Jason Abboud

We had a very poor experience with Necole during a recent real estate transaction in Brentwood. She was the listing agent for a property which we really liked, and after speaking with her directly, she informed us that it would be best to allow her to represent us as the buyers in the transaction as well. We agreed, and moved forward with signing a buyer agency agreement with her. From there, we spoke with Necole several times, and throughout the conversations she informed us of the exact prices and terms of the other buyers/offers within the transaction. With this in mind, she helped us submit our offer in a way where we would be the strongest offer. After submitting our offer, Necole informed us that she had spoken with the seller, and that the seller was happy to move forward with our offer. We were excited, and thanked her for all her help. A few hours later, Necole then texted us and informed us that the other potential buyers in the transaction all of a sudden decided to go higher in their offer, which coincidentally turned out to now be a few thousand dollars above ours. After speaking with Necole, she told us that we would now need to go higher in our offer in order to purchase the property, which was a major disappointment after she had already told us that the property was ours. Now, after several more back and forths with Necole and the other buyers, we later found out that Necole was actually doing an open table negotiation with the other buyers involved in the transaction, in order to artificially inflate the price of the home. She was communicating each of our offers to one another, which none of us knew was taking place. Because the price was being artificially raised significantly higher than the value, she informed us that the only way we would be able to purchase the property was to now remove the appraisal contingency. After we found out about all of this taking place, we were extremely disappointed, and I informed Necole that we would no longer be working with her and removing ourselves from the transaction entirely. I spoke with a few close friends of mine that are also real estate attorneys, and they strongly recommended to file a complaint against her to her local real estate board, as well as her firm Remax, and the CA Department of Real Estate for the unethical and unfair manner in which she handled this transaction. They informed us that because she was now also representing us as the buyers, she had a fiduciary responsibility towards us as her clients in the transaction, and she completely failed to fairly represent us, and ultimately we lost the property because of it. Additionally, after speaking with several other trusted agents, they informed me that Necole has done a total of 6 real estate transactions in all of 2019, in various cities throughout California, which helped explain the manner in which she conducts real estate. She does not prioritize representing each party fairly, nor make an effort to build lasting relationships, because she does not conduct a lot of real estate in general, especially within the same city. Additionally, the fact that Necole is not only a sales agent, but also a licensed broker, I was informed the level of standards and responsibility she should have within a transaction should be deemed even higher. Overall, we were very disappointed with Necole's poor and unethical performance in this transaction, as she was not only neglecting her duties as our agent, but ultimately she was not able to get us the property that we wanted in Brentwood, even though she was also the listing agent. There are many amazing and trusted real estate agents in California who take their job very seriously in helping someone to buy and sell their home, and we would strongly recommend working with one of them. Unfortunately, Necole is not one of those agents, and we cannot recommend working with her.

Great family run business.