Ian MacMillan – RE/MAX

Over the last year, we went on house hunting tours with a couple of other agents and companies, including Redfin, but we were always disappointed that the representatives we worked with didn’t know much about the houses, the neighborhoods, or the Seattle market in general. They also didn’t have that special real estate agent sixth sense about what houses would fit our needs. So we asked around to find a good buying agent.
My wife and I were referred to Ian by a friend who bought her house with Ian and who was referred to Ian by her brother-​in-​law. Once we started working with him, the difference was night and day. We got into a weekly routine of emailing him listings we liked, and he’d go through the list before the weekend, prioritizing it based on our stated preferences and, just as importantly (or more), his experience and judgement. He’d do advance research into the houses, sellers, and listing agents, and he was always able to tell us more about the houses than the listings revealed. We quickly got to the point where we’d trust him if a house we said we might be interested in wasn’t worth visiting, and for the ones on the fence, he’d scout them out first during the week without us. In a market where one has to move fast on a new listing, having Ian at our side was invaluable.
We ended up putting in three offers before getting our house. (If you haven’t been house hunting in Seattle this year, expect to make multiple offers in this sellers’ market – we consider ourselves lucky it only took us three offers to land a house!) Ian helped us navigate the complicated, competitive bidding situations we found ourselves in. He taught us about all the different options we had in crafting our offer, and was very careful to make sure we balanced the need to build a strong offer package with the need to protect against the risks of a bidding war (for example, helping us make sure our offers wouldn’t leave us with buyer’s remorse, or leave us over-​exposed to appraisal risk). Ian also had a great intuition about what might make the offer better. (For example, on our third offer, Ian had a hunch that by increasing our offer by $ 5,000 we’d increase the chance that we’d win over other bids that were anchoring closely to a round number. We ended up beating the next best offer by only $ 2,250. And when the VA appraisal came in below our offer price, Ian helped us work out a deal with the sellers that got them to include some of their furniture in the sale!) Because he prepared us so well and is such a calming personality, we always felt like we put in the best offer we could possibly put in. When you know you’ve put your best foot forward and can’t be any better prepared, that takes a *lot* of stress out of the process.
After we bought the house, we were sad we didn’t have weekly house hunting trips with Ian anymore! My wife and I highly recommend him and if we ever sell our house in the distant future, we’ll definitely ask him to be our listing agent!

Ian helped my husband and I find our first home here in Seattle. We were new to the area, so Ian’s knowledge of Seattle neighborhoods and expertise was invaluable to us. He made the process seem simple and once we found a home we wanted to put an offer on, Ian moved quickly. I was thoroughly impressed how professional and smooth the process was, and I attribute this to Ian’s experience and dedication to helping us secure a home. We successfully closed on our home and a couple of months later, welcomed our newborn daughter to the world! It has been amazing to start our life as a family in our own home. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without Ian and if we need a realtor in the future, Ian is our guy! We can recommend him enough.

My wife and I contacted Ian a few months before moving to Seattle from the East Coast. My brother had worked with him before and had a great experience. We knew that we wanted to buy soon after we arrived, but didn’t know the city well and were first-​time homebuyers.
From the outset, Ian was thoughtful and patient. He asked lots of good questions and took great notes during our initial conversation. He was very focused on hearing from us what we wanted, but also wasn’t afraid to tell us some of the pros and cons of our preferences on neighborhoods and types of homes (condo, townhouse, single-​family, etc.).
Ultimately, our search was relatively short. We looked at a lot of places online on Zillow, Redfin and the MLS before coming out to Seattle for a house-​hunting trip in August. Once we were on the ground, we probably visited about 20 – 25 homes over a few days. Ian was great at helping us focus during this process by listing out the things we needed and what we wanted in a home. It turned out to be a really helpful way for my wife and I to talk through such a big financial decision.
One house stood out in this process, and we decided to make an offer. This is when Ian really shined. He guessed correctly that it would be a competitive process and helped us line up a pre-​inspection of the house and sewer system. He also was great at helping us craft a bidding strategy and polishing our offer so it stood out. In a tight market, having this kind of advice is invaluable.
Since we closed, Ian has gone above and beyond to make sure we’re settled. You can really tell that he wants to build long-​term relationships with his clients. I would highly recommend working with him.

