Scott Ward

Scott is fantastic, our entire search process was very smooth. Being new to the area, property hunting was daunting and I was not prepared for how competitive and fast the market moves. This is where Scott’s impressive knowledge and experience was a godsend. He knew what was a good value and what was a waste of our time, answered all questions promptly and honestly. We had our first offer accepted and he facilitated everything efficiently, writing up the offer with addendums, making sure our preapproval was in order, speaking with the HOA to get all proper information, etc. I cannot recommend him enough and will absolutely use him for any real estate transaction in the future.

Scott was fantastic in helping us find and purchase our condo. We were first-​time buyers and would have been lost without his expertise and recommendations. Going to showings and open houses with him vs. without him was a completely different experience. For instance, his ability to point out details we otherwise might have missed (structural integrity concerns, noise carrying, lighting fixtures, etc.) and give us rough estimates on any repairs we’d need to make was incredibly helpful. One example was that he went upstairs to the neighbors above our unit and asked if they’d let him walk around to see if that noise would be an issue for us. Scott is very honest, matter-​of-​fact and straight-​to-​the-​point, which was exactly what we wanted in an agent. I have already and will continue to recommend him to friends who are looking to buy in the area.

Going from 0 – 100 on a hotly contested property is not for the faint of heart. When this happens in the East Bay, you want Scott Ward working with you. In the span of less than 12 hours, we went from looking at a property, doing intense comp studies, getting a pre-​approval letter, and putting in a clean, competitive bid. He predicted the urgency of the bidding, and got us in the right spot, at the right time.
What can I say, the masses wanted this property, and I unfortunately lost out to a bid that was almost 200k over the asking price. Sometimes old money or
money wins but its all about having the right folks on your team that teaches you when to step away from an irrational bidding war.
Scott is amazing. He is knowledgeable in all facets of the real estate market. He will pull the trigger for you once he gets going, and you’ll be thankful.

I recently had the opportunity to meet Scott through his client. I loved that Scott is a straight shooter. Scott is very responsive and an advocate for his clients. In this market you need an area specialist like Scott!

Scott is not only a great realtor but a great consultant, advocate, and person. He helped us both buy a house in East Oakland and sell a condo in West Oakland. He was thorough and thoughtful in helping us develop action plans and timelines for these daunting tasks. I felt very confident with him on our team. He seems to know a lot about the market, houses and neighborhoods, so it was nice to bounce ideas off him and get honest straight-​forward answers. He helped us flush out what was most important to us and gave us a reality check about the current market conditions. He helped us go over the pros/​cons of each decision as it arose and he was very responsive to even the smallest questions/​concerns. He also had great referrals and lots of connections. He seems to be well respected by other realtors and that helps a lot in negotiations. I would not hesitate to recommend Scott as a realtor.

Scott is fantastic. He’s very responsive, which is great for something as OCD-​inducing as purchasing a home. He’s also very honest (about the homes themselves, about their affordability, about their quality, etc). Scott is great at answering every random question you can come up with. Also, something that rarely comes up but that I appreciated a lot, when Scott was unavailable for a week, he left us in good hands with a colleague AND was up-​to-​date once he came back and saw us again. Scott is very organized and has a great positive but no-​frills outlook about house hunting. I felt dispirited many times but he was always upbeat and also grounding.
I have recommended Scott to a lot of people who are about to enter the insanity of the hunt. I have zero plans to purchase again soon but I would definitely do it all over again with him and will turn to him in the future once I’ve regained my composure.

Scott Ward did an excellent job for us when we decided to sell our home. Our house had many green upgrades and unique «urban farm» landscaping. Scott did a great job marketing this and helping us make improvements prior to sale that complimented the home’s features and aesthetic. He has a remarkable network of high quality, reliable contractors that he taps into to make the property stand out when it comes time to list. Just as important, Scott stepped up to help coordinate these activities and kept everything on track and on schedule. He knows the North Oakland market intimately and accurately predicted the closing price, which came in at the upper end of our expected range. We can heartily recommend Scott to help you sell your home.

