The Home Page | Best of the Best

This edition of The Home Page was originally emailed to subscribers on October 20, 2024. To receive Sarah Sinclair’s real estate newsletter in your inbox each Sunday, sign up at independent.com/newsletter

This week has been all about Best of Santa Barbara® here at the Independent, with our big glossy issue published on Thursday celebrating the winners of our annual readers’ poll in categories from donuts to dog grooming, and tacos to tutors to tattoo shops. If there was an award for Best Advertising Team, it would go to the group shown above: Suzanne, Bryce, yours truly, Tonea, and Remzi.. We got out, dressed up, and kicked up our heels with all the winners and friends at our annual Best Fest celebration on Thursday night.

In the Housing section of the poll, we ask our readers to pick the best Plumbers, Moving Companies, Mattress Stores … and Realtors. Proverbial favorite in the Best Real Estate Company category is Village Properties. They were named the winner this year for the 14th year in a row, with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices the runner-up. Congratulations!

Some of our favorite Realtors to party with — and we have a lot of favorites! — The Hall Team were the winner in this year’s Best Real Estate Team category. It was great to see Kevin, Lesley, Taylor, and Alina at the Best Fest party, celebrating their victory, as shown above. The Zia Group also had a great showing as the runner-up in this year’s poll.

Kat Hitchcock was named Best Real Estate Agent. Kat and her teammate Kylie Cardenas were also at Best Fest, shown above, smiling at their accomplishment. David Kim was runner-up in this extremely competitive category; still a victory worth celebrating.

Austin Lampson of Homeowners Financial Group was at the party with her entire team, celebrating eight years in a row being named Best Mortgage Agent. Montecito Bank & Trust was named Best Mortgage Company, and sponsored the party’s photo booth. Kelly Marsh of Cornerstone Home Lending took runner up in both the agent and the company categories, with a  very strong showing.

Make sure to pick up your copy of this week’s issue. We’ve got 164 pages of news, arts, and real estate information for your perusal, along with all of the Best of Santa Barbara® details.