Information for Home Buyers in the San Francisco, CA Area

We put our clients squarely at the center of our business. They are our bosses, our focus, our sole responsibility.

The first part of buying is looking. For most Buyers this property search component is the longest part of the process. With all of the real estate websites and apps finding prospective homes should be easy, but it’s not so straight forward. Just like a dating app may help you find your ideal mate, there are a lot of real world steps that have to happen in between swiping right and walking down the aisle.

I like to say that in an increasingly digital world you need an analog agent; an agent who tours properties as they come on the market. Let me curate a weekly selection of properties that I personally have previewed. Stop the digital assault on your senses and let me be your real estate concierge.

Once you’ve found a property you like I will be there for each of the next steps. I can translate disclosures, interpret the comparable sales and explain the inspection reports so you can understand the condition of the property, and determine its actual market value.

Read What Our Clients are Saying About Us

“Had a wonderful experience dealing with Tim. He gave us a lot of insight into the pros and cons of various neighborhoods, and helped us to locate the ideal San Francisco property. His advice as to the deal was spot on. I have closed escrows about 10 times in my life, and I have to say, this was by far the smoothest I've ever encountered. Highly recommended!”

Dan S.

“So I had this crazy idea to purchase a home in San Francisco. Thanks to Tim we found our home within 2 months and moved in by the end of 3. Unheard of!

Tim is:
* Strategic – knows how to use time (yours and his) most effectively during the search and positions offers as attractively as possible.
* Thorough – responds to every single question, finds and summarizes listings matching your criteria, reads through and summarizes every disclosure package.
* Responsive – answers emails within 24 hrs (usually much less)
* Knowledgeable – leverages his experience and knowledge of the process to guide you over hurdles and ambiguities. He also knows exactly how much a property will sell for.
* Hilarious – keeps it light and stays positive through a stressful and frustrating process
* Honest – manages expectations
* Professional – As young first time home buyers, Tim took us seriously. We always felt like his only client.
* A Closer – Tim got our offer accepted even with a higher offer on the table

We couldn’t have done this without Tim.”

Zack C.

“I am SO glad we picked Tim to be our realtor. As first time home buyers, he held our hands through multiple offers, a deal falling through on the final day of escrow (seller’s fault), and seller’s agents who were often completely unresponsive. When we thought that we might stop house hunting altogether due to some financial uncertainty, Tim was really supportive and didn’t try to pressure us to keep looking. But once we settled our finances we did keep looking- and we got a fantastic house. I don’t know how we would have gotten through this without Tim’s help. Plus he’s really nice and funny and you will want that when you are looking at house after house after house.”

Kerry L.

“Tim is a fantastic realtor - we found him because of his bajillion great yelp reviews and were not disappointed. He was super honest, calm, thoughtful and well informed and patient. He was very practical and thoughtful in his evaluation of houses we were interested in and never pressured us. When we did finally find a house we loved (he found it and totally called it - when he saw this place he knew we'd love it, and he was right!) he helped us expertly negotiate the INSANE bidding process (we were bidding against 13 other people) and it seemed that other realtors really liked him as well, so the sellers' realtor was actually rooting for us to win the house over our opponents in a counter offer. Additionally, even in the frenzy of bidding, he never pressured us to bid more than we were comfortable with and offered sage advice throughout.

Additionally, he's super responsive and his advice was always spot on. We recommended him to good friends of ours and they had a great experience as well. Highly, highly recommended. Working with Tim was a pleasure.”

Eunice M.

“We were lucky enough to get Tim as our realtor. Tim is a rare find. Trustworthy, capable and resilient are some words that come to mind.

All the other positive reviews here cover the basics, Tim knows what he is doing and is a great person. What we want to make clear is that Tim will stick it out with you even when the going gets tough. After some failed offers and many viewings (so many..), we decided to make an offer on a foreclosed property. Tim navigated us for months through the craziness of constant contract changes, inspections, figuring out potential renovation costs, and continuous doubt about whether we would actually ever close. Throughout the process he kept us informed and lead us as a team. He was truly amazing.

