CENTURY 21

Rick De Barros is a terrific real estate broker! Our house had been on the market for six months with another real estate broker without a single serious offer but houses were selling in our neighborhood and we were not overpriced. We cancelled that contract. Then we found Rick De Barros and never looked back. Since we had already moved out of the area about 250 miles away, he met our concierge at the house and within 24 hours had made many recommendations at very minimal cost which greatly improved the showing of the house. The previous broker had said the house was OK and didn?t need any improvements for selling it. Even though the house did look ?OK? he told us it was not ?catchy?. Rick made many suggestions to improve the sales appeal of the house. (Rick not only has all of the real estate licenses he also has his college degree in design and architecture and worked in those fields for some years before entering real estate.) He said we should wash the outside, paint much of the inside, clean the floor grout (the house had beautiful floor tile everywhere), repair some minor problems, change the kitchen sink back splash, install crown molding on the kitchen cupboards and hire a staging company to furnish the rooms attractively. As we mentioned before we live out of town so we hadn?t met Rick in person but our concierge believed he was trustworthy and knowledgeable so all of this discussion was by email and telephone. These changes would cost about $5,000-6,000 on a $450,000 house. We discussed paint colors, backsplash tiles, staging and the repairs with him and told him to go ahead. Rick then took over. He contacted various vendors, took bids, got the lowest prices and hired them. He picked out and bought the paint and tile. All the while he met the vendors at our house and supervised their work to a very high standard. Lastly he had the stager furnish the house and then he was ready to put it on the market. He had a photographer take indoor, outdoor and drone aerial photos and put them on many real estate websites including his own at Century 21. All of this discussion and work took three weeks and the house was ready to sell. We discussed house price with him and decided to go higher than the price we had previously asked with the first agent. He then contacted all the agents who had left cards previously and encouraged them to come to open houses and to preview a very different home before opening the house to buyers. Within a day we had two offers including the one that we took. The offer was at a premium to our asking price. We greatly wish we had known Rick six months earlier and we could have saved a lot of money in upkeep and reduced our stress. Rick took care of everything and we did not have to make a single trip to Bradenton. In fact we didn?t meet him face to face until just prior to closing. We were able to take care of closing long distance as well. Rick De Barros is a top of the class realtor! --William and Carol owners