Karen Lum-Coldwell Banker

Karen is one fantastic realtor. As first time home-​buyers, we could not have asked for a better realtor to guide us through the process. Karen’s experience, fastidiousness and patience served us well. She was always willing to make herself available, often at the drop of a hat, to check out a property or answer a question. Karen’s long-​standing relationships in the community and insistence on always going the extra mile were invaluable. Given the strong seller’s market and lack of inventory, we didn’t think owning the home of our dreams was a possibility, but Karen made it happen! We could not be happier. Karen is a true professional and in a class by herself.

We found Karen at an open house, as buyers who were just starting to casually look at places. Despite the fact that we were nowhere near ready to buy, she spent time with us and talked us through various details, even giving us pointers on little things to look out for as we started looking. When we were finally ready, a year later, we called her to help and she worked with us tirelessly, writing various offers and ultimately helping us get a great deal and close quickly on the perfect house. Two years later, we decided to sell that house and move to Tahoe, and we never even considered working with anyone but Karen. The same attention to detail she showed in the buying process helped us put the house’s best foot forward, from finding the perfect stager to bringing in high quality, low-​cost contractors to work on the house. A week after listing the house we had multiple offers. We sold for a great price, closed Escrow with no hiccups, and Karen held our hands the whole way. I could not recommend her more highly!

Karen Lum was a pleasure to work with in the sale of our treasured Crocker Highlands home. From the very beginning, she put our needs first and respectfully gave us the time and space we needed to get ourselves through the process of saying goodbye to our home. She asked a lot of questions to see how we wanted things to go and she was able to orchestrate things perfectly. Once we emptied the house of our belongings, Karen took over. She went above and beyond, hiring all of the subcontractors including flooring specialists, painters, and handymen. She met them all at the property and made sure they finished in a timely manner. Karen has a lot of reliable and affordable subcontractors that she has a relationship with and we were pleased that they came through with stellar work at a reasonable price. She suggested that we get all of our inspections up front so that «everything was out in the open» when we sold the house and we thought that was a fantastic idea. It was something we never would have thought of and it definitely aided in selling our house quickly, without leaving the buyers a lot of nitpicking wiggle room.
Along with subcontractors, Karen works with an amazing stager who not only staged the house with furniture, but went through the house with us in detail, picking light fixtures and paint colors. Reliable, communicative, and talented, we were very pleased with the stager and so happy that Karen was able to connect us with her.
Karen made things so easy for us thanks to her hard work and attention to detail. We were several cities away, but she kept us updated almost daily with what was happening at our home and how things were progressing. She even stepped in and waited for several hours at the house to meet inspectors and subcontractors as we weren’t available to do so.
The two open houses that Karen put together were beautiful and professional. It seemed that she spoke one on one to nearly all of the attendants, even though there were over 100 (?) on one day alone! We had interest in the house right away, even before the first open house, but Karen advised us that we would do best to wait to take offers until we had had at least two open houses. It was sound advice; the day we took offers we had 8 solid offers all of them over the asking price. She walked us through the process of a multiple counter to get the most solid offer for our family and to ensure that we had a decent backup in case the first went through for some reason.
Additionally, Karen utilizes Docusign (not all realtors do). This is especially helpful if you are not in the same town/​city as the property you are buying/​selling. It makes it so convenient you can even sign the papers while on vacation.
We truly couldn’t have done it without Karen and we would work with her again in a heartbeat. We are telling all of our friends who are looking to sell or to buy to work with her. You won’t regret it!