Testimonials
"Ashley Margetson did an incredible job marketing our large eastside property. Ashley sold it much quicker than we expected and at a price we are thrilled with."-- Amelia & Jim Hollis
" Ashley Margetson was a superb representative for French & French. She is charming, thoughtful, totally professional, hard working and devoted.
As you know she sold my house at Casas de San Juan and is the agent to sell my house at Valle del Sol. If I build another house for sale (which I most probably will) it will be Ashley’s to sell."-- Eleanor P. Brenner
"Don’t let Ashley Margetson’s southern charm and great sense of style fool you. Behind this woman’s calm, seasoned approach to real estate, lurks a tough negotiator and a skilled dealmaker. Ashley has successfully navigated us through two home sales and two concurrent purchases. While we appreciated her aggressive pricing strategies, she was also able to deliver solid offers and to keep buyers at the table. In purchasing our new homes, Ashley’s good taste helped us make effective buys while her grace and sense-of-humor was a valuable asset in keeping us at the table, too! If you have an agenda in real estate, like we did, working with a good realtor and in turn being loyal to that agent is essential. With Ashley, that part’s easy."-- Ann Scheflen & Jim Geisler, Santa Fe
We have looked for a house in Santa Fe on and off for years with no success. We finally called Ashley Margetson,and in one weekend she found us the perfect house at the perfect price. We are just sorry we didn't call her sooner.--Gloria and Sam Hocking
Dear Ashley,
You are the best!!!
Not only did you sell our home for 20% more than we expected to get for it, but we were under contract within two weeks of listing it with you. The buyers you found for us proved to be very cooperative , and closed on time with very little hassle. And to top that you negotiated the sale of our furniture to the buyers as well. That is the mark of an excellent broker. Your professionalism is very much appreciated. From the unique sign you designed, to arranging for all the services fixing the things in and out of the house. I call this above and beyond. As we do not live in Santa Fe full time we actually were able to sell the house and arrange for all the contingencies to be met thanks to your hard diligent work on our behalf all while we were still in our California home. Thanks Ashley for an excellent job. Let's do it again soon.--Elliott S. Horwitch
Dear Mr. French:
I am writing to express my thanks and admiration for the work Ashley Margetson did on our behalf in finding what we believe is, perhaps, the perfect home in Santa Fe.
Several months ago, my fiancée, Carol, and I decided to pursue our dream of moving here, a prospect daunted somewhat by the fact that we didn’t know a realtor in the area. I had seen Ashley’s ad in the Santa Fean and certainly knew about French & French’s reputation. It seemed a good starting point. (I also visited your website and checked her autobiographical information. Internationally traveled. Ford Agency Model. She seemed like someone we could work with.)
After initially contacting Ashley, there ensued a number of emails exchanged between us setting out our criteria, budget and timeframe. She enthusiastically reinforced some of our ideas, tactfully whittled down others. All this prep work was in anticipation of a trip to Santa Fe to begin what, I feared, might be the first of many “looking” trips. We couldn’t have been more wrong.
We arrived. We looked at eight properties. We wrote an offer on the seventh one we saw (and were prepared to make an offer on at least one of the others.) In short, Ashley heard what we wanted. She knew the available inventory. She gently took us by the hand and guided us to exactly the kind of home we had been dreaming about. She put us in touch with a lender who got us a great loan and escrow closed without so much as a bump in the road. And here we are.
Maybe we were just lucky and it all came together effortlessly, but I think not. We were drawn to a professional who conducted business in a cordial and professional way. The results speak for themselves.--Sincerely, Donald Davenport
To Michael & Pat French (via fax)
Last week my wife and I arrived in Santa Fe to look for a home. On a previous trip to Santa Fe my wife had found a property listed by French & French and had established a telephone contact with Ashley Margetson from our present domicile in Illinois.
Upon our arrival in town on Sunday May 5, Ashley had done an excellent job in laying out a full week’s worth of home viewing for us. She devoted an entire four days to us, and without a doubt, has an excellent grasp of the market and all the available properties to try to suit our fairly demanding needs.
In our many years of both international and domestic househunting experiences over the last 30 years, she was the most well prepared and well informed Realtor….. plus a charming personality.
Hopefully, we will be able to come to acceptable terms with the Seller, but in any case, it has been a pleasure working with the brokers and agents of French & French.--Sincerely, Axel White
Having sold and bought four pieces of valuable property with your dedicated help isn’t particularly noteworthy until one considers that those four transactions occurred within 75 days of the outset of our business relationship.As the realtors’ contract reads, “time is of the essence.”
Thanks for your grasp of time being money, and for helping us to maximize our investments.
--Sincerely, Al Fiegel and Jean Austin-Fiegel
To Michael FrenchAshley Margetson represented us as our realtor in the recent sale of a home we owned in Santa Fe. Through the various stages of listing, marketing and closing the sale of our home, her guidance and experience were absolutely supreme. We will use her as our listing agent in any future transactions and recommend her to others.
