Thomas Ryglinski – Alain Pinel Investment Group

One out of three reviews is neither Useful, Funny nor Cool. Fortunately, this fourth review should allay any doubts about Tom’s excellence as a real estate professional… emphasis on the PROFESSIONAL.
About Tom: Tom was referred by a realtor friend, and as soon as she told me about him, he practically reached out to me right away. In fact, this underscores the ease and consistency of his dialogue with me. DIALOGUE: two-​way. He listens and responds. He is very communicative.
My goals for him were simple: sell our one-​bedroom condo fast, and make us some money back. Tom was very sensitive to our situation as first-​time home sellers and tempered the reality of this awful market with ways to improve our attractiveness in it.
The bottom line: We sold our condo after only 5 weeks on the market and made enough money from the sale to eliminate our debts and are now in the black.
The best word to describe our experience with Tom: UPLIFTING. It’s so good to find honest, careful listing agents who do not try to up sell you on your own home, making it out to be more than it actually is, and then not being able to follow through. Tom was thoughtful, nice, intelligent and caring. I have already referred him to some friends who are selling their condo in our old complex.
He’s definitely going to be on our Christmas card list this year! We’re inviting him to our new housewarming party soon, and plan to be friends with him for a long time.

Tom Ryglinski was crucially and enormously helpful in finding excellent tenants for my 3-​bedroom flat near Golden Gate Park. He handled applications, interviews, set up the lease, and followed up on initial rent and security deposits. I find Tom to be a superior agent – fair, realistic, dependable, insightful, and honest. I most highly recommend him.

I’ve bought, sold and rented real estate through Tom on a number of occasions and through good and bad markets. In every case, his work has been exceptional and our results excellent. He’s strategic, creative and intelligent in his approach to the market and always keeps his client’s preferences in mind. He’s coached me through two complicated offers, and he’ll be there to coach me through the next one.

My wife and I sought the services of Tom when we were looking to buy our first home. Finding the right home and then getting your offer accepted was no easy feat during the crazy San Francisco real estate days. Tom spent many hours researching and driving my wife around looking at various possible homes. Tom always conducted himself with the utmost professionalism and was extremely helpful guiding (and educating) us through the buying process.
When it came time to sell our house, we once again sought the assistance of Tom. Although we did interview other agents that are more familiar with our neighborhood, it was the fact that Tom really takes pride in working for his clients. His intelligence, honesty and ethical way of doing business is refreshing and the way I like to do business. I have and will continue to recommend Tom for anyone’s real estate needs in the Bay Area.
If you would like to contact me directly with specific questions regarding our experience with Tom, please do not hesitate to contact me on my mobile at 415−517−9156.

Nearing completion of condo conversion… woo hoo! Time to give a shout out to those individuals who helped make it possible… first up, the realtor.
Tom was referred by our friends, whom he helped purchase a home up in Marin. It was time to give up our three floor rickety walkup for someplace where I was in no danger of dropping the baby in my four inch stilettos. I started to have serious doubts about Tom when he wasn’t coming through with my 2+ bedroom, 2 bath, patio, parking, 1800sq ft flat near Fillmore in move in condition without winning the superlotto.
But instead of brushing us off as some crazed lunatics, Tom helped us see beyond our checklist criteria. All that stuff they say about homes being an emotional investment is true. What we wanted was a home in a child-​friendly, picturesque neighborhood for our child to grow up in, with a park nearby. We ended up finding a gorgeous flat in a two unit TIC in the Lake District, right next to a park. What the heck is a TIC? Tom explained to us all the pros and cons of entering into one, and in a time where contingencies in offers were instantly rejected, Tom got the buyer to accept our offer contingent on our approval of the TIC partners in the other flat.
We found Tom very responsive — he returned our calls and emails within a couple hours. Tom also helped us navigate through a host of other issues. The seller’s agent (reputed as one of the «best agents» in the city my ass) blatantly misrepresented many aspects of the home, and her equally shady client didn’t have enough money to pay off his bank and tried to blackmail us by saying WE had to pay the difference between our offer price and his loan or he wouldn’t close. This was not the home buying scenario we envisioned, and without Tom’s guidance and negotiation skills, well… let’s just say something very bad would have happened. Tom even ate costs from his own commission just to help us close the deal — you can’t beat that.
With that said, I highly recommend including Tom in your interviews for potential agents. He has a great understanding of the San Francisco and Marin markets, and isn’t pushy nor overly aggressive. He even contacted us a year later to offer assistance in condo conversion — which we greatly appreciated because of ongoing issues we discovered from the seller’s misrepresentations that was hindering our conversion process.
Personality is key — you need to find someone that you click with and who understands what you are looking for, and also why you are looking for it. The entire process is so emotional, particularly when you are the buyer.

Warning: this is a boring review about Real Estate Agents. I’m fortunate enough to be able to call myself a home owner in San Francisco so I wanted to share my experience. For anyone about to embark on the scary and overwhelming journey to home ownership, read on…
The best word to describe our experience with Tom is DISAPPOINTING. He was recommended by some friends who had bought their first home from him so we thought we were in good hands.
He seemed competent enough when we first met with him and started working with him. But when it came time to place a bid on our place, it became more and more apparent that we were doing most of the work. He admittedly did not read our disclosure package, he wasn’t available for our inspection (he went on his own later on), and he failed to ask critical questions up-​front like whether the building was over 50% owner occupied which would have a major impact on our loan.
We don’t deny responsibility for any of these things; however, we would have expected our agent to be more involved and on top of these issues to help guide us during the process. Instead we found that he focused on really trivial details and that he was inexcusably sloppy with regards to contract revisions.
Any patience I had left for him vanished at our closing when we found out he had not sent a revised version of our agreement before it was signed which meant that we would not receive the keys to our place for several more weeks — very anti-​climactic and disconcerting for a first time home buyer.
After the whole experience, we met with Tom to explain why we were disappointed with him. We went back and forth a couple of times on what he could do to compensate us for our experience. In the end, his counter-​offer was to buy us dinner at The French Laundry. We had no idea what that had to do with buying a house or our experiences so we decided to walk away and I decided to write this review.
Lesson learned: if you aren’t blown away by your agent from the beginning, walk away and find someone else. There are so many choices in San Francisco. There is no reason to settle for mediocrity and have someone paid too much for it.