Benjamin Brown

About Me

I grew up in Ogden Utah and participated in High School Sports. We had a modest upbringing and went to a rough high school. I served a mission for my church in the California Santa Rosa Mission from the years 1996 - 1998. I attended Weber State University in the fall of 1998 and moved to Logan Utah in the Spring of 1999. I got married to my best friend Sherrie in June of 2000. We had our first child Kylee in Aug of 2002. I graduated from Utah State University with Honors and with a degree in Flight Technology. I was a flight instructor for the university for 2 years while I ran my small moving business Smooth Movers, and tinkered with Real Estate. I earned my commercial Pilots license on 9-9-01 two days before our nation came under attack and the towers fell in New York City. This put the brakes on my aviation career so I pursued my real estate license. I started with C-21 and then went on to @ Home Realty Network for 4 years. In Sept 2004 my son Conner was born followed by my daughter Tianna in Nov of 2006, My wife is now pregnant with another son due in March of 2009. In January of 2008 My brother and I started Cornerstone Real Estate Professionals and had a vision of a small professional office that maintained a high level of performance centered around very professional Realtors. We grew faster than expected and have had a great year even in this down market. I look forward to serving our clients for years to come. We love Cache Valley and want to share in making others dreams come true. We also love the pride we have in being Realtors.

Areas of Expertise

I love to work with first time home buyers. In this market it is very important that new buyers use someone they can trust and learn from. This is a great time to buy a home. Low interest rates, high inventory, and motivated sellers. Call me today and we can get you started on your path to your home ownership dreams.

Testimonials

May 22, 2008

To whom it may concern:

In January of 2008, my husband was offered a job in Sanpete County and we were faced with the task of selling our home for the move. We researched selling a home by owner vs. selling a home with a realtor, and decided to try to get the most money we could out of our home, which we thought meant selling by owner.

We looked online and got checklists for what should be done in a home to sell it quickly and properly, and began doing fix-ups. This included new carpet, paint, organized closets, de-personalization of rooms, and storing of excess items. I had researched how to sell a home by owner and had designed flyers, put up signs, posted information on ‘Craigslist' and KSL, and created a blogspot with more photos of our home. The first day we placed the ‘for sale by owner' sign, a realtor stopped by wanting to do a market analysis. We allowed him to do so and found that we were priced about right, if not on the bargain side.

Within the first week, we had five showings just from our advertising. The next week, we began getting bombarded with realtors trying to get us to sell with them. That same week, we had an offer on our house, and negotiated a price to sell our home. The couple came over, signed the offer paper, and wanted to close the end of March. We contacted a title company and were arranging to have our buyers pay their deposit to them. Soon afterwards, our buyers notified us that they would not be able to buy our home because the husband had gotten an unforeseen job transfer to Arizona and they too would have to relocate.

By this time, it was almost the first part of March, and my husband was going to start work in Sanpete. We decided that it would be too much of an effort for us to live apart, and thus began contemplating using a realtor again. We were working on making this decision when Ben Brown showed up at our door, offering to do a market analysis and to give us information on his ‘for sale by owner' program. Because of this program, we were convinced that we should let him do another analysis and give us his information. Otherwise, we would have just contacted our favorite realtor from the long list of who had previously come over.

So, Ben brought by his information, and it was apparent that he knew the ins and outs of selling a home by owner and with a realtor. He assured us that selling a home with a realtor will actually sell your home quicker, with less stress, and for more money than by owner. At this point, I wasn't sure I believed him, since we had already gotten an offer on our home, and I felt that it had gone quickly and for the right price. However, we talked it over, and decided to go with Ben anyway. His timing, approach, and confidence in our home were convincing reasons why. We were impressed that he would offer full service advertising for our home for a very comparable realtor fee. We were also impressed that he would go the extra mile to make sure everything was locked up, secured, monitored, and maintained while we were gone. He did this to the point of offering to take our garbage can out to the street and back for us, driving by on his way home from work to make sure the doors were locked and the lights off, and even watering our plants once a week when he was there, so the home could continue to show well. Ben talked us into raising our price a bit, and ensured us that we could always lower our price later or negotiate more with buyers this way. He convinced us that he had done significant research and knew that we weren't over pricing our home by doing this, and would actually attract the same amount of buyers.

As our process began with Ben, he was in constant contact with us via email and phone calls. He made sure we were aware of all the showings in our home, and the feedback that we had received. It ended up that we obtained an offer in about a week and a half after posting our home for sale with Ben. We negotiated a price that was $11,000.00 more than what we had settled on in our ‘for sale by owner' contract. Ben walked us both through the selling/buying process, and walked the buyers into the title company to sign the deal. It ended up that he was absolutely right in our case: you do sell a home faster, for more money, and with lots less headache if you go with a realtor to sell your home.

I have one more bit of information regarding Ben. The reason that we chose him, and can endorse him now is because he has the skills, know-how, and hard work ethic that we were looking for. We saw at least ten different realtors who tried to sell our home for us, and we turned all of them down. Ben was different because of his ‘for sale by owner' approach, his belief in full realtor service for the same price, his approachability, professionalism, work ethic, and timing. We really believe that if you time it right, are patient with the buyer, and have something different to offer, you are more likely to get in the door to make the sale.

Sincerely,

Malynda & Lee Bjerregaard