The Nelson Team - Barbara Nelson

Made inquiry - never heard back

We first met Barbara in late March to discus selling our home. We met with her and another agent that were both very highly rated on Angie's List. We ended up going with Barbara because she seemed to have a better game plan to sell our house, had a higher starting selling price (which was reasonable), and was taking a lower commission. Barbara did a great job in showing comparison homes in our market, even though it was somewhat tough due to our home being one of the more expensive homes in the Beaverton area. Barbara told us the house was probably fine as is, but we did have a plan already to improve the curb appeal and finish off remaining projects. We staged the home beautifully, and she helped out with the staging and brought over frames and other pieces to help finish off the home. The website and other marketing work on other sites such as Zillow looked really great. It was important to get this right and we were happy with the online presentation of our home. In the end we sold our home in almost 4 weeks, with 2 offers. Her second open house just happened to bring in the right buyer and she helped us to negotiate a rental agreement with the new buyer so that we could stay one more month ( who sells that fast in these market conditions?) Overall, a great job by Barbara and her team.

My plans to relocate failed due to family problems, but Barbara invested some time in finding homes for me to look at, looking over my present home and giving advice how best to sell it, evaluated it for me, and showed me a couple of possible new properties. I have worked with a realtor before but never one as efficient and pleasant to work with as Barbara. I will definitely go back to her when I am ready to relocate and I would recommend her services highly to anyone.

She was very professional and good about getting our listing on all of the major websites.

When we first spoke with Barbara we were impressed. She said all the right things and had the demeanor of someone who knows the business, and would sell our house if anyone could. She moved quickly. She had a sign up, flyers in the box, and listed in no time. After reading other angies list members' comments I thought she would have special insight regarding things we could do to make our house saleable, but she just said everything looked great and gave us a video for getting our home ready for sale. The flyers looked great and the descriptions made the house sound even better than we thought it was. She had an open house to get other realestate agents to look at it and get their ideas. From them we got an idea that maybe the house was priced a little above the market. We talked with her about this and she said we would see what kind of response we got and lower it after a few weeks if we weren't getting any response. After that all we remember is that we didn't hear too much from Barbara. We called her to tell her we wanted to lower the price and by how much. She didn't have much advice about it, it seemed pretty much in our hands. She was surprised when she came to put flyers in the box at how much we had done to make the house look good like adding bark dust etc... After lowering the price we got more responses, which is what we wanted since we were interested in selling as soon as possible. And so it happened, that we got an offer, but the offer wasn't ideal. We got an offer where we paid all of the buyers closing costs, our closing costs, and repairs on the house. We countered (or so we thought) that we would do this, but we wouldn't pay more for repairs since they wanted us to take such a drop in price. Well of course then the inspector came back with a long list of repairs and we were handed a list. When I asked Barbara why we had to pay for these repairs after having agreed with the buyer that we would only drop the price as much as we did if we didn't have to pay for repairs. All she said was "these repairs are required by the lender" and she wouldn't say anything more. At times I wasn't sure whose side she was on or if she was taking the path of least resistance and she figured it was easyer to get money from us than it was to find out what our options were. Whatever it was she wasn't talking and we weren't going to get anymore from her. From this point she seems even less engaged in the selling of our home. Past agents I have used not only could recommend a good contractor, they would call them and set it up. Barbara just said, get it fixed and let me know when you have it done. She said you might try this contractor. We tried them, and were sorry we did (another Angies story). Another fiasco was the roof. She told us that we needed a roof certification, we sent her what our roof company gave us and we didn't hear anything more. Then at the last minute before closing the title company was telling us it was missing. So we call her and she didn't seem to know anything about it. Then she called us and tells us we need to get it from the roof company and she has some specific requirements. This has been about the 3rd go around on this and several hundred dollars later and we still don't know why it's a problem. So we ask her to call our roofing company and have the paperwork sent directly to her. Later we saw that paperwork when the title company copied us on it and it was exactly the same as I had provided to Barbara earlier. So apparently we had been running around and worrying for nothing. I guess the final nail in the coffin was when she asked us when we would like to sign the papers and she gave us a couple of choices. When we went to sign the papers she wasn't there as she said she would be, the title company wasn't expecting us, and none of the paperwork was ready. Later when we spoke to her she seemed to suggest that we weren't clear on when we wanted to sign the papers. We remember no such ambiguity. In the end I guess she might have sensed our disappointment because she accepted a lower commission and told us she felt we had really worked as a team, unlike other clients she had had. We didn't see it that way.

We are very pleased with them. They posted our house videos, they made suggestions and they did everything a real estate agent should do but unfortunately the market is not the best right now. We have no negative things to say about them. We will be putting the house back on the market in another month and it will be with them again. We haven't spent anything with them as of now. The quality of their work is outstanding.

A colleague of mine recommended Barbara. We checked comments on Angie's List as well. Barbara met us and walked through the house selling process with us. She gave some handy advice on pricing and staging the house. We interviewed three other real estate agents and then decided to go with Barbara. After we moved out and had the house cleaned, Barbara and her husband Brian brought over items and staged the house for us. They also had high-quality pictures and virtual tours prepared before the house was listed in RMLS. While the house was on market, Barbara kept in close contact with us. In the end, we got an offer just 12 days after the house was listed, and the sale closed six weeks later. We are extremely happy with Barbara and her team.

We had an offer about a week after the house went into the RMLS listings. Barbara walked us through the process so that we met the buyers' needs as well as our own. There were the usual, as well as some unusual, problems before closing and each time something came up Barbara was able to communicate with us and with the buyers' agent to make sure that the deal came together. I have been involved in the real estate market for more than 25 years and thought I knew how to make a deal come together. Barbara showed me that there is always someone who has a better way to get things done.

Barbara and Brian both exemplify all the qualities that you'd look for in a realtor. They're professional, ethical, always on time, excellent about replying to questions and email, etc. I'm sure you'll find that in other realtors too, but what you won't find is the after-sales service. I had a problem with my water heater about 6 months after we bought the house, and had issues with getting the home warranty company to replace it. Barbara was under no obligation to help us, but both she and Brian went back and forth with the company and we had a new water heater in a week! Barbara and Brian really live up to their "client for life" policy.

Barbara was generous with her time and always on time with meetings. She made great suggestions for getting the house ready. Her confidence and expertise in navigating the process was especially apparent when a loan issue with the buyers bank developed right at the very end. Barbara was right on it and worked out a solution that was to my advantage and once again, I knew I had the right Realtor when she told me that solving the challenges that pop up are what make the job satisfying for her. Barbara and Brian own a professional moving truck for their clients use. I used it three times during the process of getting the house ready and moving after it sold. It was a so handy, easy to drive and saved me a bundle of money. Barbara also represented my parents in both a sale and purchase of homes and they still speak of the outstanding job she did for them. I recommend Barbara highly to my friends and will most certainly continue to use her services.

Barbara & Brian outstanding agents. They made our relocation pain free. Most importantly, they first took the time to understand our needs as a family first. They clearly understood that we were interested in moving to a community, not just buying a house. They took the time to show us around the Portland area and in the process refined their understanding of our needs while helping us understand what communities might be best for us. As we idd target communities, they provided us with all the info necessary to refine our search for a home. Once we found the perfect home to make an offer on, their responsiveness and attention to detail continued to be exemplary. The closing process was clean, simple and on time, and they kept us informed and educated the entire time. Brian even took the time to personally inspect the crawl space in our new home to save us from the dirty work! :-) They provided too many personal touches to list. We HIGHLY RECOMMEND Barbara & Brian!