Out of State Buyer Looking to Purchase in Rancho Viejo (Santa Fe: for sale, 2010)

[SFDreamer]

Hello All,

I am newbie posting but not to reading this forum. It has provided a wealth of information, for which I am grateful.

Here is some information that may be helpful: I am an out of state buyer, looking to purchase a 2nd home in Rancho Viejo which will be used as a vacation get away, as well as a retirement home. I have been coming to the Santa Fe area since the late 1970s, and have fallen for the Rancho Viejo area.

My problem has been in finding a realtor who is truly familiar with this area. I hired one based on the recommendation of someone who lives local but the realtor failed to tell me that they were not familiar with this area nor really knew much about the community. In addition, they did not do much research on their own...only presented MLS listings that I had mentioned I might want to view.

I am looking for a realtor/buyer's agent who is very familiar with the MLS/resale market in Rancho Viejo, as well as the Santa Fe area. All recommendations are welcome, and I appreciate your consideration. Feel free to PM. Many thanks!

[GreatSantaFe]

SFDreamer - Send me a private message and I'll be glad to answer any questions you have. Just to whet your appetite we've recently listed a 2 BR, 2BA small house (1170+/- square feet) in excellent condition for $245K - the lowest priced house in Rancho Viejo and a really good deal. Oh, and it's within walking distance of the gym, coffee shop, pizza place and the rest of the "village".

[lee337]

Hi there,

I'm actually moving from Santa Fe to San Francisco next month (you can see my posts in the San Francisco Forum). I can suggest a great Realtor to you, but first a shameless plug! We put our home in Rancho Viejo up for sale just before Christmas. On the off-chance that you're interested, here's the web site with more photos and information - www.2ocotilloplace.com.

As for the Realtor, I highly recommend John Rigatti of Sotheby's. Having only lived in Santa Fe for a short time myself, I needed someone who knew the area (and had some positive feedback). I posted a message on a email mailing list at Los Alamos National Laboratory asking for Realtor recommendations. I got about 30 or so responses and found 2 glowing recommendations for John. We emailed John what we were looking for and he took us to see a good 20 or so houses every weekend until we found one we liked. He didn't ask us to sign a contract like most Realtors do (I think) - he just asked that if we stopped looking or going with someone else, to let him know so that he could stop looking at properties for us.

He's very personable, and knowledgeable about the market in Santa Fe - he comes from a finance background and used to work on Wall Street, so helped us with some financial decisions along the way too. When I called him out of the blue a few month ago to tell him that I'd like to sell, he already knew how many houses were for sale in Rancho Viejo and what their prices were, so he either knows Rancho Viejo very well, or all of Santa Fe

Here's his web site with all of his contact info: Santa Fe, NM - John Rigatti | Sotheby's International Realty®. Be sure to tell him that Lee and Michelle recommended him - hopefully he'll buy us a coffee or something

People have been good to me on this forum, so I can return the favor. If you have any questions about Rancho Viejo, feel free to email me (lee at leereilly dot net). I also run the Rancho Viejo Community Website - feel free to use the forums on there too.

Best of luck to you on search and feel free to buy our house

Cheers,
Lee

PS: Some photos of our house





More at http://www.2ocotilloplace.com

[eggtimer]

lee337 - my wife and i are planning to relocate to santa fe, unfortunately not until summer 2010. we've been periodically looking at houses and absolutely fell in love with your place over the last two weeks or so. good luck with the sell, too bad (for me) it's about a year+ too soon.