Recent Sellers Agent Reviews El Cerrito Area

Katrena Prior with Maddox Real Estate helped us sell a house in West Contra Costa County a couple months ago. This was out first experience selling a home. Katrena had a lot of good ideas of about remodeling and was familiar with various options and their costs. She made arrangements to obtain several bids from contractors and offered to coordinate their work, though in the end, we ended up selling the house in as-is condition. I highly recommend her to anyone looking for a seller's agent in the area!

Dear Soon-to-Be Seller:

We bought AND sold our home in South Berkeley through Berkeley Hills Realty. I realize that you are hoping to get responses from El Cerrito, but I wanted to let you know about Berkeley Hills because they are so wonderful to work with, fit exactly what you're looking for in terms of services, and they are located on Solano Ave. Tracy Sichterman and Linda Van Covering were a pleasure to work with. They are the best combination of personable and professional; they have SUCH good taste when it comes to paint colors--forget hiring a color consultant!!; they told us what NOT to waste our money on; and they make the horrible process of putting your house up on the market quite bearable. I can't remember the name of the fix-it-up crew they brought to our home, but wow! They were amazingly skilled and such nice people--it was family crew, three brothers. They helped us get our house ready in three weeks, and we did really well on our sale price. Feel free to private message me if you want more details. Berkeley Hills Realty: Tracy Sichterman  (510) 524-9888, 1714 Solano Ave, Berkeley   https://berkhills.com

Hi there…I’m not in El Cerrito but in Albany—one block from San Pablo towards the hills--and we just had an AMAZING experience with the agent who sold our house, Romney O’Connell with Berkeley Hills Realty.  We needed, desperately, to maximize what we would make on the house since it was our only and biggest investment...and not to mention the home we raised our kids in so there was a huge emotional element to the process.  We were beyond nervous about putting the house on the market during the pandemic.  Additionally, we were worried sick about not being able to stage the house because it was not allowed in Albany by law under the Shelter In Place orders (we ended up “virtually” staging per her suggestion, which turned out to be brilliant and MUCH cheaper!) and we were doubly worried about not being able to have the normal open houses.  Romney held our hands throughout the entire process and expertly strategized all aspects of it for a few months…the last 1.5 of which we had to relocate out of state to be able to safely shelter-in-place!  She was spot-on with what we should or should not put our, LIMITED(!), resources into and she expertly guided us with her knowledge on what people want to see in a home and what they are willing to look past.  She has an entire team of contractors, painters, cleaners who were all very good and super-reasonably priced.  Her knowledge of the market, during a very shaky time, was incredible and she helped plot a course as to when we should put the house on the market and what we needed or did not need for advertising.  Also, she was well informed on all of the new “laws” around Covid-19 and seemed to have really great relationships with a ton of other agents in the area.  I mention that last note because it felt like she was a part of a larger real estate community during the uncertainty and, therefore, had resources to find the (many) answers to the (too-many) questions we had.    If I seem effusive about her it is warranted because we received 11 offers after only being on the market for 1 week (another strategy she employed, expertly I’ll add) and our house sold for almost $450K OVER asking.  Seriously, a miracle in our opinion.  We owe her the hugest debt of gratitude and I cannot recommend her enough.   Feel free to respond back if you have any questions but here is her information:  Romney O’Connell, Berkeley Hills Realty, ph:  510.599.6911 and her website is www.romneyoconnell.com.  All the best of luck and healthy wishes!!

We sold our El Cerrito home in March 2020 and highly recommend Romney O’Connell at Berkeley Hills Realty (510.599.6911 / www.RomneyOConnell.com).  She is incredibly experienced in representing El Cerrito sellers and knows all the players in the local market.  She developed a well thought-out strategy for prioritizing which prep work needed to get done, what work we should just get estimates for, when to market the property, and even which furniture could remain for staging to manage costs.  We trusted that she was always working hard for us behind the scenes: managing her network of contractors, stagers, landscapers, photographers, and (importantly) other agents to bring strong demand come listing day.  During a stressful closing she continued to provide us sound advice (borderline therapy), as strange things were happening heading into the first week of COVID quarantine.  She was professional throughout the entire process, listened thoughtfully, planned well, and was generally a lot of fun to work with.  Ultimately she not only brought in multiple offers but multiple strong offers and a quick close.  We’re very satisfied clients!