When we jokingly tell people we “bought” our Hilton Head villa on the Internet, they are naturally somewhat taken aback. The notion of shopping for a second home online doesn't seem nearly as far

fetched thanks to the expertise and enthusiasm of Neil Castellane. He guided us through the process of locating a villa every step of the way.

Neil researched available villas, sent us many exterior and interior photos of properties which met our price range and specifications, and personally inspected the villa in which we expressed an interest. As our buyers' representative, he advised us as to what he felt would be a fair offer for the property, ensuring that the contract was written to make the sale contingent upon our visit to Hilton Head to personally view the villa. Once we had made the decision to proceed with the purchase, Neil’s expert guidance and full-service capabilities were of tremendous help to us in making arrangements to close on the property. His real estate knowledge and experience were evident in his ability to recommend a number of excellent Hilton Head contacts with whom he had previously worked. He was able to put us in touch with an attorney to assist us with the legal aspects of the purchase, a finance professional to advise us on financing options, and to suggest a local insurance company to arrange for personal property insurance.

Without Neil’s invaluable assistance with this long distance Internet “shopping experience”, our dream of owning a second home in Hilton Head would have been seriously compromised, considering that our primary residence is more than 1400 miles away. We will be forever indebted to Neil for his outstanding real estate expertise,

Wonderful enthusiasm and infinite patience in making our dream of owning a second home in Hilton Head a reality. We would not hesitate to call on Neil again in the future, should we ever decide to make Hilton Head our permanent home."

Neil made the purchase of our most recent Hilton Head home so pleasant that we're almost sorry the process is over. About five years ago, Neil helped us find our first Hilton Head house. We had been vacationing on the Island for about 20 years and decided that someday we'd like to retire here. We couldn't afford as much house as we really wanted, but we decided that if we didn't get into the market in at least a small way, appreciating property values would put a property purchase even further out of our reach. Neil helped us find an affordable patio home in our favorite plantation, Shipyard, which we fixed-up and used as a second home.

After 5 years, we decided to that the appreciated value of our patio house and a favorable buyers' market could make it possible to purchase the retirement home we hope to begin using in a few years. We described our dream house, the part of the Island we preferred, the type of neighborhood we hoped for and our price range to Neil and he started working for us. His patience over the next year in finding and showing us properties was amazing. We'll never forget the day he drove us into Port Royal Plantation and up to the house we eventually purchased. It was practically perfect in every way! The only problem was that we had to sell the patio house before we could buy the dream home. Neil solved that problem for us by making a few phone calls and finding us a buyer. 48 hours later we had contracts to sell our old house and to buy our new house.

Neil has always gone the extra mile to make our real estate experiences pleasant and productive. Some of the services provided by Neil that make him special include: Sending digital pictures of prospective houses via internet, tirelessly showing us prospective properties, advising us on locations and amenities, helping us to find vendors for insurance, landscaping and property repairs, and holding our hands when we were convinced that the process would get the better of us. We consider Neil to be more than our realtor. He's our friend!