Martin (USCTrojanCPA) - Thank you for helping us buy in Irvine!

zovall

Well-known member
Disclosure - USCTrojanCPA is a site supporter of Talk Irvine. Without his monetary support, it would be difficult to have kept the forums running for all these years.

Thank you Martin (USCTrojanCPA) for helping my family purchase a home this year! I've known Martin since the IHB days and met him in-person at a forum meetup I set up at Cantaloop (froyo place - rip). I remember he was fully engrossed in his laptop - I don't think he even had any froyo?!?!? It was a tough crowd for an agent and he endured a lot of heat during those years (from me too) but he persevered and has been reaping the benefits of his hard work. Whenever I asked a member on how their experience with him was, they always had good things to say. Now, I've got my own..

With remote-work enabled by the pandemic and all the money printing and our situation (kids, savings, family, work, etc), we decided to look in a few neighborhoods in Irvine, Newport, Laguna Hills, and Laguna Niguel. We also looked at homes in Yorba Linda, Orange, and Tustin. Martin was always very responsive and would set the open house appointments and come meet us there. On some of the homes, I had mentioned that he doesn't need to come as we were just curious and were likely not going to move forward with the property. I didn't want him to waste his time. But he said he really enjoys seeing the homes and some of the neighborhoods were new to him too. Martin also was quick to send over floor plans of the homes we were looking at online. This was super helpful because I've been quite picky after spending so much time on housing blogs/forums.

As we got closer to finding what we wanted, we started to make offers and Martin's advice really helped us get an offer accepted. Martin makes a lot of offers on behalf of his clients - he knows what works and what doesn't. There were times when we were hesitant to bid so high, but we did it, and we still lost. This market is the worst market I've ever seen for a buyer. There is no lack of strong buyers and desirable properties frequently get picked up by cash buyers. It is hard to imagine how bad it is unless you are actually in the scramble trying to buy a home right now. It was reassuring to have Martin on our side through this.

Martin also helped us find a lender. He didn't give me one name, he gave me 4 or so because all the lenders/banks have slighty different offerings that might apply in our situation. He also had recommendations for contractors, handyman, flooring, epoxy, painters, structural engineer, etc. He even met some of them at the home when I could not be there.

We are very glad to have bought a home this year and really appreciate Martin guiding us through it all. Thank you for the nice rebate too!!
 
@zovall:

I'm trying to remember but didn't you move to South County somewhere? And now you're back in Irvine? Or you never left?

Anyways... congrats on buying in Unicorn Land. Turtles is the high life... good on you!
 
Yup, we moved to the La Canada/Glendale/Pasadena area for several years due to work. I was eyeing Laguna Niguel quite hard in part for the 3CWG but felt a lot of nostalgia for Irvine.  ;D
 
First of all, I want to thank Zovall for trusting me with his home purchase.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with you on your home search search from Laguna Niguel to Irvine to Orange and we got to see some awesome properties.  Even though we made some aggressive bids on a few homes we still got outbid  because the market was catching fire during our home search.  Looking back on things we got a relatively decent deal on your current home although it didn't feel like we did when we were in the middle of the transaction.  haha  Thank you again for the opportunity to help you in your home search and I hope you guys enjoy the home for many years to come.  Maybe one day we'll be neighbors if I can find the right unicorn home.  :)
 
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