They will hold on to your deposit way longer than they are supposed to after you move out, then they will add excessive charges. THESE PEOPLE ARE SCAMMERS. read more

Barbara Dugaw at Windermere Real Estate/Olympia recently helped us buy a home in Olympia. She carefully guided us through the purchase of a house that was 'for sale by owner', something many agents would not touch, going beyond her normal duties. She coached us through the negotiations to arrive at an agreement that pleased us. She had all the arrangements for closing done at a busy time of year, and Windermere helped with some cleaning of the house even after closing! She offered many useful suggestions, and I'm sure she would respond to questions even now. We would give her 10 stars if it were possible. read more

I've rented a property managed by Windermere for the past year and 1/2. I've been responsible and paid the rent on time, and kept the house clean and nice. Laura Garrett, the property manager, has been consistently rude, condescending, and threatening to us. The property is an older house and is fairly run down- but has it's own charm and has been livable. She has consistently treated every tenant of the house poorly in the past 4 years, and seems to think whoever rents the property must be a low-life, apparently. For example, my roommate wore a clean, fashionable sweatsuit to pay rent. She was told not to wear sweatpants to pay rent because they were not appropriate in an office environment. The house has a lot of problems, such as termites, caving-in ceiling, rotting windows, black and pink mold, cracking walls, and draftiness. It has no insulation in the walls and the pipes repeatedly freeze in the winter. I have had to repeatedly bother the maintenance person Dave for him to follow through with repairs. He has told be "no problem, the repairs will be taken care of" but then he fails to call me. But I am very dissatisfied with Laura Garret specifically. Perhaps if you are renting a more-upscale property or leasing a house it is fine. However, if you are lower income be sure to expect some discrimination and attitude from Laura Garret. Myself and 5 other people I know of have encountered discrimination and threats from her. She is a horrible property manager and must be a miserable person! read more

I've dealt with Greg Moe out of Windermere Olympia a few times over the last few years as I've repeatedly considered buying a house with my partner. I don't feel comfortable giving five stars because I haven't actually ended up going through with buying a house with his help as yet and thus can't speak to a pretty critical part of the process. What I have experienced is five star, no doubt. Greg was willing to work with us despite our very odd circumstances and appearance (and car and ...) that was vastly below our financial means, and never really questioned our earnestness. We've always set our sights at sort of lower price points and so we've looked at some real crappy places with Greg and he's always offered his honest opinion of the severity of problems and whether each house has been worth the asking price. Greg has never once tried to up-sell or to get us to look at something we didn't want to pay for. And he's helpful and cheerful and personable and genuinely friendly, keeping in touch even when he knows we're not in the market and encouraging us to send him postcards when we travel. That sort of personal relationship is just unbeatable and provides the sort of comfortable environment and dialogue I really need when I'm dealing with such major life decisions. I know others have had bad experiences with Windermere, but Greg Moe is fantastic and I'd recommend him to anyone. read more

Horrible. Dont rent or buy. They hold your deposit way longer than they should. Ding you for ridiculous claims. A few people I know have rented from them say the same. They seem nice but their practices are not what it should be. read more

Stay away if you don't want your future ruined! This company preyed on the fact that spouse was military. They raised the rent multiple times within one year. They would show up an excessive amount of times within the year to inspect every single detail and then leave an eviction notice on the door for a small pencil mark on the wall if not fixed within 10 days. Eventually when it was time to move out they took advantage that my ex spouse was in at the field training and did the inspection without him present. We have kids so our rug was damaged yes but not $15,500 worth of it!!!!!!!! Please please stay away from these heartless, scamming people who have no remorse to do right by service members and their families. Never again did I encounter a company with such unfair practices, rude racist staff, and literal excessive invasion of privacy! Save yourself so much stress and go elsewhere. read more

In many ways, Rod Swisshelm from Windermere was a fine Real Estate agent: he monitored my house after a showing, and he always kept me informed about what was happening. Then I got an offer, and, as he knew from our discussions, I told him I had a firm number I would not go below; after a bit of back and forth, the buyer and I agreed on that number. However, a low appraisal (very poorly done, bad comps, sloppy, and riddled with errors about the house) put pressure on the price. That's where I felt that Rod abandoned me. I learned later from USAA Mortgage that there is a protocol for a low appraisal--ten days to counter it with better comps, actual facts about the house, etc.--but Rod, who has been in the real estate business a long time, claimed never to have heard about this. It was odd after he seemed so supportive to suddenly find that I was out in the cold with no support for the price of the house. My options were (he said) to de-list the house and wait or sell at the lower price. He said that he would not continue to sell it for our starting price after the low appraisal. I could find another agent, he said, who I could work with. He failed to tell me the other major option ("unknown" to him... ) was to counter the low appraisal through the right channels--a process that would have corrected the low appraisal or given it vindication. Because of how he handled the low appraisal, the lack of support I felt about the agreed on price of my house, and how he negotiated the sale of my house, I would not work with Rod Swissheim again. read more