We feel like we could happily go on and on about Tim. But to cut straight to it, we want to say that Tim will always be a special person to our family. When we so often over the years didn’t think it would be possible, he helped us secure a permanent home in San Francisco.

Thank you!”

Steven G.

“I was extremely fortunate to have Tim as my real estate agent when I was searching for my first place 6 years ago. I had been through two other agents and was frustrated that I kept being shown properties outside my price range and being pressured to “stretch” to the limit of what I could afford.

Thankfully I met Tim.

I was working with a mortgage broker (a very “above board” good guy) and was chatting with him about my frustration with the agents I had worked with. I asked him “Can you recommend an honest, straight shooter…does a real estate agent like that even exist” Without hesitation, the mortgage broker recommended Tim Gullicksen. I consider that conversation the start of my lucky break.

I was searching for a TIC opportunity with another group and was stunned at Tim’s ability to handle all of the different personalities and individual agendas. We ended up with a great building in a fabulous location at a price the other two agents told us was not possible. It did take awhile to find, but Tim was very patient and persistent. He has a unique ability to really understand what you describe you are looking for. After a few months he could tell if a place was right for us without us even visiting the property (and he was always spot on).

I can’t recommend Tim enough. In fact, I already have recommended him. My sister and her husband used Tim and found a super cute place a few years after I found mine.

I will use Tim again. If I ever sell my unit (which is now a condo…Tim knows a lot about condo conversion and his advice was right on the money..we converted the building in 3 years!!) Tim is the only agent I would consider listing with.

Five stars are not enough!!! I give him 10!!!”

Cheryl K.

“tim gullicksen was fantastic from the start of our search all the way through our purchase...7 months later...san francisco is a difficult market for home buyers to navigate, having tim's expertise made all the difference. tim never told us "no" or discouraged us in any way...he took the parameters he was given and made sure we were aware of every available opportunity...not just his choices. tim's personal service is great and comforting as is his very pleasant attitude. i have recommended tim to many of my friends and would recommend him to anyone!”

Daniel G.

“Tim was wonderful to work with. He has the best qualities we wanted as a real estate agent. First of all, he is a no-nonsense agent, straight-forward with his opinions on the market and houses, which are based on his solid knowledge and experience as well as his understanding of clients’ needs. Secondly, proactive in servicing the clients, identifying the right targets with clear rationales and showing clients around one by one. Thirdly, just his knowledge and expertise in San Francisco market is unbeatable. We would highly recommend Tim to anyone that is looking for a home in this tough market.”

Sophia Z.

“My fiancee and I started looking for a home to buy in San Francisco in October of 2011. We found a real estate agent from a very respected real estate broker, hoping that he would help us in the process (this was to be the first home purchase for both of us). We were active in our search process, going to many open homes on weekends. When we found homes that we liked we sent them on to this broker. He, however, seemed not to really care what we wanted. He ignored most of the homes that we sent him, and instead pushed other homes on us, usually ones that his brokerage was handling the sale of. Whenenver he'd show a home to us he'd give a hard sell saying how perfect the home was for us, and what a great price we were getting, and that we needed to buy right away before the interest rates went up again... he was really pressuring us to buy, without concern for what we wanted.

In February of 2012, feeling unhappy with our current agent, we looked on Yelp to find someone else, and we came upon Tim Gullicksen. He had a ton of reviews, and they were all 5 stars. We thought, "This seems too good to be true, these results must be rigged or sometthing." But we called him and set up an appointment to meet. First of all, even though we had no prior contact he arranged to meet us late on a weeknight, after 8pm, for our initial introduction. Then, at that meeting, he carefully asked us many questions to get a good idea of what kind of home we were looking for. He also pulled out a map of San Francisco broken out by neighborhoods and went over each area of the City to know exactly what was and wasn't acceptabel for us. Most importantly, he promised that he wasn't going to push any homes on us. He'd show us homes but leave it entirely up to us as to whether or not we liked any of them. So we decided to dump our old agent and hire Tim. That was the best home-buying decision we ever made.

