Real Estate Industry In Orange County First of all, I encourage Yelpers to recognize that the real estate business is more cutthroat than most and maintaining a healthy skepticism about reviews that fail to actually describe a real personal experience with the Harcourts or its agents. Manners, Manors and Man As a client, I can honestly state that the agents with whom I just met with--in person-- were not pushy, did not insult me or tell me how much my home needed to change amd ultimately did not make any -romises or overextend themselves in any way. In short, meeting with Bill Pasqualino and Chad Whitfeldt specificially went much better than anticipated, was more informative than any meetings Ive had regarding this property to date. In the end, I decided their unique nuts and bolts approach was a great fit and I am looking forward to a successful sale in the near term future. Here is my recent consumer experience with Bill Pasqualino and Chad Whitfeldt... as a current and ongoing client. "Well, You Got A Better Idea"- For starters, Bill and Chad are both very experienced in the luxury property market and it shows. In my search for the right Agents, I previously met with an Agent who asked me if I would give him $35k... before ever setting foot through the front door. Nexxxxxt. Thankfully with Harcourt's, I was left scratching my head when Bill was explaining that there was a couple items I would be responsible for paying at a cost a few hundred total. Yesss. My gut tells me they were checking my financial flexibility, because the amount they were asking about was far too low to need to have a conversation over...and especially for what their team was willing to do for me, which is ALOT. Listen to this... It should go without saying that like all Agents, Harcourts routinely creates traditional listings with your typical "list it and leave it" manner... and if you are Lucky enough... they may choose to go above and beyond the typical parameters of occasional showings and open houses...and set up, market, and advertise a property auction. Seems scary right? Its Not. Heres why... "What are the three most important things in Real Estate today? Innovation, Innovation, Innovation!" -(Atias '24?) How exactly can Harcourt's Monarch Beach succeed where other agents have not? It's genius really, but they spent time explaining the "auction" option and process and because I am not one of these brainless 1 star review types littering all over Yelp, I actually grasped the concept and agree that holding a reserve price auction for my property while unorthodox, is actually the best method generating a ton of buzz, exactly what I need. Do you? Fortunately, for Bill, Chad and the Harcourts brand, this is business as usual. A well planned & time sensitive auction preceded by few high traffic, limited engagement showings with a very attractive Initial bid price, is anything if not effective. "One Ping at a Time is the new Foundation underlying Every Empire" I realized after meeting with them, the only reason otherd fail to do so, is because they do not want to put in the effort needed to increase the probability of getting competitive bidders (in any market) and will at the least get more feet to traipse across my new distressed, wire brushed, WOCA UV Oil Finished, European White Oak Wide Plank floors. All of this with a reserve price, and a market lacking meaningful supply plus a 12 week commitment, as opposed to the more stringent 6 month clause found in the majority of your typical listing agreements. Let me tell you what I did not experience... overpromising sales figures, hiding the ball with the essential contract terms, bad mouthing any other agents or industry tycoons, foul odors. That last one was just a test. Still reading? "IMHO--True as a Beam On Grade" I don't need more than a few hours speaking with anyone to make a judgment call regarding their business ethos and integrity. Harcourts has one of the best reputations amongst locals for agents who can produce results for both parties. In OC, it's not uncommon to find an agent who simply makes too much money to really care about an individual listing. As a homeowner with a property that is an outlier in terms of both the size and the location relative to my neighbor' homes, I believe and have faith that at the very least more than four people will see the property in person". read more