I scheduled a house viewing with Windermere for monday march 23. After calling earlier that morning to confirm the showing and getting a conformation I was excited to view the property. Fast forward to the house showing time that was conformed not 3 hours prior and no one is there. I wait 25 minutes before calling them back to be told they cancelled the house viewing the previous friday. This was not the case, I never received a phone call or voice mail from them canceling the showing. I think someone on their end messed up and they had the audacity to blatantly lie to me to cover their tracks. Incredibly unprofessional on the phone, they sound like they are doing you a favor setting up an appointment. I would not recommend this real estate company to anyone. I wish I looked up their previous reviews prior. read more

I've rented from Windermere for over 5 years now. I've never had a better experience with a rental company. Anytime I need a service or repair, they're johnny on the spot and get the job done. Thanks guys. Keep up the good work! read more

Renting through this place has been awful. Requested repairs get done weeks later, if at all. And the people working there have terrible customer service. I wonder if the owners know how unprofessional and rude the employees at Windermere Property Management are to their renters. If you don't like being the middleman, quit. read more

Experience was similar to Matthew J.'s. Twice had no results re viewing scheduled rentals w/Darren, even after clearly and emphatically letting them know I was seriously looking for a home, and had left my phone number in case of changes or updates. Third time is not a charm. 1. Tenant wasn't contacted in time, so showing didn't occur. I was going to be 5-10 minutes late, so I called to notify them. Found out by calling ahead to notify them I'd be 5-10 min. late. 2. Appointment was moved up 30 min.; viewing had already occurred. I called 10 minutes before to avoid another realtor no-show, the receptionist exclaimed, "Oh, you didn't know it had been moved up?" Sounded like a repeat performance, on her part. read more

I rented from Winderemere for four years. Property manager Monica us very nice and helpful. Maintenance was great responded quickly. I would rent from this company again. I got my full deposit back because I took great care of the home. read more

Windermere has been easy to work with as a renter. Very responsive to any issues that have come up.

My family and I have had a terrible experience with this property management group thus far. They are managing our rental property and had the audacity authorize payments to vendors and not keep us informed with our property. The secretary on staff is useless, rude, and unprofessional every time we have spoken to her. And our property manager is constantly unable to be reached. I would not recommend them to anyone. Extremely unprofessional company. read more

We have purchased four homes and sold two (soon to be three) through Steve Garrett, the Designated Broker at Windermere Real Estate/Olympia. We are a retired military family with lots of experience in real estate markets in NJ, TX, CO, MT and four counties in western Washington. Steve is by far the best person we have dealt with when buying and selling real estate. Our experience has been that his top priority is always serving the needs of his clients. His advice is always helpful and right on the mark. I've noted some of the comments others have written about his office staff. We've been in and out of his office many times and have always been treated in a friendly and respectful manner. I cannot imagine any of the people we've encountered in our dealings with his office staff being anything but thoroughly professional. I would not hesitate to recommend Windermere RE/Olympia to a friend or family member ready to buy, sell or rent property. read more

The staff who spoke with us when we where approved was super rude. We told her that we had to be out that day or we would pay a penalty with the current landlord. She didn't care whatsoever. She was very rude and disrespectful. They kept the property up for viewing and only put in pending application after we had given our money and taken a whole day off to move. If my man didn't love the house we got I would never go through them again. I wouldn't recomend them to any homeowner horrible company with horrible people skills and business practices. read more

I am currently in the processes of moving to Olympia from Seattle, due to my boyfriend's work being relocated there. We saw a beautiful home in the Capitol district on Craigslist, and knew we wanted to take a look. Seeing as my boyfriend already works in Olympia, he took a look at the house after work one evening. He met up with Monica from Windermere, who just let him in the house and said "I'll be here if you have any questions." We both thought it was a little odd to not actually show the house off, or do an actual walk through with a potential renter. We decided to go ahead an apply for the house seeing as it was what we were looking for. A few days after turning in the application, my boyfriend got a call from Monica. She told him that she ran a background check on him and saw that he is currently in a lease. (To me this already was a little odd because as far as I know, a background check usually tells if you have had a bankruptcy, felony/criminal charges, eviction, etc. They tell major things, not that you are currently in a lease... information she obviously just got from reading the application form, which makes you list your current and past addresses.) She told my boyfriend that we can not rent the place because we currently live in an apartment and the lease has not ended. When my boyfriend explained that it doesn't really make sense to be completely off one lease, and not have an actually home, just to start looking for another place to live, she became very rude. She insisted that we needed to be completely over with our current lease just to be considered. My boyfriend then asked "What if I wanted to rent two apartments. One in Seattle, One in Olympia?" She continued to be rude and said that could never be the case because he doesn't make enough money. After he told me about his conversation, we decided to pull out our applications. He called her back and said that we are not interested any more and that we would like our applications and check thrown out. She explained that since she did a credit check they still had to charge us the application fee. To me, this was so silly. I have been renting apartments for years and have never had a landlord wait to cash the check until after they ran the background check. Also, seeing as the only reason we could not be considered for the place was because of our current residence, just seems odd that they would have to run a credit check for that instead of just looking at the application. read more

