We had a great experience working with Olga from Expat Gate.Our first meeting was in the middle of August, and by the middle of November we already had the keys to our new apartment.We consciously decided not to go with the full package (where the makelaar joins all viewings), because we actually wanted to check out every apartment that looked even remotely close to what we liked (our main criteria was the overall “vibe”, which usually doesn’t translate well to photos). So for scheduling, it was just more convenient to go to viewings alone. But for anyone who plans a more efficient search and/or has more defined criteria, I’d advise going with the full package. Also, for shy people. Our first “study” viewing with Olga was extremely useful - what to ask, what to say, where to look. A lot of things we simply didn’t know. And Olga is such a vibrant, charismatic person that everyone likes her immediately, from other makelaars to potential neighbors. Which makes them spill some tea!In the end, we made two bids, but I’d call it one and a half. For the first one, we weren’t sure, and we bid significantly lower than what Olga advised (our logic was: if we lose, we’re not sad; if we win, we’re happy with the price). But with the second one, we were determined to get it - and we did! I’ll also note that the final taxatie price was predicted by Olga very accurately, and she even advised us to bid lower than what we originally were ready to.At the beginning, Expat Gate also did a property research for us as a separate service. This one I would actually advise them to make optional, because it can be extremely useful for some people, but not that much for others. For example, our friends - who actually recommended Expat Gate to us in the first place - were super happy with the research, almost to the point of setting unrealistic expectations for us. But we originally wanted to buy without a makelaar at all, so by the time we started working with Expat Gate, we already knew a lot of the information. Plus, our criteria were very fluid. We had many of them, but were also ready to drop them if we liked something, or reject a place that ticked all the boxes just because the vibe was wrong. So in our case, this “we’re not entirely sure what we want exactly” problem couldn’t really be solved with the research, because it was intentional, not the result of lack of preparation. In the end, the thing we actually used a lot from the research was the map of “good” neighborhoods, which turned out to be very helpful and saved us a lot of time. We ended up checking every listing against this map first. And a few times we checked apartments in “bad” neighborhoods and it was indeed a waste of time - the descriptions in the research were very accurate.All checks (and our requests for some extra checks) were handled by Olga quickly and efficiently. More than once she warned us about potential red flags or things that might not be bad by themselves but, for example, could complicate the mortgage.Another great thing: we once found an almost perfect apartment and were ready to bid, but there was a construction site right next to the building. It didn’t bother us much, but we asked Olga to check when it would end. She checked - and came back with some bad news about the purpose of that construction, which was… not great for us. I won’t go into details, but I’m still very relieved that she didn’t just answer our question but also did some digging and gave us context.I also want to mention that Olga seems genuinely invested in the result and really makes an effort to help.Thank you very much, Olga and Expat Gate, for making this whole process so much easier for us!
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