I took the time to speak with a collection of East Bay Realtors who focus their energy in the NOBE area when it was time to sell our NOBE house. I highly recommend Scott Ward. Here’s why.
He’s candid. You get the benefit of his experience without digging it out of him and he is refreshingly honest.
He knows the area. If you are buying or selling in the NOBE area, he knows the streets, neighborhoods and issues. If you know the area, you’ll appreciate what he knows. If you don’t know the area, you’ll benefit tremendously from his experience.
He’s serious about getting results. We set schedules and he was always ready when he said he would be ready. He arrives prepared, does a terrific job and never leaves a detail undone.
He’s reliable and easy to work with. I highly recommend that you speak with him before you agree to work with anyone else.

Scott helped my wife and I buy our first home in Upper Rockridge. We’d been looking for a while ourselves and recently got in touch with him when a house we liked popped up. It was an old house (1930’s) and needed a bunch of work doing to it. Scott went as far as to give it a really close look and make a bunch of recommendations for what needed work and how much it would cost. We got a spreadsheet with estimates that ultimately made us feel like we were in more control and make the best offer we could that wasn’t beyond our reach.
The offer stage was really straightforward with his help. We were in a competitive situation but he helped us get the inside track. We got super lucky and our offer was accepted (I know that doesn’t happen to many people on their first try around here) but we didn’t ever feel like we couldn’t do it. Scott was amazing and gave us the knowledge and confidence to go through with it.
Scott put us in touch with plenty of people to help with renovations. All of whom were great and professional and reasonably priced.
2 years later and we love our home. We’ve done some of the renovation so far and his estimates were pretty spot on. I’d recommend Scott to anyone looking for a house. His knowledge of the east bay is amazing. Incidentally we found him on Unilocal so I wanted to pay back and let more people know that he’s the first person you should contact.

I was lucky enough to work with Scott on a few deals in 2013. He was great! He is very professional and organized. He was a true advocate for his clients. And he was extremely responsive — even during very busy periods of the year. I would highly recommend Scott’s services to any buyer or seller in the East Bay.

I found Scott on the internet in a hurry, having a failed experience with another realtor who overpriced my condo and didn’t understand the market in 2009. The first experience with Scott was an extremely trying time for me and my wife. We were about to have a baby, trying to buy a house with the market going down quickly. Scott walked us through everything. He got down on his hands and knees during open houses, checking out basements and crawl spaces for us. I’ve never seen that in a realtor. He understands structural issues of homes and has the willingness to dissuade his clients from buying a place. We were semi interested in a house that probably had a lot of drainage issues. I felt that having Scott talk us out of it was a great sign for us being able to trust him.
After a couple of weeks of looking, we decided on a house. Even though we were competing against another offer, Scott helped knock off 10K because of a foundation issue. I don’t know if other realtors would have wheeled and dealed on our behalf, especially since we would have bought the place at full price. Scott also priced our condo just right, got multiple offers and a higher price than we expected.
So, when it came to having to unexpectedly sell our house, Scott was the only person we thought of going to. He helped me figure out what I needed to do to the house to attract people which involved a little investment, but mainly it meant updating the interior painting and a little tile work in the kitchen. Once again, he priced it right and we got nearly 100k over asking. I can’t say enough good things about Scott. Now I don’t live in the East Bay, I’m sad that I don’t know someone with his expertise, patience, and skill. You would be very lucky to have Scott selling or buying a house for you.

