As trustees of a relative's estate, we chose to list with Leanna and Daryl Flem of C&H because of…read moretheir previous relationship with that relative. It was a very unfortunate mistake for us, and we should have paid attention to the early warning signs. Based on our experience listing with them, here is what someone who lists with them can look forward to:
1. Even though we explicitly and repeatedly said we did not want to do dual agency with them, Leanna and Daryl kept pressuring us to sign a dual agency agreement and included dual agency paperwork with their listing agreement.
2. They also attempted to get us to waive our MLS listing by including an MLS waiver in the listing agreement documents.
3. They tried to low-ball the initial listing price, and then repeatedly pressured us to entertain low-ball offers and counters. Despite their constant efforts, we sold the house for many thousands above what they argued we should accept.
4. Both Leanna and Daryl did not seem to be on our side throughout the entire process, and demonstrated repeated incompetence. They did not catch problems with offers, and in fact made many mistakes in their recommendations on counter offers. For example, when one offer asked for a K-2 land survey within 7 days, we pushed back, saying it would take weeks longer based on phone calls I had made to surveyors. Our attorney likewise recommended at least 30 days for a K-2 survey. But Leanna and Daryl approved a 15-day counter. Well...that was not sufficient! K-2 surveys take a minimum of three weeks to complete.
5. Leanna would not - or could not - follow simple instructions from us. In one instance, when we were proactively addressing the K-2 survey issue mentioned above, Leanna cancelled a land survey (i.e. she contacted the land surveyor herself and told him not to proceed) that we had initiated. We had explicitly told her we wanted it completed, and that we were willing to pay for it outside of escrow. But Leanna sabotaged our efforts. This then created additional problems for us later on, because of boundary issues the survey revealed to us...ones we could have known about and addressed had she not cancelled the survey.
6. Leanna was easily persuaded by her fellow realtors (Buyer's agents) on multiple occasions, sometimes to an absurd degree. She even believed what they said about a $50,000 repair bill for issues that a home inspection found...which in reality turned out to actually be closer to $6,000 to repair. Leanna was either very gullible, or again was just casting around for any reason to lower the price of our property.
7. Nearly all of the additional business resources that Leanna brought into the selling process were shady, very expensive and incompetent. For example, she incurred nearly $1,000 to have our 1,500 sq ft house cleaned - which we had already cleaned ourselves! And we didn't find out about over half of these cleaning costs until we received a closing statement from escrow -- and certainly wouldn't have approved her moving forward with that contractor had we known what the cost would be. We have still not seen a nearly $600 invoice from one of the cleaners showing what they supposedly cleaned. Another contractor she recommended expected a 50% up-front deposit on repair work (which is always a red flag and very unethical). Also, she had a completely clueless (but equally expensive) handyman try to repair the front porch of the house, and he ended up getting things so wrong I had to personally rebuild much of the porch myself. Every other resource Leanna recommended to us along the way (for doing an estate auction, etc.) was either really expensive or just seemed shady to us. So beware! In fact the only resource Leanna used that we thought was competent at all was the photographer...they did a fine job.
8. On a more personal level, Leanna and Daryl Flem were just rude, difficult and unprofessional. As one example, they constantly misspelled my wife's name on all of our real estate documents, despite my asking them to correct this repeatedly over several months. This was just par for the course.
9. Leanna simply did not seem interested in doing any hard work, or paying much attention to the details of our home sale. In each situation that arose, she would ask if we could solve a problem that she belatedly uncovered - sometimes very late in the process (such as after an offer was made) when it was stressful for everyone and under a time crunch. One example was two plumbing and electrical permits for the home's construction that were never closed out at the County. Leanna didn't discover this until the house had been listed for many months, and asked us to resolve the problem.
There is more, but this is enough to illustrate the pattern. Leanna and Daryl Flem demonstrated over and over again that they were either incompetent, careless, unethical, or all of these things. There is just no way to avoid this conclusion. So again...beware.
