Shalene Rose

This review is for both Shalene Rose & Michael Braillard. I absolutely loved working with them on the sale of my condo in Emeryville last summer. It was such a positive experience and I really appreciate all that they did to make things go smoothly. There are so many moving parts and details to stay on top of when buying or selling property, and they were on top of it all! They are professional, knowledgeable, personable, responsive, organized… I could go on & on. One of the things that stands out for me is that they work with a high level of integrity — that was quite refreshing. I also found them to be really cool people — just down to earth, hard-​working and they care about their clients. And… I ended up selling my condo for more than I had anticipated, so they’re excellent at what they do. I will definitely be reaching out to them when I’m ready to buy my next home. Thank you Shalene & Michael!

Shalene and Michael gave us expert guidance in buying our home in Oakland. They REALLY know the market and are an absolute pleasure to work with.

Shalene and Michael Braillard helped my husband and I sell a unique property in Oakland. There were no comps for a property like ours so pricing and marketing the property was a challenge. Shalene and Michael provided great advice on staging, marketing and pricing. They are professional, knowledgeable, transparent and committed to excellent customer service. They delivered on everything that we’d discussed in advance of signing the listing agreement. The marketing photos were excellent and our property got great exposure. When the house was on the market they kept us in the loop on how the open houses were progressing which helped calm our nerves. When the offers arrived they provided us with a clear comparative analysis and ultimately sold the property for well over asking and negotiated a short contingency period. They are a great team. We highly recommend Shalene and Michael and are glad we chose them to help us sell our property.

Shalene and her partner Michael helped sell my house in Martinez. Shalene is AWESOME! I cannot recommend her more — any property I buy in the future will hopefully be done with her and Michael’s help! Shalene is nice, intelligent, and answered all of my questions, stupid and otherwise, with great patience. She explained everything to me every step of the way and she also allowed me to have my say in things that were being done with the sale. There were absolutely no problems, no glitches, and the house sold for more than asking and closing was a breeze. If you want a great realtor who is knowledgeable, professional, smart, and a truly nice person, you should contact Shalene. I actually contacted her based on her great Unilocal reviews and I am so glad I did!

Shalene Rose and Michael Braillard are an absolutely amazing realtor/​broker team. If we have any real estate transactions in the future we will BEG them to help us. We asked them to help us sell our home to our tenants ethically (yet at market rate). It was an arduous process that they handled with grace and aplomb! They are excellent communicators, with a sense of diplomacy, a superb understanding of design and architecture and also totally understand the East Bay market AS WELL as understand the culture of Oakland and the East Bay. We could not have been luckier.
In addition, at the same time we were in escrow to sell our home they got us into a co-​op in Alameda on the FIRST BID for much less than we thought we were going to pay. They are seriously good at working with this tight and crazy market.
The coop required many complicated extra steps and they worked them all out.
We are super happy with the two transactions and YOU WILL BE SO LUCKY to work with them. Ethical, honest, diplomatic, great sense of humor, talented, very professional, empathetic, LOCAL.
If you are lucky enough to work with this team you will not regret it!
Other Perks:
Almost ALL electronic signing (for very busy people this was great!) if you want it.
Hands on with our tenants who had many questions.
Great suggestions of vendors, (fast and convenient and they have connections and are well respected in the Bay)
At the end of the transaction they donate a sizable amount to a local charity of your choice or SAVE the BAY!
Shalene and Michael thank you for sharing your amazing professional talents and personalities with us and thank you for helping us with one of the most complicated transactions of our lives that we feel we were able to achieve ethically (selling to happy tenants) but at a market rate as well as enabled us to get into cooperative housing. Wow!

Shalene Rose Dunlap helped me in both the sale of my condo, and purchase of my current home. She is one of very few professionals, regardless of business, who handles her relationships with honesty and integrity.
Throughout the entire working process, Shalene was always super-​responsive, one step ahead of anything I needed or was about to ask. She and her partner, Michael Braillard, completely managed my condo’s sale, managing several vendor appointments, open houses, advertising within their professional network and walking me through initial steps all the way to close. Likewise, because Shalene is very familiar with Oakland/​East Bay and knew what I was looking for, she was always prepared to give valuable insights and feedback on my search for a new home.
Almost two weeks removed from getting the keys to my new place, I can look back and say that I always felt trust and comfort working with Shalene through this entire process.
In other words, I’d feel weird labeling Shalene as just another «Realtor» I worked with.

