The Jerry and Rachel Hsieh Real Estate Team

We worked with Areany Tolentino from this real estate company. This agent will not act in your best interests. She will lie to you to get the deal done so she can get her fees as soon as possible. Real estate agents have what's called a fiduciary duty to act in accordance with your best interests and your direct requests. Specifically they must act in "good faith" with undivided service and loyalty. They also must act fairly and honestly. We met Areany at a showing for a condo we were considering. She told us if thet don't get offers on this condo by tomorrow they will take it off the market. We later learned that this was a lie by her to pressure us into making an offer, as it sat on the market for weeks. We later signed a buyer agency agreement with Areany because she agreed to give us 0.5% of the purchase price as a credit off our closing costs. We found a house we wanted, made an offer, and entered escrow. During escrow a water stain appeared on the garage ceiling. The sellers agreed to bring in various companies to find the cause of the leak and remediate it. Due an inability to determine the cause of the leak, and uncertainty around the extent of repairs required, we decided we were not ready to remove our inspection contingency when the time came. We were very clear with Areany that we didn't want to close the deal until we were able to see that the repairs were completed correctly. Areany told us that if we didn't want to remove the inspection contingency we needed to show the sellers some sign that we were still interested. She told us that we should instead fund our loan and send our down payment to escrow. We explicitly asked her if we did send the money and fund the loan, could still wait to close the deal until we saw the repairs competed, and if they were not, could we back out of the deal using our inspection contingency? We asked to her put in the response to request for repairs document that the close of escrow would be contingent on our final walk through and observing the repairs done. She pressured us into signing that document without putting that language in. She even told us that she talked to a real estate attorney who told her it's OK to fund the loan and send our down payment because we could still back out of the deal with our inspection contingency if needed. The repairs were delayed and delayed so that the final walk through was delayed until the afternoon before closing at 4pm. We were still under the impression that we could use our inspection contingency to back out if there were problems. Of course, when we arrived to the final walk through, the repairs were not completed and there were new issues not evident from the initial inspection. We immediately emailed escrow and our loan officer saying do not close the deal tomorrow. We also asked Areany to contact the sellers agent and inform them these problems needed to be corrected before close. The sellers did not respond that evening and said they would get to it later on the day of close. This lack of urgency by the sellers agent was confusing because we knew it was supposed to be closing day. We asked Areany what form we need to use to delay closing. We called escrow the morning of closing to make sure they knew we should not close. They responded that they emailed the agents yesterday at 11:34 am to inform them they were closing the deal unless there were objections, and that they got no response. Areany did not respond despite our clear directive that we did not want to close until we saw the repairs completed. She breached her fiduciary duty in this failure to act in our clearly stated interests. We were in shock. We then got an email saying that the deal is closed and the deed is in our names. How foolish that we believed sending the money would not cause them to close the deal. We think she knew this all along. Throughout the whole process we would tell Areany what we want and expect and she would go against our wishes saying that we can't ask for that and ultimately not listening to us about waiting to close. In hindsight she showed us who she was when she lied about the condo we toured before we chose to sign her as our agent. We let our greed to get a 0.5% credit cloud our judgement. Don't make the same mistake. Find a trustworthy agent, not Areany.

This is my first Angie's List review, and I wish it was more positive, but it is the truth. My and I recently moved to Los Angeles and wanted to buy a nice home here. Our broker showed us a house that Jerry and his wife Rachel were showing, we fell in love. Right from the start Jerry was pressuring us to put in an offer due to a bidding war. We did, we had to come up with our offer because of 5 other offers... Anyway we came up with another offer which was eventually accepted. Even after an accepted offer our broker was constantly reminded by Jerry of another backup higher offer that was not accepted. We were a a more secure buyer and thus they picked our number. Obviously this added pressure only added to the stress not the happiness of the process. After inspection Jerry nickpicked each point and only gave us pennies on the dollar in what was asked for, constantly threatening to back out. Please note we are talking foundation, plumbing, chimney, and other large important points, we were ok with letting go smaller needed project. They didn't even want to pay for all the needed termite damage. After we came to terms we agreed to certain landscape things being included, including 6 large life size pots with trees in them, things that most people would think are already included in the price, I mean we are talking about trees for G-d sake, we went into escrow with a leaseback. Jerry was unwilling for his clients to give us a deposit for the leaseback and all while the house was sold Jerry would not remove his advertising "for sale" sign, even after being asked repeatedly. Mind you this is 3 weeks after close of the house which is now ours. When the owners moved out Jerry was no where to be found, and they removed the big pots agreed upon in the contract. Jerry's clients did not protect the floors during moveout, nor did they respect our wishes no to have a garage sale in the house. In short, Jerry and his wife took all the fun and excitement out of the home buying process. They were underhanded in everything they did, they lied to us consistenty and never respected our wishes or desires as clients in the buying processes nor as owners of the house. They are not to be trusted and if you do deal with them, make sure you learn from our mistake and use a lawyer to protect you.

It is a pleasure for us to recommend Jerry Hsieh and the Keller Williams team. We purchased our first home in September, and couldn?t be more pleased with Jerry?s help and guidance through that process. As we began our process, we met with numerous realtors and had difficulty connecting with any of them. From the first time we met Jerry it was clear that it was a good fit. We had difficult selection criteria for the home we were searching for, and we were looking in multiple areas of the city. Jerry took all of this in stride, and was extremely helpful and easy to work with as we navigated our options. Jerry demonstrated a great deal of knowledge in multiple neighborhoods, and always gave us sound advice about local market conditions, comparable prices in the area, and strategies for moving forward on properties we were interested in. In a competitive market early notification and quick response time in communication were vital, and Jerry was great at both. As first-time homebuyers we had a steady stream of questions, which Jerry was helpful in answering. He was diligent in getting us the information we needed to understand the process, and have a successful home buying experience. Along with answering questions, he was very good at providing us with market research and sources of additional information. Jerry was also instrumental in helping us find a great lender, and he worked very well with the lender throughout the offer and escrow process. Once our offer had been accepted on our home, he made great recommendations about inspection companies and companies that could help with minor repairs. We had a great experience with Jerry, and it is very easy for us to recommend him highly.