Joe Rivera – Vanguard Properties

I can’t fully express how valuable it was to have Joe in my corner when buying my first place. He is so wonderful, knowledgeable, and professional. After being essentially brushed off by another broker who didn’t feel my price range was worth the trouble, Joe stepped in and treated my deal like it was worth a million bucks! That meant a lot to me. I do commercial real estate for a living, so I had a small clue about what was going on (alright, very small) but I still leaned on Joe a lot to help me through the process. He made my first home buying experience as stress free as it could possibly be. When, at the 24^th hour, I couldn’t get a hold of the mortgage broker I planned to use, Joe of course came to the rescue with a great recommendation. All went well and we closed earlier than anticipated! I would recommend Joe to anyone looking for an amazing Realtor, I will definitely being going back to him in the future.

The primary reason why we decided to start with Joe was because he was by far one of the more professional & knowedgable agents we interviewed. My wife and I selected Joe after interviewing 3 – 4 other buyer’s agents. Since this town seems infested with real estate agents, we originally narrowed down this list by soliciting recommendations from friends, family, and co-​workers (Joe’s name came to us from one of my wife’s co-​workers who also had a positive opinion of him).
My wife and I came pre-​approved by a mortgage broker, we knew approximately how much we wanted to spend, and we had a good idea of what we wanted in a house (size, garage, floorplan, style). While we weren’t 100% sure which areas we wanted to live in (Protrero, Pac Heights, Noe Valley, Bernal Heights, etc), we knew which areas were OFF our list (lower haight, pac heights/​marina or any other neighborhood too far inside the city b/​c of our work locations). I shared this information with every agent PRIOR to our first meeting. Well, it was amazing to see how many people (even full-​time «professionals»), came to our first meeting woefully unprepared. We met at a café and Joe laid out some prospective properties — several of which my wife had already viewed online via the MLS system. Even though we only looked at one house out of the batch he sent over, he was already trying from our first meeting to understand better what we wanted. While filling out some warm-​fuzzy «needs-​wants» worksheet might work out for a clueless couple w/​o any idea of what they wanted (yes, another agent did waste our time with this tactic), I see no need to revisit what we want and don’t want. Secondly, if I have a mortgage broker pre-​approval letter, I’m NOT going to waste time filling out paperwork to use your broker even before I decided to use you. Joe didn’t bother with any of these tactics and jumped straight into finding us our home.
Furthermore, Joe never made a pretense of asking us to sign a contract stipulating that he was our agent (so he can lay claim on any house we decide to buy); instead, he chose to let his actions earn him our business.
The entire search process for us took approx 4 months and the closing took a bit over a month. Finding a house was fairly straightforward: Joe would visit a place on the buyer’s tour mid-​week, he’d send over some places that «fit our bill», we’d check them out on the weekends (most of the time by ourselves, a few times with him), and we’d decide whether we wanted to check them out together or pull a disclosure package to consider a bid.
Even though I wasn’t paying Joe’s commission, I wasn’t terribly interested in making someone $ 25−30K just to send me emails, drive me around, & serve me a free coke in a fancy office. Where Joe really earned his keep pre-​escrow was in his advice based on his knowledge of the various neighborhoods in SF under consideration. He gave me ideas of how much X would cost to repair/​change and how much Y was worth (relative to a house w/​o that item). Ultimately, he always hustled. He made himself available whenever I needed him (nights & weekends) and ALWAYS returned my phone calls — even while on vacation. I really did appreciate his feedback and advice on how a given offer would be perceived and what it would take to get the sellers interest. In every situation where the sellers countered with some terms more complicated than just «we want more money», Joe spent the time with me to discuss the trade-​offs of these concessions & whether or not they made sense for us to accept. In the end, it took bidding on 5 houses before we were able to make a deal at a price we could accept.
While his support pre-​sales was without fault, I really do think Joe earned his commission post-​sale. Since this was my first home purchase, I really leaned on Joe for feedback on all the myriad of different considerations and decisions that we needed to make between the opening and closing of escrow — several of which seem to be unique to the house buying process and defied logic. It also didn’t help that the lenders right now seem to act like they are doing you a favor and treat borrowers like criminals — even if you are looking for a plain vanilla mortgage (20% down, 30yr fixed) and have impeccable credit.
I would highly recommend Joe to anyone looking to buy a home in SF based on my experience with him. Based on the quality of his advice and his professional demeanor (it was also amazing to see how many clowns were acting as listing agents by doing things that were very clearly NOT in the seller’s best interests), if Joe is still in this business I plan on using him when my wife and I finally decide to sell our home. I have no doubts that he will be worth his commission on that side of the deal as well.
–g
PS. Prior to «hiring» an agent, check with your friends who purchased houses recently. You may be surprised to hear how many folks did NOT necessarily think their agent was worth the mone