Ian was fantastic to work with and we would recommend him without reservation. We contacted him for the sale of a Capitol Hill condo, and at our first meeting he was warm, professional, and prepared, having already reviewed comps in our building and in the neighborhood. Throughout the entire process, we felt incredibly confident in Ian’s guidance, ranging from the photographer he used to the recommendation of a stager to the price we agreed upon for sale. Our apartment sold within 4 days of being on the market, and we credit Ian’s good judgment, extensive background and confident expertise with getting us through the process comfortably, easily and quickly. Beyond being an incredibly competent and experienced realtor, Ian is a fantastic guy– he wrote a letter on our behalf for the co-​op board of our new building, and bought a gift for the baby we are expecting– certainly above and beyond what we expected in our realtor. We could not have asked for a better realtor with whom to work and would (and already have…) recommend him to anyone in Seattle!

After our previous experience with another realtor we were looking for someone new that had specific knowledge about Ballard townhouses and that would give us the attention we deserved even in our smaller-​market townhome. Ian was recommended to us thru his business partner who had helped one of our friends find her house. She had a great experience with him, so we took a chance and gave Ian a call. We met with Ian in mid-​March of 2012 with only preliminary questions about potentially selling our townhouse that we bought in April 2009. Ian was very straight forward; he explained whatwas happening in the market and his thoughts on when we should consider putting it on the market. His advice was logical and clear so we decided to go with Ian’s instincts and put our house on the market ASAP! We took a little over two weeks to paint, meet with a stager and get our house photographed. The stager we hired on Ian’s recommendation. I was skeptical initially, but so happy we followed his advice. Just 3 days later we had 3 offers on our house, one of which was for above our asking price! Ian did all the little extras to make our time on the market as short as possible. He was smart about what day to go on the market and hosted a broker’s open that very day. He had an open house planned which we ended up not needing! Ian hired a professional photographer for our listing which ended up looking modern, clean, and interesting! Ian was very responsive to all of our questions and since this was our first time selling a house we had a lot! He was easily reachable by phone, text, and email at any reasonable hour and we really enjoyed working with him on a personal level. Ian was always on time to any meetings we set up and was willing to come to our house to make it easier for us. I would recommend Ian to anyone I know in a heartbeat!
Moral of the story: If you want an attentive, knowledgeable, honest Realtor, Ian is the one to choose!

Ian was great. We used him to sell our townhome in Greenwood and we were very pleased with the entire experience. We bought out house in 2007 at the peak of the housing market and we outgrew it quickly after having our first son. We knew we had to sell our home and find something bigger, so we called Ian after hearing lots of good things from neighbors who had bought and sold through Ian.
Our main message to Ian was that we wanted to get as much as we could (since we were going to take a loss and wanted to minimize that) and also since we had already bought our new place we wanted to sell as soon as we could to avoid overlapping mortgage payments.
Ian was great, he told us exactly what we needed to do to make our place look great and advised us of preventative maintenance we should do to avoid problems during closing/​inspection. He recommended some good and reasonably priced professionals to get all of the work done that we needed.
Our house was on the market for less than 1 week, and the staging that Ian arranged made our house look better than it did when we lived there! Ian gave us good advice on how to price our home to accomplish our goals. Closing went very smoothly and he was a good advocate for us not to be bullied by our buyers and to look out for our best interest. Also since we had bought our new place (in Auburn) far away from Greenwood Ian was very helpful in being there to let in workers and check on things while we were away.
Overall I would highly recommend doing business with Ian. He is very professional and understands the area extremely well. As a seller he knows exactly what to do to make your home look great while balancing the fact that you don’t want to put a ton of money into a house you are about to sell. I couldn’t recommend him enough.

Ian was instrumental in getting us our dream home! Our search started out with a bang, and we thought we found our house on the first day. But what seemed like a great find turned out to be a disappointing money pit. After that the limited choices made for slim pickings, and we were tough clients by having a lot of criteria but a huge search area. Ian searched relentlessly, keeping up on the inventory throughout the entire city, from the south end all the way up north. Ian called us the day our house went on the market and said we needed to see this place. We ended up putting an offer in the next day, but so did two other buyers. Thanks to Ian’s great negotiating, we came out on top and found a house that is so amazing I can’t even believe it’s ours! It was hands down the best house we saw in months, and if it weren’t for Ian, we would have lost it. Ian was so professional every step of the way, and he always answered our calls or called us right back. We are so grateful to all his very hard work. We are very satisfied customers, and I would recommend Ian to anyone looking for an agent.