After living in the same home and raising 5 kids we decided to move to another city. We knew there was no way we could live in the home while selling it with all the work that needed done, but how could we afford to buy the new home, move, and remodel the old home and sell it and not break the bank. We talked with several agents including a longtime friend. We left those conversations disillusioned and disheartened about the prospects. Those agents left us with huge estimates of work to be done, uncertainty over the price and no real plan to accomplish it. I talked to a friend in passing about our situation and he recommended Merna. Merna had done a great job for him selling his place in a similar fashion, and told me she had great design skills and knew lots of people who knew how to get work done, and done well, and on budget. When Merna met with us it was like hope sprung up in my heart. She had a plan and a system for how to prepare and market our home. If we were willing to do it the way she asked she could guide us through the process and get a quick sale for far more than we imagined. It almost seemed to good to be true, but with my friends experience doing the same thing with her, I was willing to trust her. Merna put together a plan on what we needed to do and when. She got us in touch with contractors and helped us plan how to use our budget. She would check on progress and monitor things and update the plan as needed to adapt to setbacks or challenge. She got us in a program to defer some of the constitution cost until closing so we could make the house perfect. When the final push came, she gave us the tough love to keep us on track for the target listing date. She bought in her trouble-shooters to fix all the issues, inspect the home, and have issues addressed before we went to market, to avoid contingency issues. When the time came for us to list her staging was beyond amazing and the photos really made the house desirable and captured it in a way that both brought people in, but also did not set false expectations. We listed on a Friday with a Monday review date. Got multiple offers and sold the house for more than 20% over the listing price. Merna acted with only the highest professional ethics and integrity through the whole process. She did not just tell us what we wanted to hear, she told us what we needed to hear. By following her plan we were not disappointed. Merna did not work miracles, she engineered reliable results. That is a much better thing.