Willis Allen Real Estate

Linda Daniels and her team The Daniels Group are an excellent resource for La Jolla. We purchased a property from her and she continues to provide support from referring potential tenants to local resources like house cleaners and other professionals. I appreciate that she’s part of Willis Allen Real Estate a well know and respected Real Estate Agency. Ms. Daniels and Willis Allen are much more pleasant and enjoyable to work with versus the Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker, and Century 21s of the market.

One of the most in tuned real estate office in La Jolla. They know the area and are very professional. I have bought and sold many properties in La Jolla and would suggest this firm to anyone buying or selling.

My husband and I wanted to rent a house for the summer. We were very happy to have Laura Renner help us find a vacation home.
We first emailed back and forth about what we were looking for and the area we wanted to be in. She listened to our needs and she found us the perfect location to spend our summer.
Laura drove us around and showed us house after house. She spent the entire day with us. Laura helped us out with all the details to get the paper worked signed. She made it really easy on us.
Over the summer we decided to have Laura show us a few houses in the Del Mar area. We found a house that we love and it closed last month. Not only did Laura help show us multiple homes but she did everything to make the closing go smooth.
After the house closed Laura went out of her way to help us in any way. With my husband and I living out of town she met with contractors for us and opened our home up for workers on multiple occasions.
We would highly recommend Laura for your needs in renting a summer home to finding your dream home. We will use Laura again in the very near future for our next investment.

We bought a house earlier this year and ended up working with Laura Renner and Willis Allen, which we now regret.
We started looking on our own to get a sense of the market. If we saw what we wanted we could move quickly through our realtor friend. We started by going to open houses and looking online. One of the online inquiries I made sent the «lead» to Laura.
Being in sales myself, I appreciated her persistence. I told her that we weren’t yet sure how serious we were yet and we have a friend who is a realtor who offered to give us a rebate of ½ of his commission if we worked with him, so we weren’t looking for a realtor. She was very nice and eager so I convinced my husband that we should work with her if she would match our friend’s offer so we could help out someone who’s fairly new to the market and seems very motivated. Laura said that because her broker and Willis Allen take such a big cut of her commission she couldn’t give us ½ her commission but she would work out something with us, alluding to a 25% rebate. We agreed to this because we liked and wanted to support Laura.
Over 7 days, we went and looked at houses in about a 10-​mile radius, most of which I found online. To be fair, Laura was VERY responsive which impressed me. Unfortunately, however, for the first house we made an offer on, although she was trying to advocate for us, Laura fought with the seller’s agent and I had to diffuse the situation. My husband was upset and frustrated by the situation. I convinced him to move past this and I spoke with Laura who agreed to apologize to the seller’s agent and we moved forward.
My first communication ever with Laura was via email on 1÷19÷13. We met her in person on 1÷26÷13 and asked her to commission share/​rebate, to which she agreed. We made the first (unaccepted) offer on 1÷28÷13 and the offer on the 2^nd house on 2÷2÷13, accepted with some minor term changes on 2÷4÷13 for $ 677k — a house I found online minutes after it was listed. We wrote a personal letter to appeal to the owners with the offer and have since stayed in touch with them.
Throughout the process, we found most of the houses we looked at, drove ourselves to every house, and did everything we could to expedite the process. There were errors in drafts of offers and I told Laura she could skip the home inspection on 2÷9÷13. We were ok with all of this, considering she wasn’t getting her «normal» commission. After escrow closed, after I followed up with Laura, we got a letter with a $ 500 check. In her letter she itemizes deductions for broker fee, Willis Allen fee, income taxes, E&O insurance, transaction coordinator, etc. and says that the «balance after transaction fees» is $ 3122. She writes «it doesn’t pay» to do «splits» and «while 25% comes to $ 780, I am writing you a check for $ 500.» Putting aside that I don’t agree with this calculation, for Laura to acknowledge in writing that our agreement was 25% but she decided to give us less was incredibly disappointing.
I followed up with her and she explained that after her splits she doesn’t make that much, and she had to pay back money she borrowed from her boyfriend. She further states in writing «I will never give my hard earned money to anyone again.» She also said her office manager agreed with her. Considering that she didn’t have to agree to work with us with these terms and wouldn’t have made this commission in such a short period if she didn’t have credit worthy, decisive and motivated buyers, we were disappointed. After what happened with the first house we tried to buy, we considered changing realtors but I gave Laura the benefit of the doubt so we didn’t and bought a different house with her a few days later. Instead of the $ 8−10k rebate (no deductions) we would have gotten working with our friend, we got $ 500 from Laura. I own two other lesser priced properties in La Jolla and Las Vegas and in both cases received unsolicited housewarming gifts from my realtors worth about that. We weren’t expecting $ 8−10k from Laura but certainly closer to the 25% rebate of her commission we were led to expect and were counting on for expenses related to the house.
We were very unhappy because we chose to work with Laura because we liked her and she agreed to the commission rebate, even though it was less than our friend offered. Being in sales myself, I know how hard it is to be fairly new, so we decided to give her the business, referred her potential customers including my boss, referred her boyfriend a potential customer for a loan, and bought a house in about two weeks after meeting her.
We are happy with our home and genuinely liked Laura and appreciated her efforts, so we were sad and disappointed about how things ended. She was very nice throughout the process so to have this happen after escrow closed was a surprise and a disappointment. Unfortunately, although I had previously had a positive impression of Willis Allen, I am now unlikely to recommend the firm.

This is my first time buying a house and my boss recommended her realtor Summer Crabtree at Willis Allen. I trust my boss since she is picky and the type of girl that gets what she wants. As it turns out Summer was amazing! She is really knowledgeable about real estate (of course) but she was also very helpful answering questions about remodeling, loan process, short sales, foreclosures etc. She has been in the business a long time and knows what she is doing. Summer understood what both my husband and I were looking for, she didnt waste our time looking at houses that were not in our range and exactly what we wanted.
One of the best things about Summer is that she does everything electronically. I text and emailed her all the time all hours of the day or night and she would text or email me back within 20 min even if she was looking into something she let me know that she was on top of it (different from other realtors I worked with prior). Offer letters were sent electronically to my iphone and I could sign clicking boxes straight from my phone. Helpful in this competitive market. the houses we wanted were selling within 3−5days so it is nice to be able to put in your offer as soon as you make the decision. Not having to meet at an office, sign papers, fax, scan etc…
We found the perfect house within 1 month of looking and we are going into Escrow. Thank you to Summer :)

We have never been treated so rudely and unprofessionally, from the broker Bud Clark right on down to their supposed top notch Daniel’s group. I would take my money and business elsewhere.