Scott was recommended directly by three friends who bought their homes with him. After meeting him at one of their housewarming parties, I immediately knew I wanted to work with him when it was time to start my own search. Months later, that time had come, and I contacted him. After a meeting to discuss my priorities for what I wanted in a home, he agreed that it might take a while to find what I wanted, where I wanted, but I was in no rush. We looked at a few places together, and in doing so he refined his view of my likes, dislikes, and desires. A few places that I might have jumped at, he convinced me to hold back, and be patient, that something even better would be along sooner than later — he was so right.
I had been renting in a desirable East Bay neighborhood for years, and although I would have loved to buy there, I was pretty sure I’d never find anything in my price range that wasn’t a total fixer-​upper (not what I wanted). So I was fully prepared to move to another neighborhood, but we both kept our eyes open just in case. One Saturday evening I happened to see a new listing pop up just a couple blocks away. I looked at it on my own the next morning (Scott was out of town till Monday) I loved it and texted Scott about it. He looked at it himself as soon as he got back on Monday morning and agreed that it fit exactly what I was looking for.
He then sprang into action, making suggestions and doing everything he could to find ways to make my offer more appealing than the rest in such a competitive area. The deal we came up with was unusual, to say the least, but after a week and a half of constant communication, referrals, planning, decision-​making, and running around on his part, my offer was accepted. I would never have known such things were possible without Scott and even if I did, I couldn’t have pulled them off that quickly.
Thanks to Scott, I now own my first home, in a neighborhood I love, and where I never thought I’d be able to afford a house. I’ve since recommended him to other friends, and will continue to do so.

Are you looking for an agent who will help you find properties that meet your criteria?
An agent available to show you properties you want to make an offer on?
An agent who will treat you with respect?
If so, DO NOT WORK WITH SCOTT WARD.
We chose Scott based solely off his Unilocal reviews.
First, it was obvious Scott was busy selling properties. In this market, being a seller’s agent is a sure thing. As a buyer’s agent, Scott can’t be sure he is going to make $ 15,000+ off you.
As a busy agent, Scott didn’t show us any of the properties we wanted to see. In the six months he was «representing us» he showed us one house and emailed us one house– the catch? It was a house that he was selling! It didn’t even meet our #1 criteria: Good schools.
It was frustrating to watch houses get listed and go into pending before Scott would even respond to our emails or call us back.
My husband and I were not needy clients. We gladly did all the research finding houses we liked, attending open houses, driving by properties, and learning East Bay neighborhoods. This was our second home, so we were already well-​versed in making offers, etc.
On the off chance we liked a property and wanted to know more, Scott would email us a sentence fragment like «place is a dump» or «underpriced.»
When we made an offer on one house, Scott could not find the time to tour the house with us. We wanted to make an offer on another house, and again Scott could not find the time.
Second, he didn’t treat us with respect and this was the most damning. His «laid back attitude» translated into smug and curt. He treated two well-​educated, informed and rational clients as naïve in both economics and life. It is one thing to be an expert and share your wisdom it is quite another to be arrogant.
Third, Scott kept trying to get us to offer a value much higher than what we were comfortable with in order to win a bid. He would say, «It doesn’t matter if its $ 400k or $ 450k if you want the house.» Well, maybe if you are wealthy, but to us $ 50k DID matter and it still does. The idea of wanting to wisely invest our money was absurd to him– honestly. He said to us on a house we were placing a bid on (in an angry tone), «If you put an offer on a house tomorrow, March 2^nd, you will overpay. But that’s not the point, do you want the house?» He could never understand we weren’t just desperate to have a house, we wanted it to be a solid investment. The crash of 2008 revealed some tough economic realities for our friends, families, and communities and it was hard to believe Scott could not relate to any of it.
I rarely write negative reviews, but Scott’s behavior was so unprofessional and frustrating that I didn’t want others to go through what we went through.

We found Scott after he helped two of our friends purchase their first homes. Scott was so great to work with, he made every part of the process easy to understand, and made us feel comfortable throughout the entire process.
The selling agent for our house wasn’t the most helpful or motivated agent to work with, but Scott bent over backwards and went far beyond what is expect out of a buying agent to ensure that the sale process went as smoothly as possible.
If you are looking to buy a home in the Berkeley or Oakland area, we can’t recommend Scott enough. He has to be one of the best agents out there.