Very scammy! I spoke with Sarah on the phone was fully transparent about my credit situation and income and she mislead me & was downright dishonest by telling me to "apply & they can get me in a place" Maybe she has to adhere to metrics, either way it's a waste of time & money for applicants. It's unethical to take people's money for credit checks. Best business practice, is to let them know, initially what would work and what wouldn't. These property management companies are breaking the new law regarding credit check fees. Honestly, they should pay themselves, to check people's credit, if the cost is on them, they will not lie and will only work with applicants, that they are truly interested in. The new law is: California's AB 2493 significantly changed rental application fees, requiring property managers to either process applicants on a "first-qualified" basis and refund unused fees, or refund the entire screening fee to all unselected applicants within 7 days (or 30 days if no tenant selected) if they don't use the first-qualified method, ensuring transparency and returning money when screening isn't fully used or an applicant isn't chosen. Landlords must provide itemized receipts and give written screening criteria upfront, with fees capped by inflation (around $65 in 2025). Key Requirements for Property Managers Option 1: First-Qualified Process Process applications strictly in the order received. Provide written screening criteria upfront. Refund any unused portion of the fee if the applicant isn't chosen after their application was considered (e.g., if another applicant was processed first). Option 2: Refund All Unselected Applicants If you don't use the first-qualified method, you must refund the full screening fee to every applicant who isn't selected, regardless of why (even if a background check was run). Refunds must be sent within 7 days of selecting a tenant or 30 days of application submission, whichever is sooner. Transparency & Receipts Must provide itemized receipts showing actual screening costs. Provide written screening criteria to all applicants upfront. Fee Limits Fees are capped at the actual cost of screening, adjusted annually for inflation (around $65 in 2025). In Simple Terms Landlords must be very clear about how they process applications. If they can't prove they followed the "first-come, first-served" rule for every application, they must refund the entire fee to everyone they didn't rent to. I would not recommend this place unless you have a high credit score but even then they might still just be collecting applications & not have any real properties for rent. Could be a complete scam read more

If I could give a negative star rating this organization would deserve it. There is a reason Harcourts doesn't claim this page. I would stay clear if you want a legal rental experience. They will deduct items from your security deposit that are clearly illegal according to published California rental laws and they won't correct it even after showing them documentation. From my experience, they don't care about renters' rights only protecting the landlord's interests and no rental is worth occupying through them! read more

I got screwed over by Josh Procopis and Ben Brady. They claimed to be the top guys. They certainly know how to screw people over. They ran me around for months, showing them properties and then they bait and switched me at the end after I found the property for him and procured the deal brought a CBRE Broker to finalize the deal They screwed me out of a Commission most unethical thing I've ever been involved with I would never deal with I suggest nobody deal with this company These guys are pros at screwing people read more

Soheila F. Lisa provided a very professional and knowledgeable experience. She was incredibly Communicative, responsive and attentive throughout our home buying process. I and my husband are so happy to have had Lisa. We would highly recommend her. read more

This company is scamming people out of money with unclear direction for buyers and pressuring sellers to close before reviewing all offers. Sellers beware. read more

Imagine you had the opportunity to design a custom realtor for your own home buying and/or home selling experience, Shane & Michelle exemplify all these attributes we would include for a stellar buying experience. They handled each and every detail from First Call to Keys, They have the perfect blend of finesse and fire to negotiate on your behalf. I can say with great conviction, values, and their professionalism is second to none! Shane, we love your signature line "Call me anytime" a phrase he will certainly stand behind, Michelle your personable touch and attention to detail are unmatched! read more

Working with the Hartoucts Auction Team is incredibly easy! The transparency provided throughout the process for the seller and buyer is not available elsewhere. It does take a bit us time for everyone to understand the process but that is where the auction teams comes in strong. They are right there to answer seller and buyer questions, concerns and make it work!!! read more

This company is good at selling you their business but it's a complete hoax. Stay away. Choose a conventional realtor. They don't come through on anything they promise upfront and you'll end up with extra costs from their "streamlined approach." Justin, amongst many others is a particularly is a dishonest individual. Don't take the risk. read more

My opinion? Questionable practices. Listings too good to be true. Why? They're ostensibly a starting point for an auction. The MLS and online sources aren't "auction" sites. Many potential buyers have felt they've been intentionally misled. Read the reviews about these issues and communication issues. My opinion is to avoid doing business with people who play games and manipulate customers this way. read more

I will not lump everyone in this office as unprofessional, but my interactions with its agent (Justin Green) and office assistant (Whitney) was absolutely horrendous for a first time home buyers like us. One promise broken after another, no follow upon requests, total disregard of buyers' concerns, and absolutely the most unprofessional people to deal with. To make matter worst, they made us look for house key outside the house on the handover day. Is that how you treat your clients? My recommendation to others, stay away from these people as your listing or buying agent. As soon as they get your money, they won't respond to you and sent you a couple of $5.00 Starbucks gift cards to basically say "Fu@% off", and ask for referrals. You will get better treatment and professionalism from a used-car sales people than these people. read more

This Review is for Brenna Van Hoogenstyn. Brenna found us a home in Laguna Niguel recently and we had such a wonderful experience with her! We've been looking for a home without success for many months. We met Brenna at another home she had listed and she remembered us. Even though the house she was selling didn't quite match our requirements, she listened to our long list of what we wanted in a home and went out and found it for us! Brenna is just excellent at what she does and we highly recommend her to anyone buying or selling. She is a step above all other realtors we have met with her ethics and she truly cares. Her listening skills are amazing too! If you have the pleasure of working with Brenna, you will truly be happy. She is our family realtor now! read more

