Patti Brainard

ZillowVERIFIED

Team Brainard at Compass did a phenomenal job guiding us through the sale of our condo in Cambridge. From pricing the property to connecting us with critical resources like a stager and a painter/handyman to working with the property management to obtain necessary info for the listing and for buyers, Patti provided the expertise needed to make a quick sale at our desired price. We cannot recommend Patti Brainard enough.

ZillowVERIFIED

Alex is simply the best. We recommend her to everyone we know who is navigating the greater Boston real estate market. She helped us buy a dream condo in Cambridge in 2016, bringing her savviness and years of experience to find us a beautiful place at a price we could afford. We stayed in touch, and this year she sold our condo and helped us buy a home in the burbs in what has become an incredibly crazy housing market. She and her team at Compass made the selling process seamless. She suggested practical improvements that we could make with minimal time and effort to increase our condos value. These extra touches spruced up our place and, we believe, led to us receiving multiple competitive offers within the first week and a great sale price.Alex is an expert buyers agent. Thanks to her, we were able to quickly find and buy a house within our budget that had all the important criteria we wanted. She helped us strategize our offers on homes by bringing all of her skills and tools to bear for us: a data-driven approach of looking at comparables, her deep knowledge of the market, her attention to detail, and her keen intuition in the midst of a rapidly changing market landscape. Throughout the entire process, Alex worked tirelessly with us, from walk-throughs to pre-inspections to many phone conversations. When it came time to make offers, Alex's skill as an expert negotiator shined, and she was able to extract valuable information from the sellers' agents that allowed us to make far more competitive offers, ultimately beating out more than a dozen other offers on the house we purchased. Working with Alex and her contacts made the closing process smooth and easy, both for our condo sale and home purchase. On top of everything else, she recommended a lender who was able to offer us a mortgage interest rate almost a whole point lower than what we could find on our own. We are so pleased with how the whole process went from soup to nuts. Alex is a superstar agent, and we cant recommend her highly enough.

ZillowVERIFIED

I called Patti Brainard when my daughter and I decided to sell our twoA familyA in Somerville because she was so knowledgeable two years earlier when she did a valuation for us.It was not my first real estate deal, but it was my daughter's. And the market and processes changed a lot over our 16 years in Somerville. Patti answered all our questions in understandable detail, adding more details if we asked. Decades in the Cambridge area urban market has made Patti's knowledge deep, broad, and sharply up to date.We were not sure about using Compass Concierge vendors for cosmetic work and staging, thinking we could find it cheaper, do it ourselves, or just not do it. But we decided to trust Patti and were so glad we did. Her advice about work, staging, timing, and pricing got us a far higherA selling price than we expected.A Patti's team members, Ricky and Victoria, were great. Ricky went above and beyond in person, and Victoria always responded immediately to emails.Most of us do very few real estate deals, usually many years apart. If you are at such a crossroad, you can't do better than Team Patti Brainard.

ZillowVERIFIED

Patti helped me buy my home 17 years ago. We were young and clueless and she was incredibly knowledgeable and patient! She's always kept in touch and helped with advice on home value and renovations. During covid lockdown I needed a home appraisal and Patti did a video call walkthrough (as she already knew the house well) and gave an incredibly detailed valuation for free. I would hire her again and recommend her and her team without reservation.

ZillowVERIFIED

Patti Brainard, Riki Everest and the Brainard group were very professional and efficient in helping us (my husband and I) acquire a new home in Cambridge, MA. We were moving from New Mexico with very little time to visit the house we wanted in person.Their entire walk through process was extremely helpful to us. Ricki had patience with teaching us how to use Zoom for the first time which created a good experience for us with the online virtual tour of the new house. He and Patti were honest about the good and the not-so good aspects of the house (e.g., the basement needed cleaning and new lighting) which we appreciated! Any additional questions we had were immediately answered by Patti and her team. Patti explained everything step by step.We would gladly recommend Patti Brainard and her group to anyone who needed help in buying a home. They are honest, reliable and professional.C. Bowen

ZillowVERIFIED

We were buying the house from a distance. Patti and her team (including Ricky Everest) we quite responsive and willing to work with us via online email and Zoom, including a Zoom-based tour of the house during an open house. Patti knowledgeably helped us understand the valuation of the house and prepare a winning offer. Once our offer was accepted, Patti worked with us to develop contractors to update the house (again, from a distance), and had a number of useful ideas and suggestions. Team Patti Brainard was really great to work with.Bowen

ZillowVERIFIED

We couldn't be happier with our experience with Alex! She's done a great job all the way through (and has continued to be in touch to wrap up some loose threads) with close attention to detail and just remarkable expertise at what she does. We shopped around a bit and wound up going with the mortgage broker and lawyer that she had recommended, and were really happy we did so - the whole group was top notch and communication was a complete breeze. She was super supportive guiding us as first time buyers, while also being a fierce advocate - if you want to put in an offer in 60 minutes she can make it happen, without pressuring you either way to make the decision. If she thinks you shouldn't buy a place, she'll tell you. If there's negotiation she will handle it masterfully and tell you honestly what she thinks will be possible. We'd work with her again in a heartbeat!

ZillowVERIFIED

We just bought our first home and we couldn't be more grateful to Alex for being a wonderful guide and partner from the first step to the last.Alex was a total dream to work with. We had a remarkably easy and positive experience finding, financing, and buying a home -- even in a hot market, as people who'd never bought a home before -- and Alex was absolutely central to making it go so well.She was warm and kind, like having a good friend at your side to make the process easy. She was super fast and attentive whenever we wanted to reach her. We'd text her a question and she'd be back with an answer right away. At each of the many steps, she was like a private tutor on how things should work. With her on our side, we felt confident and well-informed. As soon as we were ready to look at places, Alex was ready to meet us anywhere in the Boston area, from Wakefield in the north to Dorchester in the south. Always on time, always fast with a response.Looking at individual properties with her was like getting a guided tour. She commented on materials, updates, maintenance. She pointed out features we hadn't noticed, right down to the unglamorous basement details like the quality of the cellar flooring or the sewer pipes. When we needed to move fast on a property, she sprang into action, advised us on putting together an offer -- and we got it. We had literally one hour to put in a first -- and final -- offer. I texted Alex. She called instantly. She swooped into action. Contacted the sellers agent immediately. Then called us back, told us what we had to line up to make this work. She strategized with us on an offer -- including amount and bidding strategy. A few breathless hours later we found our bid had been accepted.Even before that, Alex had helped us put together a whole team -- mortgage lender and lawyer -- who worked together seamlessly. We got a great mortgage, really fast, and our closing was so trouble-free that we were able to close a week early. Alex was the person who put it all together for us and made it happen.You just couldn't do any better for yourself.

ZillowVERIFIED

We cannot stress how much we LOVED working with Patti and Ricky. In addition to being extremely responsive to our requests, they both put our needs first and really listened to what we wanted. Because this was our first home, we needed a bit of help gathering all of the necessary items. Patti helped us greatly with this and made the process so easy! We are definitely going to recommend them to our family and friends and hope to work with them in the future for our next home!!

ZillowVERIFIED

Patti Brainard is a seasoned, knowledgeable, ethical real estate broker. Also, kind and patient, in terms of providing answers to all my questions. I highly recommend her.