Tim is a home-buyer advocate, and he does not push homes that his employer is listing. He actually was very selective in the homes that he suggested to us, and true to his word, he never pushed any of the ones that he did suggest, and actually would often point out most of the homes' negatives so we were aware of them.

In the process of our own home searches we came across two short sales that we really liked and asked him to check those homes out and to give us his opinion. He checked one of them out the same day, and the other he looked at within 48 hours. In both cases he talked about the offered pricing of each relative to comparable sales and to the condition each home was in. He also went into very lengthy detail for us on the short sale process and what we could expect if we decided to make an offer on one or both of the homes. We ended up putting a bid on each house, and then a hellish process with the banks started.

Short sales can be a nightmare, and drag on forever... two things Tim did warn us about. The banks had us submit and re-submit countless documents, and then there'd be long periods of silence. And then after six months of waiting around suddenly the banks for one of the homes approved the short sale but required us to jump through a million last-minute hoops or lose the sale. The demands were so last-minute that we were in danger of missing the deadlines. Throughout the entire short sale process, though, Tim was there for us and kept a close eye on all the documents that were passed back and forth, helping us stay on track, and to understand exactly what was going on.

Tim was especially invaluable in the in the hectic closing week of the sale, when the banks were stalling and we thought the deal would fall through as a result. He called our mortgage broker, the title company, and the bnks that were stalling on giving their approval of the sale and he got all of them to cooperate and get the act together, and to get them to give us deadline extensions so the deal wouldn't fall apart.

Tim is completely honest, and we highly recommend him.”

Bryan M.

“Tim was super helpful in helping me purchase a condo. I took my time (about a year) but he was very patient and continually answering any questions I had. He even took care of my purchase while on vacation.

I would definitely recommend him to anyone purchasing a place in the area. Plus he has one of the coolest names I’ve ever come across.”

Tim S.

“If we had to do it again, we would do it with Tim.

My wife and I had a very particular type of property in mind. We found two ads on Redfin in our price range. When we went to see the first one, Tim told us that it will go for much more than the asking price. The listing agent of the second was not returning calls and e-mails, but Tim's persistence paid off. When we finally saw it, Tim told us it will go for less and we can be bold. We made a low offer on this second, and after some bickering got it for a very good bargain. Tim's feeling for the price saved us at least a hundred thousand, and may be much more. And the first one? It was sold for 2.5 times the asking price.

Few things about Tim. He is very quick to respond, unless he is with a client of course. I don't think there was a question that he didn't respond to the same day. His responses were always insightful, informative and to the point. He is not pushy at all and will not tell you what he thinks unless you ask. He is a pleasant person to deal with, which is a nice bonus.

Moreover, sellers agent gave wrong information to the escrow company, and the difference was worth a few thousand bucks. When we found out, the deal was closed and Tim had no financial interest in helping us. Yet he put a good effort into that, and we got all the difference refunded within a couple of weeks.

We had only one issue with Tim. During the contingency period he went on vacation, notifying us only a day before he left. His business partner helped us while he was away. While he was gone we hit some problems, and they were difficult to resolve with another agent, who didn't have a deep knowledge of the situation's background. So if you go for Tim (which I highly recommend), make sure you know his vacation plans in advance.”

Victor K.

“Tim did a great job with helping me find a place to buy in a short time period. He was available when I was ready to pick up the pace of my search and he provided me great resources while I was in the casual looking phase. Tim had an unexpected event come up when I was working with him, but he didn't miss a beat. He had a very capable coworker of his work with us while he was away for a couple of days. I would definitely work with Tim in the future.”

Lauren T.