Shalene is the best! Seriously, the best.
I took a chance and looked for a realtor on Unilocal (not what I’d ordinarily do for something so major). We were looking to buy investment property in Oakland. She got in touch right away, we met and went through all sorts of options and areas. She is relaxed, knowledgeable, savvy, and super nice… a rare combination in her field.
It wasn’t until we were starting to make offers that I realized just how awesome she is, and just how far her vast experience and personality would go in making our deal go well. Her relationships with other realtors, and combined smarts and ease in dealing with everyone from lenders to inspectors to contractors made a lot of potential pitfalls disappear. I’m confident that no other realtor could have made our purchase happen for us (especially not at the price that we paid).
But it gets better! Since then, Shalene has been unbelievably supportive and helpful as we’ve moved into landlord territory. Her experience as a property manager makes her really insightful and a great resource for advice, references and overall know-​how. Even though we’re managing our investment ourselves, Shalene has been incredibly generous with helping us through the many questions and dramas that have arisen. It’s almost shocking… until you realize that it’s all part of the amazingness that is Shalene.

Shalene and Michael Braillard handled the sale of our condo in Oakland. After dealing with a couple of real estate agents that felt like sleazy sales people I found Shalene on Unilocal.
After pinging Shalene over email, the very next day her and Michael were at our place to discuss why we were selling, and where we were headed. I immediately felt more comfortable with them than the prior agents. They are really friendly, intelligent, no egos, and what I can only describe as ‘normal’ compared to a lot of look-​a-​like agents that might as well be local newscast team members who decided to go into real estate.
After a pretty thorough discussion of our preferences and timing they came up with a great strategy to sell the condo given our timeline, and after that it was smooth sailing.
Michael made several suggestions on minor improvements, due to his great sense for décor, that I think really helped make our condo stand out among the comparables on the market at the time. Throughout the process, from the open houses to closing on our sale, communication with both of them was great, and I think we achieved a really good outcome.
If you are looking for a great real estate team in the Oakland/​Berkeley area definitely give Michael and Shalene a call before considering other real estate agent look a likes.

Shalene (and Michael Braillard) did a fabulous job of guiding my brother and me through the process of selling our family home in Berkeley, CA. Neither my brother nor I were local. They were amazing in advising us, gathering several offers, and closing the deal very quickly.

Shalene Rose and her partner, Michael Braillard were energetic, available, and accommodating to our wishes when we put our house up for sale in Oakland. They were good about returning calls promptly and were not adverse to handholding during the seemingly lengthy process. They were able to provide us with access to other needed professionals. We are entirely satisfied with their service.
Rosalie LeCount

Bottom line: we were first time homebuyers and she helped us close on a house that felt like the best deal on the market for our price range and in a neighborhood we wanted to live in.
Shalene is not a very pushy or aggressive agent, and she always put our interests first. If she didn’t think a house was a good fit for us, she’d say so.
If anything she could’ve been slightly more aggressive. She sent us regular listings and did a great job showing and advising us on houses that I typically found online, but she rarely alerted us to specific houses that fit our profile as they came on the market. But, given how aggressively I was scanning new listings, I didn’t really give her much room to do that.
In any case, I would highly recommend Shalene as an agent, especially if you are willing to do some of the legwork on sifting through listings yourself (which I think is better than relying on an agent anyway). She’s competent, hard-​working, and trustworthy and definitely won’t sell you snake oil just to run off with a commission!

Shalene helped us sell our home in Oakland. She was very informed about the market we were in and what to expect. She was very organized and professional. We look forward to working with Shalene and Caldecott in the future.

We worked with Shalene and Michael and they both were amazing! We had a limited budget and wanted to find something that wasn’t already totally fancy and staged that we could fix up a little and get a good value on. Shalene and Michael drove us around to several different neighborhoods that we were curious about. Everything from West Oakland to the hills. They were informative and down to earth and never turned their noses up at our fixer upper ideas or lost patience with our many questions and concerns.
Both Shalene and Michael were easy to get in touch with and prompt about getting back to us when we didn’t reach them right away. In the end we wound up with a bank owned home that was a great deal but like pulling teeth to get through the paperwork associated with closing. Shalene and Michael were both calling and emailing the bank and listing agent along with our mortgage broker multiple times a day to get it all to happen in a timely manner. What could have been an unbearably stressful transaction was bearable because we knew that Shalene and Michael had our backs through the whole process!
Sooo glad we found them.
Lila and Ben

Shalene has been a trusted advisor, champion, and consistent ROCK STAR to my family since 2008. Over those 5 years, she’s served as a property manager and realtor. Shalene is trustworthy, diligent, hardworking, thoughtful, creative, communicative, and reliable.
While managing our property, she helped us address repairs, remodels, and upgrades all with a keen eye toward an eventual sale. When we put the home on the market a few months ago, she was with us every step of the way — and her excellence service really paid off! We received multiple strong offers on the property within DAYS — yes, days — of listing.
We are extremely satisified with the outcome of the sale — moreover, we HAVE been consistently satisfied with Shalene’s above-​and-​beyond service. She is the best, period.