Rachael Ashley (949 204-4082)gave me a call this morning, 11/10, and asked if I had any association with some property in "Newport Coast." After I told her she had the wrong number, she pushed further, questioned my reply, then proceeded to abruptly hang up on me as I tried to explain that I did not know what she was referring to. I highly recommend that Ms. Ashley receives some proper training on telephone etiquette before calling and reaching out to strangers or potential clients and taking up their time only to rudely hang up on them. Thank you. read more

Contacted repeatedly starting at 7am until 11 am. About 10 calls asking if my house is still open for sale. Continually asked to be taken off her list and all her reps began aggressively calling me. Shady business. Brenna Van Hoogenstyn was asked to take my number off her list on 12/10/20 several times. read more

I work with a lot of real estate companies, staging homes and doing pre-sale consultations. Harcourts agents are some of the most professional, hard-working, ethical realtors in the industry. It is always a pleasure working alongside this group of professionals. read more

Please do not use this company. They had cars parked blocking my driveway during an open house. I let it go thinking that the cars would be moved shortly but 30 minutes after the END of the open house the car was still there preventing me from accessing my own house. I politely texted the agent: (this was the first time I ever spoke or contact this agent.) "It's 4:30 now. Your open house should have ended 30 minutes ago. Can you please ask your client to move their car so it is not blocking my driveway?" The agents response was: "I'm going to have my attorney contact you." This is not the way to hold an open house. Frankly, I'm puzzled at what their attorney might say. I've never heard of an agent who would threaten legal action over a neighbor. read more

This was the worst property management company I have ever worked with. Plan on some of your deposit being taken for a rental managed by them, no matter what condition the property is in. We left the property better than when we rented it, after 14 months, they charged us for painting and landscape seeding. Even though they had a monthly gardener and we were in a drought. Their property manager was terrible to work with. Unorganized, and not clear on follow up. Renting from Harcourt was the worst rental experience. I had to battled them to get my deposit back. I received $2,500 of the $3,000 deposit after multiple emails to the owner and property management president. They told me I was lucky to get that back, as they always take most of the security deposit. It's shocking businesses like this can stay in business.bob Wolf is terrible. He told me he focuses on "protecting his clients, the homeowner" but really he scams renters to get his homeowners $. I've heard from multiple real estate industry experts that Bob Wolff has a bad reputation. I see why! read more

My wife and I rented a property on HomeAway.com, where Harcourts was the property management company. BEWARE of any property managed by Harcourts. Our rental was Solana Beach property ID: 1406380 We paid $2500 to rent this unit for a week, but when we arrived, after a fiasco getting the keys, getting into the parking garage, and getting to the unit, we arrive to find a unit that was 95 degrees inside, with no air conditioning. We were trying to escape the heat in Arizona where my wife gets migraines from getting too hot. Harcourts said not to worry because they have a fan inside. We couldn't stand it after the first hour and left. I let them know and was basically told, that's you're problem, there's no refunds. I wasn't looking to get all my money back, and just asked them to consider half my money back. Again they came back with "sorry, no refunds". A couple more calls, and they said all they would do is refund the cleaning fee of $175, but claiming they didn't need to do that because they will still do a full cleaning on the unit, even though we never touched a thing and stayed less than 1 hour. I tried to write a review on HomeAway, but Harcourts has somehow blocked the ability to do that, so I can warn others about how hot it gets inside in the summer. Now, they won't even return my calls asking for a link to submit a review. I will NEVER rent from a Harcourts managed property...ever. I'd recommend anyone considering them, look at the other reviews submitted here besides this one. I'm not the only one who's had a terrible experience with Harcourts. read more

Unethical listing agents and rampant lies. Likened to being forced into deals by a car salesman. Scummy and not trustworthy.

