Testimonials

I have had the opportunity of working with Grace on a recent transaction. Grace conducts herself in a very professional manner, is very knowledgeable, and is truly a pleasure to work with. I would highly recommend her to anyone!

Grace is great—patient, responsive, helpful, and able to Get Things Done. Grace and her team just helped us sell our house in the East Bay. We were concerned that it would be a hassle since we were moving to SoCal before the house went on the market. We definitely didn’t want to be juggling a bunch of issues from afar while trying to settle into our new place. Fortunately, we didn’t have to. The entire process was smooth from start to finish. Grace provided great recommendations on stagers, window cleaners, carpet cleaners, and so on. After we moved out, all the necessary paperwork was dealt with over email and with a mobile notary. Two weeks later we got a great offer on the house and closed soon after. This is how it should be done!

Grace was exactly the kind of realtor we wanted in our corner: very responsive and easy to work with, yet also willing to push hard when there’s a good opportunity to be had. She also has an exceptionally good intuitive sense of the market, which helped us to know when certain houses were unrealistic for us and which ones were flying under the radar.

We got a house on only our second bid, but that was largely due to Grace’s advice to watch the market very carefully and then pounce with a very strong offer when we saw something we loved.

In the spring of 2015, Grace helped us buy a house prior to a cross-country move. We gave her a pretty tough challenge: the market was going crazy and she had only a few days to meet with us in person. But it worked. We got a good house in a great location with our first offer.

Several things stand out about working with Grace (and Kim, who was also very helpful). First, she was strategic and realistic, both of which were crucial in helping shop us land a house. Second, she and her team communicated very effectively with us. Buying from across the country is stressful enough, and having a realtor who checked in regularly, was organized, and was very transparent in her thinking was quite helpful. Third, we enjoyed spending time with Grace and Kim; they both made the process of searching as pleasant as it could realistically be. Fourth, after the deal closed but before our move, Grace continued to be wonderfully helpful in dealing with contractors and the other logistics of cross-country homeownership. She was a class act throughout the process, and we would highly recommend working with her.

Thank you Grace! You made it easy for us to sell our Berkeley house. Plus you added much value by selecting good contractors to fix its various flaws. They really polished the old place up to look its best. You were absolutely right about the importance of staging, based on how many offers we got. Thanks for arranging those offers in a clear fashion for us to choose, and for handling the final negotiations and for arranging remote signing for Sandy and me. I will certainly recommend you and Red Oak to anyone who wants to buy/sell a house in the bay area.
Best regards,

Reflecting on the holidays and the start of the new year, one name comes to mind when my husband and I think how lucky we are to have found our beautiful home. GRACE BISHOP. Grace is AMAZING. I recommend her in a heartbeat to anyone who needs a realtor and raved about her throughout our house-buying experience when discussing with other friends who were also house-hunting.

I rarely Yelp; I am more of a Yelp lurker and read other’s reviews. But I feel NOT reviewing Grace here would be a great disservice to anyone looking for a rockstar agent.

We received a glowing 1groot.com recommendation from a friend as my husband and I were on the market to buy our first house. We did our due diligence and researched Grace (on Yelp and her website) and interviewed her in addition to several other agents. Finding someone who was knowledgeable in the industry, well-versed in the East Bay and that we also liked and trusted was important to us. Hands down she was the front-runner. From her professionalism in our first meeting to the well-thought out information booklet she gave us, we were super impressed from Day 1.

Grace is smart, thoughtful and detail-oriented. She’s super responsive via phone, email and text. And as we were going through one of the biggest decisions we would ever make, we appreciated her warmth and witty humor to help us through the big hurdles, especially during a fast-paced 15-day escrow. I was in the middle of my pregnancy while we were house-hunting, and Grace was kind and patient during what I attribute to hormonal meltdowns.

Grace’s numerous accolades prove she’s sought after and quite busy, but we never felt like we weren’t her main focus. She was always two steps ahead on what our next move should be. Her assistant, Kim, was also part of this great team that helped us secure a house that we love. In the few instances Grace was not available, she gave us ample heads up and Kim was guiding us so we didn’t lose momentum. We both work in San Francisco and she was flexible in meeting us to accommodate our work schedule.

Grace is aggressive but not pushy – exactly what you need in an intense seller’s market. She’s well-networked with contractors you can trust. Her recommendations are always spot on. If something doesn’t sound like a good idea, she walks you through the logic of why and gives alternate solutions. She’s a problem-solver. We had a few surprises along the way and she was always creatively triaging the best way to work through issues.

As we make some necessary improvements to our newly purchased home (all of which were discovered during escrow inspections based on Grace’s recommendations), we continue to work with contractors who are consummate professionals who either Grace recommended directly or know of her. Her reputation throughout the industry is stellar and in working with her, it’s clear as to why. We can’t recommend her highly enough. And while we plan to be in our home for many, many years, she will be our first phone call should we decide to sell. Grace rocks!

We lived overseas for a number of years so we were a bit shocked with the whole home-buying-in-the-Bay-Area-in-late-2014 experience.
We were introduced to Grace by a friend and she was extremely helpful in guiding us through the whole process — made sure that we took the necessary steps so that our offer had the best chance to be accepted in this very competitive market. She also gave us contact information for any and all other people/services that we needed during and after the big transaction.
Grace and her assistant Kim Markison, (they worked as a team,) were always available to answer our many questions and worries.
She also helped us begin celebrating the holidays in our new town with a lovely holiday party. Thanks!

I have had the opportunity of working with Grace on a recent transaction. Grace conducts herself in a very professional manner, is very knowledgeable, and is truly a pleasure to work with. I would highly recommend her to anyone!

SHE’S THE BEST!!!

I wanted to take time to write this letter of recommendation for Grace Bishop.We started working with her nearly a year ago to sell our first starter home in The Dimond and find our “dream home” in the Glenview neighborhood of Oakland, and we did, all thanks to Grace!!She went above and beyond with negotiations with the listing agent and her patience, approach, thoroughness, and professionalism in every situation was amazing!!!!I truly wish more realtors could learn from her what it takes to not only sell, but to get results that make both sellers and buyers happy!

Without reservation, we recommend Grace to family, friends, colleagues and prospective neighbors… Thanks again!