I paid an entire month's rent to Windermere but due to the military had to move out on 10 December and did not stay the entire month. My family decided to relocate with me to my next duty station at the last minute and we were not able to give Windermere adequate notice. I understood it was their policy and did not have any hard feelings that I would be paying for 20 days of rent on a rental property that I would not be using. Windermere spent the next 20 days making repairs to our vacated rental home. The issue I have is that the repairs that were done to the rental property were taken out of our deposit, which I felt should have been covered by my rent. Repairs like, rehanging undamaged sliding doors that we had removed because they kept slipping off their tracks. We got tired of calling Mr Dave (the on call repairman at Windermere) to rehang them so we stored them away. When we left, we placed them so they could be rehung easily. Also, we were charged for reprogramming the remote control to our garage door. I assumed that changing locks was something that rental properties automatically did. It surprised me that they charged me for this, when Mr Dave easily reprogrammed the garage door for me when I first moved in and called about it. I understood about being charged for a lost garage remote but almost $400 for these repairs on a rental property, when I had already paid an entire month's rent really upset me. These were repairs that we got for free each month that I paid my rent. I assumed since I had paid a full month's rent, that any repairs would be covered as usual. We were told when we first moved into the rental property that the carpet we had was old and had two years remaining before it needed to be replaced. Prior to us moving in we were charged for the shampooing and cleaning of the carpet. They explained it was a state law. We moved out four years later and Windermere charged us for cleaning the carpet again when we moved out. This was gleefully explained to us by their representative Monica. I still don't understand why I have to pay for carpet cleaning twice in the state of Washington. I would have refused to do it when I moved in if I knew I had to do it when I moved out. I was also disappointed in another charge. We were charged $300 to hire someone to 'clean' our home after we moved out. The thing is when we initially moved in and signed for our key, our home was not clean. There was a nice lady scrubbing furiously at our sink trying to get a red stain out with a pumice stone when we signed for the rental property. When the property manager gave us the keys and left, this same 'cleaning lady' left five minutes after her property manager left, leaving us to finish her work. Items were left in the cabinets we ended up having to remove, not to mention the additional cleaning she skipped out on. I was truly disappointed in how Windermere treated us when we left. For four years they gave us great service. My husband and I were very happy with them. Mr Dave, the repairman, was always nice and friendly. I actually thought the receptionist was always pleasant. She was really nice whenever I called. In fact I got along fine with everyone except Monica who I did not interact with until we moved out. She seemed to go out of her way to be as rude as possible and took pleasure in treating us poorly. I would have given Windermere a good review, but I feel as though their employee, Monica, discovered we were moving out of state and just took advantage of our situation. I would just encourage anyone dealing with Windermere to be cautious with the issues, I have listed. Some of the people are pleasant, just make sure you clarify about your carpet cleaning, so that you aren't paying for the before and after like we ended up doing. Have them put it in your contract. Also, call your repairs in prior to moving out. Apparently paying a full month's rent does not count, they can and will remove any repairs to the home from your deposit. read more

I found a house on Craigslist on a Friday a couple hours after the ad was posted and immediately emailed them. It was through Windermere Olympia. I called the windmere office and left a message hoping they would call or email me back on Monday as I was really excited about the property. I didn't get anything and called first thing on Monday when they opened and made an appointment at 3:15pm. I showed up at 3pm sharp and no one showed up til 3:20 and it wasn't the agent showing the house, it was another person looking at the property. We all called the office with no answer and waited til about 4pm when someone finally answered saying that an agent was there at 3:15 and waited til 3:30. I told her we had been there since 3 and what she said wasn't the case she put me on hold for another 5 minutes and said the property already had 4 applications if I still wanted to wait. Eventually somebody showed up and let us view the house. The agent that showed up said she didn't't know this property because it was not one she was showing. After we viewed it we asked for applications but were told they would not accept anymore because they already had 4 pending. Kind of a waste of time and seems like the recopnist was annoyed and was either lying or the person showing it was lying to them. Would not recommend. read more