Long & Foster

***2.5 stars***
It took me a while to write this review not only because of the chaos involved in moving into a new home, but I had to really think about how I feel about the services from my agent overall, weighing in the pros and cons.
To start on a good note, our agent was readily available to contact by e-​mail/​phone/​text. We regularly had conversations with our agent 11PMs during the negotiations, and we did a lot of back-​and-​forth by emails to find listings before we met for walk throughs.
Despite that, my husband and I (mostly the hubs) did a lot of work scouring the listings for houses to walk through, researching listing prices and housing statistics, taxes, etc. We did a lot of the legwork that those we solicited information asked us why –we’re– asking these questions and not our agent. Which really made me think — did we end up doing a lot of the work ourselves because of our pro-​active, anal-​retentive selves, or did the agent really not look out for us? Was the agent more concerned about the bottom-​line commission, not have the energy to be our advocate during constant back-​and-​forth negotiations, or was the agent too tired to be as attentive as she should (our agent was an older lady with a cane who was out of breath after short walks)? The agent’s daughter was nice and was really helpful in showing us some houses, but could she have done more? I really don’t know.
Overall I have lukewarm feelings towards the service we got from our agent (s), with them being our advocates for buying our house. Not sure if they really weren’t looking out after us or the house-​purchasing experience is overall a draining experience. With the housing market nowadays, I expected more attentiveness in agent advocacy on our behalf, but it seemed only partially there.