Nivi, take a bow

This is something new for this site. In fact, First of its kind. Mostly, I write about Tech, Finance, books etc. Recently, I thought about writing/journaling more of my personal life and experiences. Also, interactions with the professional people whom I met.

If you have known Sri or myself personally, we moved to San Francisco from Boston (Sri) and Los Angeles (myself) in 2019. We don’t have that many friends or family here in the Bay area. Slowly but steadily we are building our circle though :) First place lived is in Burlingame. During 2020, we thought of buying home. Yes, during the pandemic year. Also, we decided to move to East Bay/Tri-Valley. That’s all we knew at the mid 2020. The first challenge is finding a good realtor. Started with a Redfin agent but didn’t find the chemistry. Then, we tapped our network and got some recommendation. Worked with them but it became very obvious even at the first meet that the dynamic wasn’t there. Kinda, we hit a roadblock. That’s when we got reference of Nivi from the most (un)usual place - Blind app.

We rememember vividly, our first conversation with Nivi. It was a good 30 minutes call - discussing about our timelines, requirements such as budget, location, etc. That was first of its kind by a realtor (at least for us). Clearly, Sri and I were impressed during the first call.

Then came our first meeting with Nivi for Open house. She showed 4 houses during that weekend. Things that we found it thoughtful were - The way how she planned the entire day. She started with the lower end of the budget and gradually moved to all the way a bit above our budget. She made us a realize what the difference in houses within in our budget. - The route at which she took us - super efficient. - Surprisingly, we did end up putting our first offer on the highest priced out house. - In hindsight she also recommended the pricing which would have won the bid - (Un)Fortunately, we didn’t quote that price and eventually we didn’t get the house. Neverthless, a great first experience. She was with us guiding all through this process of coming up with numbers, writing offers which includes terms like contingencies, reading inspection reports (which we were doing first time)

The patience but with an eagle eyed search continued for 4 more months. Finally, we found a place that we call our home now. That’s in a neighbourhood we already know well. We couldn’t be more happier with what we found. It ticked all our requirements. We wrote the offer (of course, 3 other people quoted the same price). Once again, Nivi came up with right bidding terms and helped us get that house. It was thrilling, trying to get your loan closed within 21 days. All went well.

And, we continue to be great friends with Nivi, well after the transaction.

You can check out her site or Linkedin

Happy to give an intro.

• personal