Brian Olsen, Your Utah Realtor
Increase Your Confidence and Reduce Your Risk
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at the skate park in Park City with my son Zachary. Skating is something he’s had a passion for since he was about 10 years old. It was really neat to see how far he’s come and how his talent for skating has developed.
Watching him skate made me think of something that my mom often told me:
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not: Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
As I’ve looked back at my life, I’m always trying to improve; trying to be a better father, a better husband, serve more in my community and do better at my career of being a realtor.
I’ve had some pretty big and unexpected changes in the last few years going from owning my construction business to real estate, and it seems like I’m always looking for an answer. ACHIEVING MY DREAMS IS HARD.
“What can I do to be better? How can I connect with my children better, communicate better with my wife?”
Whatever it is, one thing that I know is that, especially as I look at my children, you never stop. You never stop being concerned. You never stop trying to do better; whether it’s with your family, if it’s with income, in the community… Whatever it is, you never stop.
I just want to share with you that I know persistence and determination are critical in whatever you’re doing. Sometimes it’s hard to get up in the morning and think I’ve got to go another day. However, there are a lot of rewards as we are persistent and determined.
Want to reach your dreams? Learn persistence! That’s what I’ll be doing. We’ve got this!
So anyway, have a great weekend and if you’re interested in Park City, it’s a great place to live! Get up here!
A recent situation has urged me to share with you a couple things you need to know specifically as a buyer (somewhat as a seller) about appraisals.
As a buyer, you need to get the appraisal; the lender is going to order the appraisal, the appraisal will come in. You need to know that you have a right to that appraisal. There was a law passed in 2010; the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and that law said that the lender is obligated to give you, the buyer, a copy of the appraisal. And they’re supposed to give it to you promptly after they receive it or within three days of closing, whichever one is earlier.
Now why should you make sure you get that appraisal? You’re going through the lending process and need to make sure you have the correct value of that property. Look and review what the comparables were and what was used in some of the properties.
This is an instance where having a Realtor will become beneficial to you. Your realtor will start working with the seller’s agent because that agent is going to know the specific area. They’ll know what comparables they looked at when they originally priced the home. This is critical because sometimes you’ll get a comparable of a home that’s the same acreage, same square footage, but it may have been distressed or have a problem. The listing agent is probably going to know all of these details.
So make sure you get that appraisal! Your lender not only is obligated to give you the appraisal but any additional paperwork, any reviews…anything else that he’s using to get your loan put together or that the appraiser used to come up with the appraisal of the property.
It is critical that you know this! Take the opportunity to work with your lender, let him know as soon as the appraisal comes in: “Give me a copy of the appraisal. I want to review it, I want to make sure that I’m getting some good value in my property.”
If you have a question about appraisals give me a call, shoot me a text or message and I’d love to help you.
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We have just worked with Brian Olsen and purchased a house in South Jordan on Glenmore Golf Course and I don’t think we could have been happier through the process of that; working and buying a home with Brian’s help.
He was just an easygoing guy, no pressure at all, willing to work on our schedule. I don’t know how many times we called him and said, it was spur of the moment, “Hey we saw a house on Zillow or we saw this house or whatever and he said let me check on it and he goes when do you want to meet can we do this this afternoon? I don’t know how many times we did that, it was called him in the morning, we met that afternoon at a location; saw one or two or three houses and you know he was always on call for us.
He was always just really pleasant and made us feel very comfortable in the process; we didn’t feel pressure at all. So we didn’t mind bugging him that much actually, because he made us kind of feel like you could. We were really picky about what we liked or what we wanted.
I felt he knew what I wanted probably more than I did, because he asked some very specific questions. What’s your lifestyle? What are you looking for in a home? What makes it comfortable for you? What makes it functional for you? I remember this one property in specific, I thought, “well this could work if we did all of this.” And Brian says, “well I know one of the things that you really wanted Georgia, was a lot of natural lighting.” I go yes that’s very important. He goes, this really doesn’t have that. That’s true and that’s something that you can’t change.
Brian narrowed it down really quickly and very well for us, so we avoided seeing lots of houses that we would not have been interested in just because of his expertise of being able to pretty quickly discern what we were looking for.
On this one, we saw it Saturday morning and we decided, Oh we’ll probably put an offer in on it, you know later in the weekend. And then we left and Brian called us within 10 minutes and said someone has put an offer on it. So we put an offer on and Brian made several phone calls back and forth over the next few hours and by the end of the evening we owned a home.
It had everything that we were looking for in a house, plus stuff that we didn’t know we were looking for.
I’ve worked with some other good Realtors, but none with the attention that we got from Brian. I was very surprised, I thought it was going to be very time-consuming, very stressful, not pleasant at all and like Mike said it was really enjoyable. He was always on call for us.
The process itself was not stressful for us and I think a lot of that, most of that had to do with Brian. He just took care of everything, from finding the properties, to scheduling the times, to meeting us just before closing with a home inspector. It was, we looked forward to seeing Brian and meeting up with him, and talking about properties.
It truly met and exceeded all of our expectations. And I know that that sounds…like what you’re supposed to say? Yeah, but it truly did.