Testimonials

I’m a first time home buyer.My partner and I were looking for a home that would give our son priority for a good elementary school in the Oakland options process. Whenever we would talk to Grace about a house we were interested, she was very informed. She knew something about all the houses we were interested in and knew the neighborhoods were interested in in great detail.

One thing that really impressed me about Grace was that when we had settled on a house to make an offer she checked in with me to make sure that I was happy about the house even though it didn’t have some of the things that I had initially said that I wanted. This showed me that (1) she had actually listened to me when I was talking about what I wanted from a house and cared enough to remember what I said and (2) that she was more concerned about my being satisfied with my purchase than her earning a quick commission.

While both Grace’s integrity and detailed knowledge of what was actually on the market were impressive, where she really shone was once we made an offer. She explained the whole escrow process to me from beginning to end. She helped us figure out what sort of offer to make and helped us negotiate with very difficult sellers. She talked me down, whenever I worked myself up into a tizzy. We ended up getting the house for significantly less than it listed for, largely because of Grace.

To anyone considering working with Grace Bishop:

I’m a first time home buyer. My partner and I were looking for a home that would give our son priority for a good elementary school in the Oakland options process. Whenever we would talk to Grace about a house we were interested, she was very informed. She knew something about all the houses we were interested in and knew the neighborhoods were interested in in great detail.

One thing that really impressed me about Grace was that when we had settled on a house to make an offer she checked in with me to make sure that I was happy about the house even though it didn’t have some of the things that I had initially said that I wanted. This showed me that (1) she had actually listened to me when I was talking about what I wanted from a house and cared enough to remember what I said and (2) that she was more concerned about my being satisfied with my purchase than her earning a quick commission.

While both Grace’s integrity and detailed knowledge of what was actually on the market were impressive, where she really shone was once we made an offer. She explained the whole escrow process to me from beginning to end. She helped us figure out what sort of offer to make and helped us negotiate with very difficult sellers. She talked me down, whenever I worked myself up into a tizzy. We ended up getting the house for significantly less than it listed for, largely because of Grace.

Before practicing real estate, Grace was my high school club volleyball coach. After I graduated high school, we lost touch. However about 15 years later, when looking for a new home, I remembered that she changed careers and became a realtor. I figured if she practiced real estate with the same drive and tenacity as she coached volleyball, she would be a great realtor. And she is. I am so glad I contacted her.

My experience buying a starter home with Grace was fantastic. Grace understood that buying a home was a new experience for me and she tried to make it as seamless as possible. She was attentive and listened to my needs and concerns and was my advocate throughout escrow.

Grace is an excellent realtor. Thanks to Grace, I now own my first home and I love it. I recommend her very, very highly. Five stars plus.

To Whom It May Concern,

We cannot recommend Grace Bishop highly enough if you are in the market to buy or sell a home. When we decided to buy in October 2010, we knew two things: we wanted to move quickly, and our first call had to be to Grace. She was incredibly supportive and helpful throughout our search. Within two weeks, we got a crash course on the inventory and market conditions in our desired neighborhoods, looked at over two dozen houses, found our home, and made an offer. We closed (on time) a month later, at the end of November. Grace was in touch with us daily—responding to our calls or emails, suggesting new properties that fit our criteria, encouraging us to keep refining our search.

Grace provided amazing service from day one through closing. As first-time home buyers, we had a number of questions—about prices, offers, disclosures, inspections, financing, closing, and even contractors. Grace was always quick to reply, always ready with sound advice or an excellent recommendation, and always incredibly generous with her time.

Grace’s knowledge, professional skill, and decisiveness were integral to getting our offer accepted. She learned about a significant price reduction on the house on a Tuesday morning, about the same time Lisa found the listing online. Grace knew that the house met each of our most important criteria, and that we should see it. She also knew that the price reduction would generate significant interest on the Thursday brokers’ tour. By midday Tuesday, Grace had taken Lisa on a walk-through of the house. By sunset, Matt had been briefed on the house by Grace and Lisa and made his own walk-through. By dinner time, we decided to make an offer, which Grace stayed up to write with us late into the night. By Wednesday, before anyone else had acted on the price reduction—before most agents, let alone their clients, had even noticed it—our offer had been accepted. We could not have acted so quickly, or with such confidence, unless Grace knew exactly what we were looking for. And thanks to Grace, we got our wonderful home without getting into a bidding war.

Grace has been a friend for years, but we know that we didn’t receive special treatment. She gives the same attention and personalized service to each of her clients. Grace has an amazing gift for reading people and situations and responding appropriately—an invaluable skill in her profession. She was always available when we needed her, but never pushy. She never wasted our time (or hers) by checking in for the sake of checking in. Whenever she contacted us, we knew it was for a good reason that required our immediate attention.

Finally, we always felt comfortable with Grace representing us. We trusted her to act in our best interests at all times. The professionalism and poise she projected in dealing with sellers’ agents, the escrow agent, or even our lender reflected well on by association.

