While looking to buy our first home, my wife and I began visiting open houses and reaching out directly to the listing agents of properties we liked. We used Realtor.ca to filter homes based on our needs and started touring them on our own. Most of the homes we liked were priced right at the top of our budget, and one we even made an offer on ended up selling for $30K over asking. That’s when we came across a listing by Aditya and reached out to him with a few questions. He provided all the information we needed and offered to meet in person—completely no strings attached. Without asking us to sign anything, Aditya offered genuine help in finding a home we’d love, within our budget. He asked what exactly we were looking for and came up with a shortlist of six homes, which we visited together without waiting for open houses. These homes were still at the upper end of our budget, and honestly, I expected Aditya might try to convince us to stretch it. But he didn’t. Instead, he was confident, calm, and clearly knew what he was doing. And guess what? We ended up getting the home we loved the most—for $40,000 under asking. We couldn’t believe it when he called to say our offer had been accepted. He definitely is a “friend who knows more about real estate than we do”. If you’re buying a home—do yourself a favour and talk to him.