Don Cies Real Estate

This review was written several months ago, right after we stopped working with Brian Eddins. I was waiting to post the review because I wanted to be able to compare my experience with Brian to whatever realtor actually helped me close on a home (we were first time homebuyers and I wanted to be as objective as possible). After working with my last realtor, who actually did his job and wasn't aggressive or manipulative, I realize this review is actually generous and Brian was worse than I originally thought. However, here is the review, unchanged from when I wrote it. I will start with the good experiences first and get to the ugly later. When my husband and I first met Brian he was friendly and personable. We asked him to suggest lenders because we felt like our current credit union was inexperienced. It took him a couple of days, but he emailed us a list of a few different people that he recommended. He was very good at quick communication through the phone. Most of the time when I called, he answered right then. If I had to leave a voice mail, it usually did not take him longer than ten minutes or so to call back. And that's about it for the pros. I believe Brian used gas-lighting against me during our encounters on the phone and email. If you don't know what that is, look it up on Wikipedia. In short, gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse used against a person to make them question their own judgement. It's actually a great tactic (though unethical) for a realtor, I'd be surprised if they didn't all use it. I'm pointing it out now because it will crop up several times in my story. The first thing my husband and I noticed when we met him for the first time is that he interrupted a lot and talked over us. The reason this wasn't a red flag at the time is because we could tell he wasn't trying to be rude or aggressive, it's just his personality. It did however, end up being a problem later on. Anytime we would talk to him on the phone, he would talk for about ten minutes non-stop repeating himself and trying to reassure us that everything is perfect. We are both soft-spoken and interrupting someone to get a word in is not something we like to do. When we did interrupt, he wouldn't even let us talk, just continued to drone on. Not only did he do this to my husband and me, but we also noticed he did it to our mortgage broker when we were waiting in her office one day. Every time I spoke to him on the phone, if I asked a question about how something worked or voiced a concern, he would start to say "Now, don't freak out." Here is the first gas-lighting example. He only did this to me, no one else that I know of and he did it every time I talked to him on the phone. He would say this even though he was the one talking for ten minutes when I had only said a sentence or two. It was insulting to me that he told me not to freak out, especially when I was always calm, and he was always high-strung. Because he was so easily worked up, my husband and I felt like we couldn't come to him with any concerns or requests.Once we were under contract for a house, that's when the real problems began. I had to ask him five times over a period of a couple of weeks to check to see if the property was in a flood zone. He was late for several appointments. When we made on offer on the house, he was unwilling to negotiate for us. He just kept saying "Well, I don't think that's a good idea but I can do it if you really want me to." We ended up being under contract for full listing price on the home. We really loved the home, so it was worth it to us. When I asked to show my dad the home before inspections came (my dad has built homes and I value his opinion on quality), he refused and said he could just come out when the inspector did, which ended up not working out for my dad's schedule. When inspections came, he argued with my inspector (who was fantastic btw) about something he thought was a maintenance issue and my inspector said was a repair. He even belittled my inspector to me later, which I found to be completely unprofessional. If he thinks he knows so much about inspections, maybe he should be an inspector instead of realtor. I just felt like he should have let the professional do his job without interfering. A week later when I spoke to my inspector on the phone, he warned me to be careful with Brian, he could tell he was trying to take advantage of us, something I had already realized at that point. We lost the home and about $1,200 because of a simple mistake Brian made. When the appraisal came in, it was $13,000 below the price we were under contract for. When I heard, I immediately asked Brian if he had checked the comparable sales before we made the offer on the house (this is part of his job, something a realtor is supposed to do with each and every home). His text to me said exactly "Yes I remember thinking that the value was just fine." At this point Brian told us he would be contesting the appraisal to get it higher. My husband was under the impression that Brian was looking for comparable sales to send to the appraiser to justify the price on the home, but a week later we found out that he wasn't doing that and was only contesting a small error on the appraisal report (that ended up raising the value $3,000 in the end, leaving us with a $10,000 gap). I asked Brian to show me the comps that he said he had found that justified the price. I asked him three times and each time I asked he tried to divert the conversation to something else. In the end, he flat-out refused to email me comps. My husband and I believe the only reason he wouldn't show us the comps is because he didn't actually find any and lied to us about the home value. He also told us he was only willing to work on one of the two problems. Either he would fight the appraisal to get it raised or he would try to convince the sellers to lower their price $10,000. He said he wouldn't do both, and we had to pick which one was important to us. Up until then, I had been dealing with Brian more than my husband because I don't work and I have much more time than he does. When I kept asking Brian for the comps he became angry and told me that I was being hostile and he didn't want to work with me anymore and would only speak to my husband. At that point I told him that was fine, that he didn't have to communicate with me but that we would need to terminate our brokerage contract with him if he only wished to speak to my husband. He agreed to this and from then on, only my husband spoke to him. In the same email, I told him I would be writing a review on our experience and he replied that if I wrote a bad review and libeled him, he would have his attorney involved. This is another gas-lighting example. He was suggesting that I was going to lie about our experience to defame him. But we all know that it's not libel to write a bad review that's true. When he told me I was being hostile and threatened to sue, I actually had to look back at what I had written because I was confused and second guessed myself. Thankfully, everything was in email so I can look back and see the back and forth conversation between us. By threatening me with an attorney he was trying to "vilify the victim." I know he made this threat to scare me from writing the review because he realized he messed up. The reason he went ballistic is because we caught him in a lie. Incredibly, the only thing I had to do to get that threat was continue asking to see the comps. Neither of us ever accused him of lying. I can't imagine what he would have said or done if I had told him I thought he was lying. This is extremely frustrating because we are very forgiving people and we appreciate humbleness. We would have continued to work with Brian if he had admitted that yes he made a mistake, but it wouldn't happen again. He tried everything in his power to cover up the mistake that lost us the house. And even worse, he has no empathy for the fact that we lost money. Maybe $1,200 isn't anything to him, but for someone like my husband and me, it does make a difference. I want to point out that nearly all the reviews of Brian on Zillow have generic usernames with numbers at the end. Also all the reviews are very formal and repetitive. I think Brian is writing his own reviews online (I am not making a statement of truth, only a statement of belief). Also, Brian got in trouble on Zillow for soliciting several times. You can see this if you look at the advice page under his name. You have to actually click on the links on the questions and answers. Also notice that his grammar and punctuation are very poor. Of course, this isn't a crime, just unprofessional. My advice is to not use this realtor. I hope our story helps someone else out there, especially if you are a first time home buyer like we are.

As first time home buyers, we had no clue about the paperwork, or what things to look out for in houses. Moen helped steer us clear of disaster houses and even with our very specific and quot;wantsand quot; for our home, she worked very hard to find us homes that met our criteria. She was always professional and very enthusiastic about helping us find our first home. She very patiently walked us through the home buying process and explained what all the terms meant. I highly recommend her as a real estate agent.

Ms. Hayes is great. She is accommodating, friendly. She is very knowledgeable in her field. We just love her.

They did a really god job of advertising, staging and sold it on the first day. They showed it 5 times the first day and sold it to the second person who looked at it. We've used them before. They did a good job, I can't complain and I'd recommend them.