Buying a home

**YOU DON’T WANT JUST ANY HOUSE. YOU WANT TO FIND THE ONE.**

When you’re looking for the perfect home, the details matter. As top ranked buyers agents in San Francisco, we use our years of experience to advise you on the San Francisco market and help you find the right house at the best possible price, with the best terms.

As your Realtors, we work with you to find a home you love – not just any home so we can close the deal, but the home that works within your budget and meets your needs, both now and in the future. We visit more than 100 homes a month, which means we know a hidden gem when we see it and can help you see the potential (and pitfalls) of each property.

Most of all, we handle all the details with the utmost care and discretion. Your personal and financial information is treated with sensitivity, and we always put your best interests first. That’s our promise to you.

During these times we are working hard to discover new and innovative ways to connect with our community online and over the phone to continue to close deals for our clients. See how we are getting buyers in contract during COVID.

“Ruth helped us get into our new home at a price that worked for us in a very unusual real estate market during the first month of the COVID-19 shelter-in-place. Her depth of experience and many relationships in the San Francisco real estate scene, not to mention her honesty and thoroughness, definitely worked to our advantage during our home buying experience.

She helped us navigate these unprecedented waters at every turn. She guided our initial offer in a way that maximized its attractiveness to the sellers while minimizing our own exposure to risk, and then when it became clear it was a competitive situation, she helped read the selling agent’s poker face and pointed out the modifications to our bid that would position it to win.

We can confidently say that if you are looking for an experienced agent to help maximize your chances of submitting a winning bid for a great property, we think you’d be hard pressed to find a better partner than Ruth.”

– JR and MR, Buyers 31 Fairmount St

Andrew Fritts

I have managed salespeople for almost 15 years, and can honestly say that I've never met one with a more perfect blend of faithful commitment to her clients' stated priorities, relevant knowledge, instinctive grasp of exactly how far a boundary can be pushed, and tireless dedication to her craft and process. I'm not embarrassed to say that I learned more about my own profession by watching Ruth in action.

OUR PERFORMANCE

IN 2020, WE CLOSED $128M IN REAL ESTATE SALES. WE’RE RANKED IN THE
TOP 5 REAL ESTATE AGENTS IN SAN FRANCISCO OUT OF OVER 5,000 AGENTS.

The truth is, when you hire a Realtor to help you buy a home, you want someone who can help you win the home you want. That’s what we do for our clients – over 86% of our buyers get into contract on the first or second offer.

Want to know how we get clients into contract in the first 1-2 offers?

SCHEDULE TIME TO TALK

PROCESS

STEPS INVOLVED IN BUYING A HOME:

#1
GETTING
PRE-APPROVED
WITH A LENDER
#2
VISITING
& TOURING
OPEN HOUSES
#3
Submitting
& Accepting
Offers
#4
managing
escrow process
through closing

As a top performing San Francisco real estate team, we handle all details to help you realize your dream of home ownership. As your Realtors, we always go the extra mile to ensure that we not only help you find the home you want, but we can win it for you! When it comes to getting your home sold, we have the best marketing plan in the business and will do what it takes to get you the highest possible price.

RENT VS BUY

“Renting can make sense as a lifestyle choice or because of income constraints. As a means to building wealth, however, there is no practical substitute for homeownership.” – New York Times, “Homeownership & Affluence,” op-ed article

We thought you might have a little fun playing with calculations. You may perform calculations based upon your own specific financial situation and future projections and also see the definitions for all the terms used in this analysis:

Please Note: Rent vs. buy calculations can be performed a variety of ways, and results will depend on your own financial circumstances and economic projections, which you should review with your accountant. The below calculations represent just one scenario.

This rent vs. buy analysis compares the monthly housing cost of buying a San Francisco home at the Q4 2019 median sales price of $1,600,000—adjusting for tax deductions and principal pay-down of the mortgage—with the cost of renting a San Francisco 2-bedroom apartment at the Q4 2019 median asking rent of approximately $4750/month (as of 10/19 per Zumper.com). It also attempts to compare—while adjusting for inflation and other factors—projected asset appreciation between investing the down-payment monies (instead of buying a home) and using them in one’s home purchase.

Assumptions: 20% down-payment ($320,000); 30-year fixed-rate loan at an APR of 3.8%; and closing costs; property taxes; ongoing insurance and maintenance costs; annual inflation (2%), outside investment returns (3% after taxes) and home appreciation rates (5%) – all at what seems to us to be reasonable projections. We’ve used a combined income tax rate of 25% for the mortgage interest and property tax deduction. When projecting variable economic factors over long periods of time, many of these figures will simply be best guesstimates.