Jim Shaffer and Associates

Jim Shaffer is the epitome of professional. Buying a house can quickly turn from exciting to stressful, and Jim provides exceptional services well beyond those that you would ordinarily expect from a realtor. He is friendly, approachable, and very responsive to phone calls and emails. He really makes the process less stressful.
Jim is very knowledgeable about homes and real estate, and is very good at helping his clients identify how a property can meet their needs or be modified to do so. He helped me to find and identify a home that I would not have initially considered. I now have lived here for several years and it has been absolutely perfect for my needs. I’m so lucky that Jim helped me find it!
Jim is a great person, and it’s no surprise that he is so well-​regarded around town. He has given me referrals to other professionals that were also excellent. You won’t find a nicer and more talented realtor!

I was a first time home buyer, and I did not know one thing about how to go about buying a home. An inquiry on Zillow led me to Jim and Matt, and a few days later I was looking at houses in Ferndale!
Even though I’ve only purchased one home and went through one person to do it, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to work with Matt. He was totally flexible by helping me look at houses late at night or over the weekends. There was once a house that went on the market while I was traveling for work, and Matt took the time to go look at it for me and give me his honest opinion. I trusted him to always give me his honest advice mostly because he never, ever pressured me to consider putting an offer on a house. He helped me weigh the pros and cons of every house and after getting to know me and what I was looking for, would let me know before I even stepped into a house if I would like it or not.
My list of wants wasn’t that big, but was difficult in Ferndale. I wanted a bathroom upstairs if the house was a bungalow, an updated kitchen, walking distance to downtown, and knobs on cupboards and a stove that’s not right next to the fridge (sounds not complicated, but seriously, every house has a fridge next to a stove, and I don’t understand where pot and pan handles are supposed to go). I looked for almost a year, with Matt helping me check the listings and sending me houses I might like. Finally, one popped up only 3 blocks from downtown with everything I wanted, and I put in an offer with the help of Matt. I at first lost out on the house, but the original offer they accepted fell through, and the house was back on the market. Matt dealt with the listing agent for me to re-​negotiate everything. In the end, all I had to do was sign paperwork on the house and got it for quite a bit less than my original offer due to Matt’s negotiating skills with the listing agent (who was not the easiest person to work with). Since I was new to this, Matt also showed up for my inspection, and even when a beam in the house was flagged as needing to be updated, Matt came with me to get that inspected as well and get a quote to have the fee negotiated into my offer.
If you’re looking to buy a house or sell yours, I would definitely consider working with Matt through Jim Shaffer. If you don’t want to be pressured into putting in an offer every time you look at a house with an agent, and you want someone with honest opinions, he’s your guy! Especially if you want a home with knobs on kitchen cabinets so you can open them easily and for a stove that’s not connected to your fridge so that you can cook on both sides of your stove with ease :)

Working with Jim and Drew was an awesome Experience. I was a little nervous about finding a house that we would love as much as the house we were selling. Drew was amazing and really patient as we changed our target neighborhoods. He was great at showing my husband and I properties that we would both love.
I was really at ease after meeting with Jim about selling our house. We were able to get more that we had hoped for.
If you are buying or selling a house I would recommend working with Jim and Drew. They are amazing!

Drew from Jim’s team was extremely helpful… even at first during the uncertainty whether I was even going to buy or not Drew was extremely tentative and willing to show me any home I was interested in… Through the entire process he was always available and answered any question and provided the level of service beyond what I expected during the buying experience. Drew has an excellent knowledge of the Oakland county area where I was looking.
Even after the sale has closed and I moved in to the new home Drew has still been available and helpful.

Really appreciated all of Jim’s effort throughout the process. He was honest, direct, and hard-​working. Jim and his team were a pleasure to work with, and I would certainly recommend him again.

My husband and I worked with Jim on the purchase of our first home in May of 2013. As first time home buyers, we had a lot of questions. Jim understood our situation, stayed within our price range and answered all of our questions. Since our budget was very strict along with our requirements (3 bedroom, garage, close to downtown Ferndale, ideally $ 100k with max $ 150k) we were worried we wouldn’t be able to find what we were looking for. Jim assured us that we would find it. The search process was even fun with Jim; he has a great personality and we felt comfortable with him immediately. We saw around 15 homes in a month and a half. With the current market, we expected search to go on much, much longer and to lose a bid or three along the way. We were wrong!
The day our home went on the market, Jim called me and said we needed to go see it ASAP. His exact words were «Your house just went on the market.» I think it had been listed for maybe 5 minutes before he called. We went to see it a few hours later and he was right, we loved it! All our requirements plus more and right at our ideal price of $ 105k. The market is very competitive in Ferndale and we had heard many heart-​breaking stories of lost bids, so we considered offering over asking price. Jim said no, offer asking price and he would take care of the rest. 2 hours later our offer was accepted!
We could not be happier with our experience with Jim Shaffer. As long as he is selling in the Ferndale market, we will be his clients. His knowledge of the area, connections and negotiation skills are tops. We have already recommended him to everyone we talk to about our home buying process.

Jim Shaffer sold me my first house.
I found him by accident through Zillow. As real estate agents go, I thought he was as honest as it made financial sense for him to be, since the market is in the toilet and he makes his living on commisions from sales. If a house had a structural issue, he would point it out and tell us not to buy. Likewise, if eveything was in good shape, he’d point that out too. He did display a knack for showing us homes at the very tippy top of our price range, but he only completely missed the mark twice. Together, we probably saw about two dozen houses and he never seemed reluctant to go out looking.
We decided to place an offer on a short sale property in February of 2011. If you are looking for a home, you no doubt understand what a short sale is – they can be screaming deals, but the purchaser has to go through an agonizing wait to find out if the seller’s bank will even deal with them. We waited 6 months and got ready to close in August of 2011.
Being a first time home buyer, I admit, I was needy and I had tons of questions about closing. I texted, I called but there was nary a word from Jim Shaffer. One week before our closing, after three days of not gettting anything for a response, I finally called his office in Huntington Woods and found out he was on vacation and would not be reachable until the morning of the closing. We muddled through and figured things out, but it would have been nice of Jim to at least let us know he was going to be gone and give us the name of another realtor in his office that we could speak with. But in the end, we scored an awesome deal and got a house that we really wanted, and that’s what this was all about, not making lifelong friends with the agent.
Fun fact: A month later, we referred a friend of ours to Jim. When our friend told Jim who referred him, he didn’t remember who we were, even though we had been dealing with him for 7 months.