect and submitted an offer. It did not work out and we found out quickly that there is a lot of manipulation out there; listings with lower prices than what the owner ever intends on selling the property for. Krista was able to warn us that this may be a problem which was lucky for us as the perfect property was still to come. In our case, the perfect property was a short sale. Although the “short sale” part was a bit stressful, Krista worked hard to keep the lines of communication open with all parties involved. We are now in our dream condo which has most of our original criteria met. I truly believe that without Krista’s persistence in her communications with the bank and seller’s agent for this property we never would have had a chance to get it. Through the whole experience, once again Krista and her assistant Victor, made it as painless as possible. They never seemed bothered by any phone calls or text messages or any of the endless questions that we asked. They were always there and had all the answers and if they didn’t, they got them! I would not hesitate to call on Krista for any of your Real Estate needs. She truly stands out in her field!