We hope to be in our home for many years. But if and when we move, our first call will again be to Grace.

Cheers,

To Whom It May Concern:

We recommend Ms. Grace Bishop of Red Oak Reality as a superb real estate agent, in the strongest terms possible. Grace is a personable, well-organized and very effective agent who has an outstanding record and who did an excellent job of marketing and selling our property in El Cerrito, CA.

We learned of Grace as an outstanding agent for the East Bay from an agent whose territory centers on Davis. When we met Grace, we knew she was the right person to represent us in selling our El Cerrito house. In every respect, our expectations were met or exceeded.

Grace first gave us a list of house updates she recommended to improve the appeal of our house. These reflected her excellent knowledge of the housing market and buyer preferences. We believe the resulting changes we made were critical to the ultimate sale of our house. Grace also recommended inspectors and contractors who each did an outstanding job for a reasonable price. She guided us through the process of remediating items pointed out in inspection reports, interacting effectively with both inspectors and contractors. During the process of updating and fixing, Grace was very responsive to our phone and e-mail messages, always getting back to us promptly. This held true throughout the whole house preparation, marketing and selling process.

Grace has a very impressive house marketing approach that takes full advantage of all possible media, including all aspects of both traditional and advanced internet sources of information. She works with an outstanding photographer who did a great job of capturing all the attributes of our house and its surroundings. Grace complemented the photos beautifully with descriptions that presented the unique and attractive features of our property. In addition, the internet skills of Grace and her associates were applied very effectively to make full information on our house readily available to on-line house searchers.

At all times, we felt that Grace was acting in our best interest. When we received an early low offer, she strongly recommended we not succumb to our concerns about the slow real estate market by accepting the offer. Later, when we received a reasonable offer, she was very effective in guiding us through the negotiation process and dealing with the buyer’s agent. Grace was a strong negotiator while not being unreasonable. We believe we got the best possible price for our house under the circumstances of the house and the housing market. Grace very efficiently and patiently guided us through all the legal aspects of selling a house.

We feel extremely fortunate to have found Grace and that she represented us in sale of our El Cerrito property. We can’t imagine anyone doing a better job, and we thoroughly enjoyed working with her and getting to know her as a friend. We believe other sellers and buyers would have an equally happy experience with Grace Bishop.

After 8 years of looking for a house, we met Grace and found our house.

For whatever reasons, our bids with other agents got close but never were accepted. Grace got us our house on our very first bid together. If only we had found her sooner!

Grace understood our needs and our limitations right away and seemed to really get what we were looking for. She asked all the right questions and made us come up with some tough answers. Just one month after working together, we had our house and 30 days later, we moved in. Grace was our fearless leader throughout the home buying process. From negotiation tactics to mortgage and inspection help, we literally could not have done it without Grace and her very strong contact list. Through the process, Grace was our unflappable rock. She gets our highest recommendation.

We love our new home and truly have Grace to thank for it.

To Whom It May Concern,

We just bought our first home with Grace Bishop, and our home buying experience could not have gone any smoother. As someone who is very experienced, super organized, and easy to work with and talk to, Grace is someone we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. When the day eventually comes for us to move again, we’ll definitely be calling Grace again.

Grace has a lot of experience and it shows. She is great at working with first-time homebuyers. She did a great job at orienting us to the process, helping us with selecting lenders, insurance, and explaining the quirks of the East Bay housing market. Her knowledge of the market was remarkable. It seemed that she could recite details of every house off the top of her head. She also had a very good sense of what we were looking for in a house.

At every stage of the process, Grace was completely in control. It gave us confidence to be working with someone who was so on top of things. As a way of making our offer more competitive, Grace orchestrated a very aggressive escrow period with our lender – 21 days! Not only did she pull it off, but it was about as stress-free as we could imagine. She was always a step ahead, letting us know when to start shopping for insurance, scheduling inspections, and working closely with our lender to make sure everything came together. She also did a great job negotiating with the seller, and got us a $2000 credit.

In such a competitive market, it really pays to have a good agent with a good reputation, and you couldn’t do better than to pick Grace. We heard horror stories of flakey agents from our friends, and after working with Grace we wonder how those other agents stay in business at all. It seemed every open house we went to, the agent would say ‘You’re in good hands with Grace.’ After our experience, we’d have to agree.

Sincerely,

To anyone who wants a GREAT realtor,

My name is Jessica King and my husband, Phillip, and I were looking for a house, half heartedly, starting in October 2009. I contact Grace, as she and I went to elementary school together and had reconnected a few years back. I figured, “if a friend can’t be honest, trusting, available and good, what kind of friend are they?” Well, true to form, Grace came through!!!

