Windermere Real Estate/ Richard B. Smith

Our real estate agent's name is Jennifer Fornander, whom we met at an open house. The house ended up being beyond our price range, and we weren't quite ready to launch a serious house hunt as we had only been in Boise for a few months, but we found Jennifer to be charming and intelligent, so we gave her our information and took her card. Once we launched the search, we called Jennifer. During the process, we discovered a lot of surprising things about ourselves and what we *really* wanted in a home (thus changing our preferences and price range more than a few times). Jennifer was with us and very encouraging and patient during the entire process. She really helped us understand that buying a home really is a learning *process* for not only the agent, but the buyers. We had purchased two homes before this (in different states), but they were both new builds and not "pre-owned," so it really was a different experience for us. We found most of the houses we toured through a web service to which she provided us the access, preferring to pre-select homes and drive by them before requesting a tour. This worked well for all of us, and Jennifer was very responsive when we requested tours. As she got to understand our ever-changing preferences, she would also send us "hot off the press" listings. We looked at several "fixer-uppers" and she arranged for us to meet with a handyman during one of the tours of that house, so we could understand what we were getting into. We didn't end up buying the house, but we were impressed with how thorough she was. We gained complete faith that she would not let us pay too much for a house and would help us stay "eyes wide open" throughout the process. We closed on our house on 4/30/2012, and we're a little sad we won't get to interact with Jennifer as much as we did during the house hunt. If we had enough money to just keep buying houses, we would turn to Jennifer again and again.