The Good
The Klinge Realty Group operates like a finely tuned machine, with a very personal touch. We contacted them on a Sunday and they were talking to us about our family and our needs on our living room couch the following day. They carefully listened to us and worked with us to identify the best and quickest path to listing within 2 weeks to take advantage of the low inventory conditions in our South Carlsbad neighborhood. They knew our tract specifically and had many previous sales there over the years - they came prepared with a thorough analysis of comparative sales and recommended a pricing strategy that they felt confident would yield offers the first weekend on the market.
The Great
Over the next two weeks Donna coordinated a range of vendors who she knew from experience could get the preparation to list work we needed done on time and with high quality. Our light tune-up involved excellent experiences with their stagers, landscapers, contractors, electricians, and plumbers. Throughout this period Donna's daily communication was clear, concise, and responsive. Any time we had questions Donna picked up the phone or texted immediately - but almost always, she answered our questions before we even knew we had them.
The Outstanding
We had a tricky situation with a shared fence that could have delayed our escrow. Donna used superb mediation skills to negotiate the terms of replacement and was personally on site with the fence contractor to make sure everything went smoothly. The fence looks great and escrow closed on time.
The Truly Exceptional
Our house came on the market on a Wednesday and between then and Monday morning Jim was personally at all three open houses. He was in constant communication explaining potential buyer reaction and strength. As he predicted offers began to come in on Saturday and each one was incrementally higher than the last. At the end we had 5 offers, 4 of which were over list, and the final accepted offer was $100,000 over list. In addition to being over list it included rent back terms that met our needs.
The Recommendation
For all of these reasons we would strongly recommend The Klinge Team to anyone wanting to sell in North County Coastal San Diego. I had been reading Jim's blog for 15 years and knew when the time came to sell that he would be our first call. Jim Klinge is not your standard realtor. He is keenly aware of market conditions and sales strategies. And, works his tail off - though not as hard as Donna . At this point he's gone from realtor to friend and I plan to have him over to grill and chill at our new place to talk real estate, but also just about life and raising kids in San Diego. He's more interested in relationships than his sales numbers - and that's why his sales numbers are so high. We have already recommended the Klinge's to some close friends and another successful sale is on deck right around the corner...
The Painted Lady closed today – for full price, $499,000 VA. 
Congratulations!!!
I don’t think poor home inspections are humorous at all. It can cost a seller tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. And home inspectors do not need to be accountable to anyone.
Quality product, quality seller, quality agent.
Man, I wish I lived in San Diego (rather than, at the moment, the flat featureless Midwest…)
I don’t know what it is about that picture but it almost looks like there’s snow on the ground and the home isn’t in San Diego but somewhere in the midwest or east coast. I think it’s just how the colors contrast or maybe that it’s not the typical San Diego tract look. Still looks really nice. Where’s the damn palm tree to remind me I’m in San Diego.
Congrats to you both!
Where did this half-blind inspector come from? Doesn’t sound like a Jim recommendation.
Congrats! Though I’m not surprised. 🙂
Extraordinary builder, exquisite home, and epic Realtor. Too bad the inspector added inept to that streak! Congratulations to Tom and JtR…
The buyer was represented by a downtown realtor, who recommended the inspector.
A good reason why you should select your realtor carefully!
From experience I can say that a good inspector can help your deal in ways you won’t expect. A bad inspector will only hurt you when negotiating.
Congratulations on the sale!
Sort of off-topic, where is JtR on this list ? Gonna’ make it in ’11?
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/07/san-diego-top-producers/
http://realtrends.com/products/top-1000-sales-professionals/team-volume
We (with jtR representing us as buyers) tried to close with two in the top 50 representing the sellers and they couldn’t get the deals closed. One was a complicated short sale that was foreclosed before we could buy it and the other was a lemon that Jim’s inspector was able to detect before we closed escrow.
The service JtR provided to us far surpassed what we saw from those on the list in the link above.
We closed on a much nicer home that was also a short sale and JtR did all the work to get it closed and used some great, creative solutions so we were in position to close escrow less than 48 hours after the short sale approval was signed.
Hope to see JtR on the list next year.
I’m a boutique operation – those are teams of 10+ people.
I was the number one salesman worldwide for KR though! 😉
I watched your video throughout this process and this is a great way to improve this potentially super neighborhood. The only thing that I would have done differently is make the back porch deck a wrap-around, creating a useful outdoor room with kitchen access. But no big deal, it sold in a flash. Nice.
Hey Peter that sounds great, nice vision. Maybe even do it in the historic style to match the front: )
Tom #13 – now you’re talkin! There is a home like that in PB that I’ve always loved. Street view of it: http://g.co/maps/gn4ct . Not that good of an image, but you get the idea.
Congrats to both Tom and Jim, I’m looking forward to reading about the next project.
I love that house
Congrats Tom, Jim.
I’ve seen the house from in person and it looks awesome.
Can’t wait to see your next property Tom. Improving SD one home at a time.