We first listed the house with a different agency, and it was not until we moved the listing to Ashley that we feel the house was marketed to its full potential. She held frequent open houses and made sure that either she or her assistant followed up with everyone who came through and showed an interest in the house. When she talked to a potential a buyer, her approach was to make her job as realtor a very proactive endeavor. Where some realtors sit back and wait for the buyers to show enthusiasm, Ashley has a way of creating that enthusiasm in people. She actually “sells” the property.
Her interaction with us as the sellers was also very good. She did not call us to report everything that happened. That would have demonstrated to us that she was working hard, but she understood that it also would have heightened our anxiety. She called us when she had something significant to tell us. However, if we called her for an update, she was very well informed about the activity and would provide a detailed spontaneous report on all that had been happening. We were confident all along that she was indeed working very hard throughout the entire listing period, and her efforts paid off for us with a full price offer.
Her guidance and flair in staging the house for sale was also very helpful. She worked well with our hometender to be sure the house was presented to its greatest advantage. Her ability to work with the hometender was very helpful to us because quite often, that was an awkward process for us.
When we received an offer, Ashley’s experience, confidence and advice were invaluable. She guided us through the negotiations and pointed out things we needed to consider that we would not have thought of on our own.
--Sincerely, Fred & Elsie Thurman
To Michael FrenchThe Museum at El Rancho de las Golondrinas recently sold a property that we owned at 1-3-5 Cerro Gordo in Santa Fe. The sale of the property was handled by Ashley Margetson of French & French. I am writing to tell you of how exceptionally pleased we are with the way Ashley managed the sale for us.
We have known Ashley for many years, and she and her husband have been great friends and enthusiastic supporters of El Rancho de las Golondrinas. When the time came to list the Cerro Gordo property, we immediately turned to Ashley for help. Her great experience, professionalism, competence, and dedication were invariable correct and pertinent, and her availability and responsiveness during the process made her a pleasure to deal with. The result of the process is that Ashley brought i\us a buyer at full price for the property, and it sold the first day it was listed.
I want you to know how grateful we are for the professionalism that Ashley Margetson displayed during the process. I do not believe anyone could have handled this important sale for the museum any better than Ashley did, and we are grateful to her for her professional skills, her fine sense of humor and warmth of personality.
I believe French & French is fortunate to have Ashley Margetson as a broker, and we appreciative of all the support we received from your company.
I look forward to seeing you soon, and hope you will plan to visit us at Las Golondrinas during the season.
--Sincerely, John Berkenfield
Via email, Mr. Jack Rogers II
Jack:You are an irrepressible wonder!!!
Ashley: What do you mean by that?
Jack: It means that I think you have the LIFE FORCE, something most lack, and it is something for which I have enormous respect. I also think you are a true professional and a positive ion in a world filled with jerky little negative ions that do nothing but get in the way of history.
Before departing for our home in Sun Valley, I wanted to say a few words about Ashley who has been our intrepidagent for the past four months. My wife and I have been involved in 12-15 real estate transactions. We have never enjoyed the assistance of any agent more than we did Ashley’s. She has been indefatigable, patient, problem solving, sympathetic, and on call 24/7.-Bruce D. Smith
We have dealt with Sotheby’s before in selling a house in Monterey California and we are very impressed with your company. Ashley has been wonderful! She was the only agent who really listened to us and found a house that we love. She is very smart, goes out of her way to help her clients, and we will deal only with her in the future for any other real estate transactions.-Dr. & Mrs. Jerry Held, MD
Thanks for everything. You are the best agent in Santa Fe! I didn’t think anyone as beautiful as you are could be as smart as you are.
–Melinda Held
The first week we met, you gave Bruce and me an introductory folder you created in which you mention many of the reason you love Santa Fe. We’ve been compiling a list of our own, and you will be pleased to learn that immediately after last night’s dinner we placed “Ashley’s Homemade Chicken Soup” at the top of our tally. Many Thanks for your thoughtfulness and for taking such good care of us since we arrived. You’ve shown us property, secured dinner reservations, surprised us with Margaritas, recommended physicians prepared homemade soup to nurse us back to health and always with a generous spirit. Upon reflection, we’re moving “Ashley’s Homemade Chicken Soup” to the #2 position and giving you first place.
-Anndel and Bruce
Last January my husband and I moved to Santa Fe. I have worked with creative people all my life, and one of the many qualities I admire about Ashley is her ability to think “ outside the box” and continually come up with imaginative ways to solve problems. If someone asked me to reduce our conversations with her to two words, those words would be “What IF…?” The ability to imagine is a wonderful gift: and sadly, it is disappearing as fast as ice caps in the Artic. We have personal friends who are real estate agents, and we have utilized the services of agents in the past, and not one of them worked- or would have worked- as hard for a client as Ashley has worked for us. She is professional, responsive, true to her word, followed through each and every time , asked deliberate and sometimes difficult questions, and went out of her way to try and see we got a house we wanted. She has a wonderful sense of humor, is intelligent, competent, shoots from the hip, knows and loves her business, is devoted to her family and her community, and passionate about living Life with optimism and gusto. In short, she exemplifies all that is admirable; and would be an asset to any company We recommend her without hesitation to anyone serious about relocating to Santa Fe.
-Ann Kinimon
Please feel free to contact me for a reference or for more testimonials