We were first time buyers and weren’t really sure what we wanted or how to go about finding a place. Shalene was thoughtful and helpful from the beginning, laying out the overall journey from scanning listings through to closing. I travel for work and she was very accommodating in making time to tour houses with us, putting together offers, finding places that weren’t quite listed yet, etc. More generally she was a great coach /​voice of reason for dealing with the sometimes discouraging realities of buying in an overheated market.
Thankfully there’s a happy ending to this story. We found a place that was in budget, suited to our lifestyle and doesn’t look like it’s about to collapse. Thanks Shalene!

Turns out I found Shalene here on Unilocal and I couldn’t have made a better decision than to contact her. I was selling/​listing my first personal property and she was beyond excellent in her knowledge, service, and responsiveness. I had a lot of questions — as my situation was a potential short sale — and she handled not only herself, but me, expertly through the process. Honestly I feel lucky to have met and worked with her. What I thought was going to turn out horribly — being an agonizing, drawn out sale — turned out to be fast, pleasant, and even beyond my expectation financially. «Miracle worker» might be a little excessive, but Shalene, she comes darn close. Is there a sixth star I can give?

Shalene Rose… I don’t even know where to begin with all of her awesomeness!
My partner and I began our search for a home with an agent who was recommended to us. During the first month of our search, we continually felt like we were on the back burner, were a burden to the agent, and just didn’t feel that he was helping us at all. We weren’t sure if we were just expecting more than what agents tend to provide. We felt lost and insecure in our process. We decided to do a Unilocal search to see what others’ experiences of their realtors had been. Enter Shalene Rose. We read great review after great review and knew we had to meet her. We called her and left a message. We were shocked when she quickly returned our call and agreed to meet with us right away.
Shalene totally impressed us. In our first meeting, her knowledge of Oakland was immediately apparent, and she was so great at helping us think through the various neighborhoods that we were considering. Even though she was aware that we already had an agent and were merely there for a «consultation,» she remained patient and supportive of us. By the end of the meeting, we knew without a doubt that we wanted to have her as our agent. Shalene was so thoughtful as she talked us through what would be the most ethical way to end our professional relationship with the agent with whom we had been working.
Then, our process with her began, and she just continued to impress us every step of the way. She didn’t seem at all ruffled by our multiple emails with tons of questions, nor did she laugh in our faces when we wanted to place bids on homes that were well above our budget. She endured and remained patient through our endless crazy thoughts and ideas. During viewings of potential homes, she offered her expertise about the condition of the home, always including her disclaimer that she wasn’t an engineer, or a chimney expert, or a plumber, etc., but her feedback helped us in considering the questions that we wanted to ask the seller.
I can continue to go on and on and on about how incredibly helpful, reassuring, supportive, patient, professional, kind, and knowledgeable Shalene is… but I think I’ll finally just cut to the chase and say that if you want the absolute best real estate agent as you begin your journey in finding your home, call Shalene. You will not be disappointed!
Thank you, Shalene! We absolutely LOVE our home!

Shalene helped me sell my house in Oakland after I had to relocate my family to Sacramento on short notice for work. I was so busy, finding a new school and home, I didn’t have any time to devote to the sale. But it didn’t matter, she took care of everything! I mean EVERYTHING. I completely relied in Shalene and her judgment for most of the decisions for the sale. She did a spectacular job and was great at keeping me updated as the process moved along. I would absolutely use her again if the opportunity were to arise.

Shalene was recommended to us by a friend and we were not disappointed. We had already found the place of our dreams but as property virgins we needed someone to help us negotiate and who had our best interest in mind.
Shalene walked us through everything and was very supportive and always nice dealing with all of our requests, including endless e-​mails and phone calls. She really helped get us the perfect place for the right price. Even when we were willing to cave she really knew what the right offer would be and she ended up saving us some money.
I would highly recommend Shalene as she is patient, knows the Oakland neighborhoods and is great with all the stressful paperwork, negotiating and waiting.

Oh Shalene, where do I even begin. She was hands down the best realtor I could have hoped for.
My husband and I had been looking on our own through one of those do-​it-​yourself MLS websites for almost a year and met Shalene through one of her listings. We ended up not getting that home but decided to stick with Shalene after that.
As a first time buyer I was nervous going into the home purchase, but Shalene made the process seamless. She was extremely knowledgeable and efficient when it came to inspections and disclosures, and really broke it down for us when we were feeling overwhelmed by the purchase. Shalene was also super quick to respond (when I would work myself into a panic and act like a needy psycho!) and available when we needed her.
I would highly recommend her and can’t even do her justice in this review. Shalene is professional, smart, helpful and super sweet too!!! Shalene or bust!!!