Kaelen G.
5/5
We didn’t just happen to stumble on to Natalie Boyle and Kayla Breneman at Verso Homes in Aliso Viejo. We started with some general screening of maybe 40 or so Yelp, Google and Facebook reviews of South OC realtors with happy clients. We looked for realtors who successfully completed transactions from Orange, down to Laguna Niguel. We read their biographies looking specifically for formal education, broad experience as a Listing and Buyer’s Agent, and some sense of a team culture so wouldn’t find ourselves limited to an overly busy individual Realtor. We narrowed our list to 8 Realtors who I called and asked to respond to a 12 item questionnaire. After reviewing the questionnaire we further narrowed our list to 3 individuals we thought showed promise and set up 3 face to face interviews. It was clear while interviewing Natalie and Kayla on Friday night that it would be tough to find a better fit during our two Saturday interviews. We were right. For starters, Natalie and Kayla were by far two of the best listeners I’ve met in quite some time. They were engaged in every question we asked and both gave thoughtful, detailed answers to the many questions my daughters and I came up with. They were both well spoken, professional, knowledgeable and had a willingness to do what needed to be done. They fully described their process to assess a buyer’s needs and wants. They detailed the escrow process, the types of documentation, the access to professionals that we may need for a buyer’s inspection or any plumbing or similar type concern that came up. Natalie shared some of the construction details she had learned while growing up with her father who was a general contractor. They explained that they read through the same HOA documentation that we as buyers should be reading which I found to be uncommon with other Agents. Natalie advised that she subscribes to a legal service that we would have full access to at no cost should issues or questions come up. As things turned out, that became very useful. I used one attorney for help with vesting questions on how my daughters should hold title together when buying a condo and ultimately got discounts on two Living Trusts for them. We also used a different attorney to make us feel comfortable in our legal position as the listing agent tried to pull some shenanigans.
The ladies used an MLS screening process to push us constant Emails with condo’s that matched our general criteria. We put together weekly lists of Open Houses that we were fine going to on our own and others where we needed them to help us get in the door. They were always very accommodating. The benefit of two Realtors came into play many times as one may be handling an open house for a seller’s listing but the other was always able to assist us with homes we considered making offers on. One of our interview questions was their willingness to provide open, honest feedback of homes we liked. They always shared pros and cons and I didn’t feel they held back, which was what we needed.
Over the course of maybe 11 weeks, these ladies worked diligently and constantly communicated with us. We would sometimes text early in the morning and sometimes have calls at 9pm. I asked questions continuously and they always had an answer, or knew where to get one. They were always professional, positive and honest. They had a keen sense of imperfections in the properties we saw and were willing to climb up or kneel down to point it out to us. Ultimately, they shared in our joy when all things eventually worked out. If you want an agency that truly acts in the fiduciary capacity they should be held to, you won’t find any better than this team.