As I said, we started looking for homes in October with the intention of it taking a long time. Well, we started looking at the wrong time. There was NOTHING out there. Grace was about to go on maternity leave and had us contact one of her collegues. Out of all the homes that we saw, only one seemed remotely interesting. Well, January rolled around and Grace was about to come back to work, but contacted us first before her formal return to the office and said, “I’ll start working early with you guys.” LOOVE IT!!! Made our lives easier.

We continued to be frustrated by the lack of inventory and Grace kept reassuring us that after Super Bowl it would pick up. SURE ENOUGH and true to her word, inventory picked up and we were beginning to see many more homes that we loved, that were in our price range, were in the areas we wanted and seemed great! We had requested disclosure packages on a few of those houses, only to find out that we just weren’t ready for a house that required a TON of work that wasn’t visible to the naked eye. After having seen more that 50 or so homes, you really get to know yourself! We saw a couple homes we loved, bid on one, missed out and learned that we just had to be a little tougher with our offer. Grace didn’t say, “I told you that you should have bid more,” or anything of that nature. She was very sympathetic to our situation and was ready to keep looking and tracking that perfect home down.

Through this all, Grace kept her composure, ALWAYS returned calls, emails, let us know when she was not going to be available, when she needed things from us, etc. She is one of the most hard working, organized and detail oriented persons I know… even after having JUST had a baby.

We finally found a house in El Cerrito. Not our top choice of city’s, but top choice for the price of what you get! It was at the top of the hill with a little view, GREAT yard (which we were looking for, coming from SF where you only have a shared yard with your whole building) and awesome light. I couldn’t believe it. Well, I was SURE that we wouldn’t get it, but Grace had a good feeling, gave us some options as to how we could approach the offer. By luck of the draw, we got it! Grace was able to negotiate a lower price due to some things that our inspector found and we were able to move in on time!

The biggest problem that we came across where Grace helped us the most was AFTER we had actually moved in to the house. We found that our refrigerator worked for 5 days, the just died. We couldn’t believe it! But, thank God Grace recommended to us to get the extra coverage for the home owners warranty protection plan. Spending another $25 for the fridge and then a $55 service call, we thought it would be taken care of in no time. Well, not true! We went without a fridge for 2 weeks, before I FINALLY contacted Grace, saying, “you recommended this plan and we built it into our offer as being necessary for the purchase of the house. Help us out here. The warranty company has said that our situation was top priority, but here we are, 2 weeks and still no fridge. They’ve sent out two technicians, replaced the control panel, and just dragging their feet and we’re literally living on a couple dorm fridges for a family of 4. Not easy!! What can you do to help?” Grace contacted an inside contact that she had for the warranty company, 15 minutes later, I got a call from her, then 1 hour later we got a call from another person with a settlement for a cash out. Wow, why didn’t I call Grace earlier!? She works wonders when you think you’re going to get nowhere.

Grace has the experience, composure, contacts, knowledge and patience to handle all sorts of clients in this crazy market. We are very glad we used her and to know that a childhood friend, who knows the area so well was able to help not just us, but other former classmates, as well, tells me that she is a valued employee and works to make people happy.

We know that you’ll enjoy working with Grace, as much as we have. Enjoy your adventure!!

To Whom It May Concern:

We will always be indebted to Grace for helping us through the complex, emotional but ultimately rewarding experience of buying our first house! We first met her more than three years ago at an open house in our neighborhood — we were immediately struck by how her name reflected her calm demeanor, unlike many realtors we’d met — and developed an immediate rapport. Soon we were talking about how much we liked the house we were renting, so Grace suggested she drop by to get a better sense of who we were and how we lived. While we weren’t in a position to buy at the time (the market was overheated and we didn’t make enough money to get in), we continued to look and keep in touch with Grace.

When we were finally ready to buy at the beginning of 2010, Grace moved into high gear. She spent a lot of time with us, and patiently listened to all the feedback we provided her about the homes we were seeing. We soon felt she really understood what we were looking for, and what we weren’t. When it came time to begin placing bids, Grace was there every step of the way, clearing her schedule to allow us time to complete the arduous task of putting together an offer for the first time. Her skill at making an offer as strong as possible really came through at this stage, as she suggested several “tricks” we thought were brilliant moves, such as getting a private inspection to remove that contingency from our offer (lowering the risk to the buyer), or having us pay the tax on the seller’s credit we’d requested. But Grace’s defining moment occurred behind closed doors, when she made our case to the seller’s realtor. Against all odds (five other offers), we successfully won the second bid we placed!

During the closing process, Grace was still there to assist us through a minefield of potential delays, and we appreciated the almost daily phone calls and e-mails as she kept us aware of every step of the process. Her network of professionals proved invaluable in getting us the services and advice we needed. We’d like to say we even closed on time, and we would have were it not for a misunderstanding on the lender’s part. But “better late than never” — and we are now proud homeowners. We look forward to working with Grace again when we sell. We’d recommend her to any of our friends.