Dylan Hale: A Great Realtor in NC.
A review of the realtor that helped my family relocate to NC.
If you’re in a rush, and you just want to know whether I’d recommend Dylan Hale as a broker/agent for buying a home, the answer is: Yes. Absolutely, without hesitation, reservation, or any caveat whatsoever: Yes. Dylan is an intelligent, honest, hard-working human being that also happens to be a very good Realtor with a very good team behind him.
Here’s the longer version.
My wife and I were living in Northern VA, and we decided to relocate to the Research Triangle of NC. Our past experiences with buyer’s agents weren’t stellar, and I wanted to try buying our next home without one. This is just to tell you that, at the beginning of this story: I didn’t want a realtor, I thought I could do everything without a realtor (saving 3%!), and I was pretty sure I would be irritated by any realtor that we’d sign up with - all the while wondering “How is unlocking doors to houses worth 3% commission?”
My wife wasn’t necessarily on board with the idea. She humored me, though, and began the process of finding candidate homes using sites like Zillow. She’d see a house that fit our criteria and fill in the little contact form on the side-bar to schedule a walk-through on next trip down to the area. Most of the realtors would respond by the end of the day via email.
One of the listing agents called her within 3 minutes.
My wife was the one that answered the phone and spoke to Dylan initially. After the phone call ended, she reported a very nice conversation with a realtor that wasn’t pushy at all, and just wanted to let us know he was happy to help us out whenever we made a trip down. My wife and Dylan also talked about the issue of not having a buyer’s agent, and of COURSE he offered to represent us (it’s his job, after all!), but she knew I was pretty “enthusiastic” about not getting tied to a potentially lame realtor - so she just politely indicated that we’d discuss it and let him know.
Oh, and discuss it we did! “We haven’t done any research! - This is just some guy that happened to be the first one to call!” - and right there was the first chink in my defenses: this guy called within minutes. He’s clearly on top of his business. “Ok, credit where credit is due - but what else do we know about him? That could’ve been an anomaly!” So my wife, being the marriage-judo master that she is, agreed that I should vet him further.
So, I called Dylan and introduced myself, and I told him about my concerns and hesitations and he was very understanding, and when I asked for references from previous clients, he paused for about 1 second, and then said “Yea, sure, no problem. I’ll get a list to you today.” And he did.
I followed up with the people on his list and got emails and phone calls for responses. The responses that I got were not just “+1 would use again” - they were heartfelt expressions of gladness and relief that they had used Dylan as their realtor. With each reply, I was more surprised at the words being used to describe their experience with a realtor. They were certainly not words I would have ever thought attributable to one. Words like “Hardest Working”, “work-horse”, “integrity”, “reliability”, “never felt neglected”, “on the ball every step of the way”, etc, etc.
My wife and I discussed it more, and decided to take Dylan up on his offer to walk through houses. We told him about our schedule and that we’d be driving down on Sunday so that we’d have all of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to look at houses. He explained that he’d make himself available for us during that period so that we’d be able to see all of the houses and areas that we needed to see.
On Sunday, as we drove down to NC, my mobile phone rang. It was Dylan. He asked what time we’d be getting into town, and offered to begin showing us houses that afternoon. We hadn’t assumed he’d be available on Sunday - but he put it out there because he knew were had a lot to cover in a limited amount of time.
Whatever concerns I had about Dylan being dependable and reliable were quickly eroding.
Over the course of the next few days, we proceeded with a routine of waking up, getting coffee, meeting Dylan, seeing houses, eating lunch, seeing more houses, and finally getting dinner and going back to our hotel room to digest the day’s events. Every night, we’d receive emails from Dylan with more listings, and we’d whittle down the list of houses we kept in a spreadsheet.
By the end of the 3 days, we were exhausted - but we had found the right house for us, and we did submit an offer, and Dylan was included on the offer as our agent.
Whatever concerns I had about Dylan being hard-working or dedicated were gone.
Over the next few weeks we proceeded through negotiation, inspections, more negotiations, and all the other things that wrack the nerves during the home-buying process. Dylan and his amazing team were on-point for EVERYTHING.
They arranged inspection, and because I couldn’t be there, Dylan was present on my behalf. For all of the issues that we learned during inspection, Dylan reached out to his network of contacts to get answers, estimates, and expert opinions on various items.
We secured our loan with Davis Orebaugh at OnQ Financial. He and his team met the bar that Dylan had set for service, professionalism, and just being decent human beings. I can’t stress that part enough: these were all good people. Also, we got great loan terms - much better terms than we were able to get through other lenders. So, you know, there’s that.
When I finally traveled down to NC for the closing, the whole team was there. I met Chris Mann, the closing attorney. He whipped us through the signing process of a massive stack of papers, explaining everything along the way, answering any questions I might’ve had.
So, it’s all said and done. We moved in to our new home about two months ago and I’m writing this review on my blog, because the 150 characters Zillow affords wasn’t enough.
Whatever concerns I ever had about Dylan being the right choice for us, are gone.
We consider ourselves lucky to have met Dylan and worked with him, and his team.
