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Four different jobs

These are not the same transaction

A first-time buyer, a seller, someone relocating with three weeks, and someone leaving a house they have been in since 1998 need four different processes. Treating them the same is the most common thing a brokerage gets wrong.

  • Buying your first home

    Buying your first home

    • Renting now
    • No idea what you can afford
    • Worried about the down payment

    The one where nobody has explained anything to you yet. We start with the monthly payment you actually want, work backwards to a price, and tell you what every acronym means before you meet it in a contract.

    • What you can comfortably pay, not what you can borrow
    • FHA, VA, USDA and conventional side by side
    • Down payment assistance you may qualify for
    • What PMI costs and when it stops
    • Due diligence fee vs earnest money in North Carolina

    Read how this one works

  • Selling your home

    Selling your home

    • Trading up or down
    • Relocating for work
    • Settling an estate

    An honest number with the comparables shown, the cheap preparation that actually moves the price, and a plan for the first fourteen days — which is when a listing gets almost all the attention it will ever get.

    • A walk-through and a net sheet before you commit to anything
    • The comparables we used, including the inconvenient ones
    • Pre-listing inspection: when it is worth it
    • Professional photography, floor plan and MLS entry
    • Reading offers properly — the highest number is not always the best one

    Read how this one works

  • Relocating to Raleigh

    Relocating to Raleigh

    • Moving for a job
    • Never been to the Triangle
    • A very short timeline

    Two Saturdays driving the Triangle before you look at a single listing. It sounds like a waste of a weekend, and it is the single most useful thing we do for anyone moving here.

    • An orientation tour of the areas that fit your commute
    • Video-first touring so you rule homes out before you fly
    • Lenders who can genuinely close in three weeks
    • Temporary housing and the rent-first option, honestly assessed
    • What the commute is actually like at 8am, not on a map

    Read how this one works

  • Downsizing

    Downsizing

    • Stairs have stopped being a joke
    • Too much house
    • Freeing up equity

    Mostly a logistics problem and partly a patience problem. Selling a house you have been in for decades is not the same transaction as selling one you bought five years ago, and it should not be run the same way.

    • Sequencing: sell first, buy first, or bridge
    • Single-storey and main-floor-primary homes across the Triangle
    • Condominium due diligence — reserves, assessments, project approval
    • What a lifetime of belongings actually costs to move
    • Capital gains on a long-held primary residence, in plain terms

    Read how this one works

The bit nobody puts on a website

What we charge, and who pays it

Commission is negotiable. It always has been, and since 2024 the rules require the buyer's side to be agreed in writing between the buyer and their own agent before touring homes. That is a real change and it is a good one, because it makes the number visible instead of buried in a settlement statement.

If you are buying: we will sign a written agreement with you that states exactly what we are paid and by whom. Sometimes a seller offers to cover part or all of it; sometimes they do not, and then it is a line in your closing costs that we will show you before you write an offer, not after.

If you are selling: our fee is agreed in the listing agreement, in writing, before anything is photographed. You decide separately whether to offer anything toward a buyer's agent, and we will tell you honestly what we think that does to your traffic either way.

Lender introductions are free and unpaid. We do not take referral fees from lenders, inspectors, attorneys or contractors. If we send you to someone it is because they have been good to our clients, and if they stop being good we stop sending people.

Ask us what it would costOther things people ask