Deva Wijewickrema - Home Buying experience
My home buying experience
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
To my readers, it’s a rare thing these days to find a good home builder, even rarer to have a great lender, and an exceptional realtor…. But the most amazing thing of all was to have all three in one transaction.
Four months ago we were lucky enough to experience just that. This is my 5th house purchase, and so far it has been the best experience I have had. Funny growing up watching my dad go to the work site every day for my mom’s new school, or when our last house was being built, and seeing how he had to go back and forth with the builder and dicker on little piddle things, I just came to expect that that was what was done. Heck I have had to do that twice in the past, and both times was never really satisfied.
Well at thirty three with the assistance of a great realtor, Ryan Ward; he showed us over 200 houses in the span of about 9 months, stuck with us giving us great advice, taking us to exactly what we wanted to see when we could spare the time to see it. We are rather detail oriented, did not want to compromise quality for cost; not that we were not on a tight budget to boot… With Ryan guiding the way, we were able to find that rare builder – you know, the one that does what he says, and says what he does. Yes, we bought a Tim Nama / Mayfield home.
This was the my first closing where the lender showed up as well - probably because our closing attorney was a mile or so from his office, I told Ryan, Kendall, and Tim at the closing if we enjoyed our house as much as they said we would, we would rave about it to all of our friends, well we did, and we have… but I thought I would rave about it to you too…
As far as the great lender, his name was Kendall Knight, he not only beat all the other lenders I could find banks – including the one I banked with since I was 15 (ok they changed their name a few times, but I stuck with them), mortgage brokers – my coworkers recommended, he went the extra mile to make it happen. The day before closing I was headed to a branch to get the certified funds… well I did not account for traffic at 3:30 in the afternoon, and showed up to the branch about 15 minutes after it closed… not sure what to do, I called Kendal… and he sent me to another branch that had later hours, called the branch manager, explained what had occurred, got the manager to wait till I arrived, and gave me my certified check… with that kind of service, I decided that day to switch all of my accounts, personal and business, over to Sun Trust.
As some of you know, I am a software contractor by trade, so I understand how important having reference clients are. I have made it a point to always be able to use any of my prior clients as a reference, and view endorsements of others as a reflection of myself… with that said:
if you are looking for a good home builder, please consider mine:
if you are looking for a great lender, please consider mine:
if you are looking for an exceptional realtor, please consider mine:
-Deva Wijewickrema
