Michael Hall

Michael was an above average selling agent when showing us a home (good knowledge, on time, professional presentation, honest about conditions). However, upon putting an offer in on said home, we found out two days later that said home was «apparently still under contract». This may have well been a mistake or oversight, however, in that case, it shows a slight lack of attention to detail and professionalism. I write this review because in the worse case, it potentially represents a lack of honesty. In our case, it is somewhat likely that they actually used our offer as a counter offer against the previous contractees to force them to stop asking for credits. They told us the previous contingency contract had fallen through due to disagreements over credits, in fact, it was still under contract and they may have falsely put it back back on the market to garner offers to force their current contract through. At best, an honest, but unprofessional mistake, at worst, a completely dishonest move.

Quite frankly, I was astonished to see Michael’s glowing previous reviews, given that he was one of the most frustrating and difficult people I have had to deal with in a transactional context. Perhaps he does a good job for the people he represents as a realtor. I can only speak as someone who has had to deal with him from the other side of the equation — as a lessee renting a property from a lessor who he represented.
From my experience, Michael’s techniques involve pressure sales tactics, an unwillingness to accept responsibility while freely blaming his colleagues, and a tendency to bend the truth. He refused to accept that his company had listed and advertised the relevant apartment as including cable TV as part of the monthly rent, and proceeded to blame both us (the prospective lessees) and his colleague (who courteously backed us up) for not knowing that in properties such as ours a landlord never provides free cable TV to the tenants. Michael then (unnecessarily) went out of his way to claim that we had found the one isolated listing where cable TV was stated as included as part of the rent. Perhaps annoyed at having been thrown under the bus, his colleague graciously found several example listings that also stated cable TV was included. I saw no apology from Michael to us or his colleague for his accusations.
When we maintained our position that all we wanted was a reasonable deduction from the monthly rent based on the apartment listing, Michael claimed that he had back up applicants ready to sign (and that one group of applicants had called him up to ask what the status on the property was, despite having been told a week earlier that their offer had not been accepted) and continued to pressure us to cave in. In effect, he was pushing us to accept responsibility for a mistake that was neither ours nor the owner’s, but his. Having reached a wall, he then made some ludicrous claim that we had accepted a 2-​year lease, which we were able to demonstrate was not the case (again, backed up by Michael’s colleague).
We were eventually able to resolve the situation successfully, but I firmly believe this was despite, rather than because of, Michael’s input. I would personally not select him as my realtor as I would not wish to deal with him in any professional context again.

I’ve been around the block many times (and around many blocks) with buying and selling real estate. This year’s experience working with Michael Hall was exceptionally positive. Together, we set the right price and Michael brought us offers immediately. Our final contract was a cash offer, no contingencies except the legal and inspection contingencies, and the sale price was above our listing price by a significant amount. Michael was a dream to work with — highly responsive, proactive, communicative, friendly — the best of professionalism. Working with him on this sale was a truly enjoyable experience, in fact it was fun. We recommend him confidently, without reservation, as a «best of Chicago» treasure.

Michael is an outstanding realtor. My husband and I interviewed several realtors before choosing Michael to help us sell our house in Jefferson Park in April 2014. In three days on the market we had 6 firm offers that led to the sale of the house in one month’s time, at a price higher than we expected. In this market, that was amazing results. Michael is a true professional with years of experience, a canny ability to evaluate and understand how to stage a house and market it to best effect. He is also a real pleasure to work with. We recommend him without reservations. He is number one with us!

We hired Michael to help us sell our house in a very tricky real estate market. We opted for him over the person we had used to buy the property. We did this because he came to the meeting prepared. He showed us so much information. It put us at ease. I often wonder if many realtors keep purposely keep clients in the dark or just aren’t educating themselves on market trends. Anyhow, Michael was very knowledgeable during the introductory meeting and gave us an honest account of what could happen with the sale of our home. He was transparent the whole way through. The other realtor told us to short sale it. We listed the property a little high because of a lack of inventory. Then Michael went to work. He flooded our home with prospective clients for a couple hours a day. Within like five days we had three offers. The last one was for full asking price. This wasn’t the end of his work though. Getting a mortgage for full ask price is tough. All sorts of things went wrong. He worked with and counseled us through a very stressful sale. He still got full asking price. Our home closed and I am pretty sure that his efforts alone helped us get our home sold at such a great price.

Michael Hall did an amazing job selling our condo in the Lakeview/​Wrigleyville area. He helped us determine a fair and appropriate asking price, assisted us in all aspects of staging our condo for marketing photos and showings and created an excellent, attractive listing which he posted on hundreds of real estate sites. The very first day we listed we received several requests for showings and the day after our first day of showings we received two offers, one of which was for full listing price. I do not think this would have been possible without Michael’s advice and assistance in properly staging our condo.
Once we accepted an offer, Michael really kicked it into high gear. He was involved with all aspects of the negotiation process offering advice and assistance all along the way. He was very prompt in all responses and communications between ourselves and the buyer. There were a few speed bumps along the way, as there always are in a real estate transaction, but luckily Michael was there to smooth them out and keep the momentum of the sale moving forward. We closed the sale in less than two months after first listing and we could not be happier with the results.
I have dealt with real estate professionals in the past and none of them could even come close to comparing with the experience we had with Michael. He is truly in a league of his own and I would highly recommend him to anyone who is thinking of buying or selling a home in the Chicago area.

We had been trying to sell our Andersonville condo for almost 3 years with no luck, with a period of renting it out because the market was so bad. Everyone knows the real estate market is horrible, but I think we would have been able to sell a lot sooner had we used Michael earlier. I would much rather have priced more aggressively at the beginning of our trials and tribulations and just gotten it over with rather than it turning into the nightmare that it did! We just didn’t realize that a different realtor could make a difference. Thankfully, someone recommended B&W to us and Michael was amazing. Incredibly supportive and communicative, honest and hard working. We ended up being under an extremely tight timeline, and Michael managed to get our property sold just in the nick of time. He rocks!