House Hunting (Part 2) - Finding a Realtor and Lender

Now that I had my house list, it was time to search for a realtor.

I wanted someone whose full-time career was real estate. There were a few recommendations made to me, but most did real estate part-time. I didn't want to miss out on a house because my agent couldn't go to a showing due to work conflicts.

I wanted someone who was familiar with central OKC entertainment districts and the historic neighborhoods, someone who could give me insight on different areas of the city.

It just so happened that the week I was asking for agent referrals, one of the OKC twitterers I follow shared a link to blog post about historical homes. Come to find out the blog belonged to Alan and Heather Davis, local real estate agents. After reading a few blog posts about OKC and looking over the website, I emailed and received a quick response from Alan Davis. We did a phone interview and I learned that Alan and Heather were both full-time agents with Churchill Brown and Associates. They have both lived in different areas of historical OKC, so they had first-hand experience with my desired location. After speaking, I felt very comfortable choosing them as my agents.

Something I really liked was they worked as a team. while Alan would help with contracts and negotiations, another agent on their team, Ken Hutmacher, helped in my search. Ken would send me listings that met my qualifications and I would let him know which houses I wanted to see. The best thing was he would hear about homes that hadn't gone on the market yet through other agents he knew. He would text me photos and addresses and I would be able to be one of the first ones to view the home. This was vital in the hunt, as most nice affordable homes were being sold within 2-3 days of being on the market.

Both Alan and Ken suggested I work with a local lender. From their experience, the local lenders were more reliable at closing and easier to work with. I had already been pre-approved by a national mortgage company, but I took their advice and contacted Yukon National Bank. Best. Advice. Ever. My loan officer, Jessica Dean, was the best. She was always quick to respond to emails and answered every question I had. She ran who knows how many different calculations for me so I could figure out what my budget should be and which type of loan I wanted. I feel like I learned more about mortgages from conversations with Jessica than I did when I owned my last home! I have already recommended YNB to a handful of people and that is 100% due to the outstanding customer service I have received from Jessica.