This review is waaaay overdue. My wife and I worked with Scott to buy our first house about a year and a half ago, and every part of the experience was positive. Scott is just a really fun and relaxed guy. Personality may not be the most important thing when choosing a realtor, but when you’re spending a good deal of time driving around with someone looking at houses, it’s nice to enjoy their company.
When we found the house we wanted, Scott sprang into action helping us with all the inspections and paperwork as well as haggling with the seller to get us the best price.
We recommended Scott to two separate friends who were starting to shop for homes, and now they are both our neighbors. They too had a great experience working with Scott, and you can read their glowing reviews here as well.
Scott is the BEST!

Its a battleground out there. My fiancé and I were the underdogs with our modest FHA loan and Scott stood by our side through the thick of it. In the brutal Bay Area real estate market, he believed in our loan and taught us novices a thing or two. Months later, we finally were able to find our perfect home.
Thank you Scott.

Scott Ward signed up to be our realtor, and that was all we expected. He ended up being a realtor, contractor, guy who came over in the rain to inspect some landscaping, friend who brought over a fan after the house was painted, and consultant who talked us through every element of the listing strategy and the merits of each offer. The quality of advice and attention we got from Scott was top notch. We recommend him wholeheartedly and without reservation.

We were referred to Scott by our SF agents, and we’re so glad we were. Scot is a great listener, a savvy businessman, he knows about home-​construction/​maintenance, and he is completely down-​to-​Earth.
He listened to everything we needed and wanted in a home, and then hound the home of our dreams for us in an area we had actually overlooked, but is in the school district we wanted and a neighborhood we love.
Scott worked behind-​the-​scenes to find out as much as he could about the competition for the house we wanted and helped us make a competitive bid that won us the house over three other offers.
He also knows a lot about homes and construction, and was able to help us look at the quality of various homes we saw and judge them more fully. He is also great at visualizing improvements to homes, and walked us through potential expansion options.
Finally, Scott is just a fun and easy guy with whom to work. He is never frazzled or too busy for a client, and he is always genuine. He’s a great guy.
I highly recommend working with Scott to buy or sell your home – or hey, do both. He’s that good.

Scott is a pleasure to work with. Great communicator, straightforward, good sense of humor, and very knowledgeable and thorough. He actually seems to enjoy all phases of the home purchasing process…
The Search
He listens and gives his honest opinion. He heard that I wanted to be in an urban area near BART and didn’t waste my time suggesting good deals that didn’t meet that criteria. I had the sense that he put as much thought and care into selecting an appropriate property for me as he would himself.
The Offer
Again, he listens. We discussed approaches, he suggested a strategy he thought had the highest chance of being accepted, tweaked it based on my input, and well, it worked. And the experience wasn’t stressful nor did I feel overextended.
Closing the Deal
So many steps before getting to the finish line, but it was as painless as possible. Scott arranged the inspections and met with contractors to get quotes on work that would need to be done even when I couldn’t make it. He went down to the City to ensure that there were no surprises to the purchase. He kept tabs on the lender and title company to make sure everything happened on time.
The Life Long Bond
He is still providing helpful advice on the little items that come up for a new homeowner. Any future real estate transaction I’m involved in will include Scott.

Scott Ward is the Man!!! My wife and I stumbled into him at an open house and it’s the best fortuitous meeting I’ve had. We were first time homebuyers and trying to buy in the North Oakland/​Temescal area and had had several mishaps with other agents before thankfully lucking into Scott.
Scott knows this area like the palm of his hand, his expertise in this zip code is unrivaled. Scott worked with us for over a year, over which time we must have seen 50 – 60 homes together. Scott was ALWAYS patient, giving us room to figure out how we felt about the place, and would honestly advise us if he felt a place wouldn’t suit our needs. You know how you when you go to see a place with an agent and two minutes after you walk in they say, «So, how do you like it? Want to write an offer?» That NEVER happened with Scott. He allowed us space to develop a feel for the house, and provided valuable, candid insights.
Scott has an amazing amount of knowledge, is extremely detail oriented, has a deep rolodex of very reliable home inspectors, roofers and plumbers, and a great sense of humor. And when push comes to shove he is on your side, pushing for your best interests. I seriously cannot recommend him high enough. If you want to buy a house in the East Bay, don’t mess around: Scott Ward is your man.