July 26, 2008

To Whom It May Concern,

Abbe Waldman was the realtor for the sale of our home on 2703 Holly Springs Ct. in Austin, TX.  She did an excellent job in every aspect. 

I had never sold a home before and so, I was new to the experience.  I didn’t know anything or what to expect.  Abbe lead us through the process in a manner that left no questions unanswered.  More than that, she did many things that she didn’t have to such as spending hours taking us to visit other homes in our housing market so that we could understand why homes were selling for what price. 

Abbe’s marketing of our property could not have been any better.  The web presence was spectacular.  This may sound like an exaggeration, but it is not.  The virtual tours of each room looked beautiful and the still photos on the website included captions that she wrote making the home sound attractive and special. Abbe followed up on visits to the home by other realtors who were showing the property.  When an offer came in, she handled it skillfully and guided us through the decision making processes.  I felt like I could rely on her judgment 100%.  Even when our final offer was close to being finished, Abbe was still following up on contacts by other realtors and communicating with them regarding potential offers.

From the time our house was placed on the market, our final closing was only one month later!  We were amazed and thankful!!  It would not have happened without Abbe’s leading the way and providing us with her expert advice.  Abbe is very professional yet, has a friendly, easy demeanor which I found very beneficial when dealing with the stress of selling the home that I had lived in for 22 years.

If we ever purchase or sell real estate again, Abbe will be the person we will trust to handle our affairs. 

Sincerely,

 Cathy Prescott (512 567-1783)

Glenn Hathaway (512 748-9827)

To Whom It May Concern:                                             August 10, 2008

It is difficult to convey how much Abbe did for me to sell my house earlier this year. I think that if there were a real estate hall of fame or book of world records, the sale of my house would be in them. Having first hired an agent who not only did nothing but lost keys and mistakenly posted pictures of my bathroom on the internet, and having leased my place to a renter who was essentially dying of alcoholism, and facing the looming possibility of having to replace the entire sewer line behind my house, I hired Abbe. Within less than a month she helped me turn the entire mess around.

But even before Abbe sorted things out for me this year, she served me well a few years agp when I asked for her help. She came to advise me on how I might go about selling my house and, even though I was ready to hire her to do it, she suggested that I wait at least a few more years for my house’s value to appreciate. I took her advice and was able to sell my house this year for $90,000 more dollars than I would have been able to had I gone ahead and hired her then.

When I finally did hire her, she took matters in hand immediately and vastly improved the way my house was being marketed. Where I had had virtually no one looking at the place at all for the previous five months, we began to get calls and walk-throughs once

Abbe took the reins. When people responded to the run-down parts of the place, Abbe suggested easy and affordable remedies that immediately garnered more positive responses to it. Crucially, Abbe recognized the impending death of my tenant one Friday and was able to alert his relatives to his condition. By Sunday of that weekend, he had been taken by ambulance to the hospital and did not have to suffer the indignity of a solitary death. Clearly, I was not the only person she was helping.

Immediately after that crisis was averted, we were contacted by the people who ended up buying the house. When we started looking into the details of what needed to be done on the house, the issue of the sewer line came up and became problematic. (The line had been attached to the neighbor’s line in the 1940s and had only been discovered as such when a new owner built a house on the lot earlier in the year.) Abbe quickly got several bids from plumbing companies, bids ranging from $4,000-$11,000. This range made everyone nervous since one possibility we were discussing was to include the price of the work in the price of the house. This was my preference since I live out of state and did not want to undertake such a project from such a distance. Fortunately, Abbe knows sensible workmen and one of the plumbers she asked to bid on the work pointed out that the digging in the yard would imperil the giant pecan trees along the fence line I shared with the neighbor to whose sewer line mine was attached. This consideration prompted me to call the city engineer in charge of these kinds of issues and he then suggested that the prospective new owners of my house obtain a private easement from the neighbor. We not only settled on a reasonable reduction of my asking price, we also were able to leave a situation alone that had not yet caused the problems it was feared it would cause. We were able to leave what was unbroken unfixed. I have no doubt many headaches were avoided.

I also think that Abbe’s congenial manner made a big difference in how easy it was to negotiate with the buyers. She established a friendly relationship with them and I think they sensed her decency and good sense. She represented me well at the important moments too. She made sure to be there when the inspector they hired inspected the house. She was thus able to give her impressions of what he pointed out and what he said about what he saw.

I could list many other saves and happy chances that Abbe  effected or facilitated. All the way through the process she never failed me. Suffice it to say that I have never seen or heard of a harder working real estate agent. She always managed to keep her cool even in tense moments (and with my situation, there were plenty) and she offered unfailingly sensible advice. I recommend Abbe without any reservations whatsoever. She is honest, diligent, wise, resourceful, and charming. You will be in good hands if you hire her. You will be in the best hands.

Sincerely,

Jacqueline Thomas

Assistant Professor

Department of English

Christopher Newport University