This particular review pertains to Greg Babakabian, the broker in Laguna Beach. Greg was consulted on a home sale for me with a very deceptive co-owner. I live in the home and maintain it exclusively and Greg knows the personal drama and hell I've had to deal with to get this phase of my life over with, I never hired Greg, he has spent zero dollars on marketing my home, and very little time commitment, he never asked me to sign a contract. The house is not on the Market and I found a private buyer (on my own), I recently found out that Greg had my ex sign a Sales Agreement without my consultation and knowledge. How is this even legal? I asked him to cancel the transaction since he did not disclose this Agreement with me, and intentionally withheld this from me, I felt this was highly unethical since I was conversing with him, yet he never found the time to tell me about this Agreement? He declined. I brought Greg into the mix as a personal friend to my ex to sell my "selling strategy", Greg didn't offer anything to the scenario that I had not already thought of. His strategy was to "luxury auction" my property and I decided I didn't want to go this route. RUN, don't walk away from this POS read more

Our Harcourts Prime agent was knowledgable, thorough and managed to get me a price higher than I had anticipated. I felt included in the process and our home closed in 29 days. Recommend. read more

David Maines s the most unprofessional realtor in the planet. He verbally accepted my offer in Sunday and Monday he took another offer in paper with another buyer. Karma is a bxxth David read more

This review is for Kathryn. We found Katie when she was the agent representing our previous landlord and getting the apartment rented when we moved out. I was very confused and stressed because somehow my phone number got listed and I had people calling to demand viewings, one lady even told me that she was sending people my way, and that they could just go with another agent's showing. The other agent had no idea about it and when I told him, he told me it was unethical and that she had to be there when her clients were there. He even told ME that I had to call the unethical lady back and explain it to her! I was caught in the middle of all of this, without having anything to do with the listing, it was quite the nightmare. I was just living in the place while it was being rented. Anyways, I told Katie about this and she was so sweet to me, spoke to me calmly and told me she would take care of it. I never got another call and her sweet words made a HUGE difference. From then on out, I trusted her and knew that when it came time, we would call her first. And we did... My husband got deployed (the reason why I moved out of our previous apartment, to live with a family friend while he was away) and now his return is coming up. We were trying to decide between renting and buying, as I was hunting alone while he was away. We decided that for now it is best for me to find a place to rent and then buy upon his return (if we end up staying in this area). When you are looking for a place to rent, most Agents treat you like a waste of time, and I get it, they aren't really making their money off of you. However, Katie treated me with absolute respect from the first time we spoke, fought for me, and worked very hard to find us a place. I am pretty naive when it comes to searching so she stepped through the entire process with me, out of sheer kindness. I eventually found the perfect rental!! I can't imagine anyone better to work with and when we are ready to buy; she will be our first call, especially after how we've been treated in the past by other agents. I will recommend her forever! :) Thank you Katie! read more

Annette Glass is my hero. I would give her 10 stars if yelp would let me. Annette worked extremely hard for me and came up with creative solutions each time an obstacle came up as I recently navigated the purchase of a condo in Laguna Woods. The purchase was very complicated because there was a tenant involved, and the sellers picked an unusual escrow company that caused problems for everyone, but Annette figured everything out, got the deal back on track, and gave me great advice all along the way. I could not have asked for a better agent. I truly don't know what I would have done without her. My kudos to Annette and the entire team at Harcourts Prime Properties! read more

Rented a house(expensive) from this management group. Problems from day one. Was filthy when we moved in. Then after 2 weeks the towel racks and cabinets began falling off and breaking. A pipe broke and thru the HOA and Bob Wolff people arguing over who should pay it took almost 2 months to fix. Then they wouldn't even give us a credit until I got lawyer. After only 6 months we wanted to leave. Finally time to leave and we were totally ripped off from our security deposit. Even thought everything was much cleaner then when we moved it. They are scam artists and I would never recommend this management group to anyone. Be weary of these people. read more

Excellent group of Real Estate professionals! Bob Wolff is a legend! The man is an animal and an icon in the real estate industry. His team is very supportive. Monique and Lori work tirelessly and bring huge value and support to Bob so he can be freed up to focus on his clients, who he values immensely. Definitely highly recommend this team, especially if you are looking to buy or sell in coastal OC. read more

Susan Chase and Cynthia Montinola assisted us in the sale of two of our properties in order to purchase our new "Dream" home in Laguna Niguel. Their professionalism and extensive insights into the real estate market gave us total confidence in the process. Susan and Cynthia have a far-reaching support network with other realtors, escrow, and loan representatives making the complicated process of buying and selling property "do-able." We highly recommend Susan Chase and Cynthia Montinola for your next sale or purchase. read more

This was the worst experience ever. I felt like I was dealing with used car salesmen. These people promised me an auction and were not able to follow through. Furthermore the agent Wesley Williams, had no idea how to sell luxury home. Since the house cannot be seen the street, there was no curb appeal. He put up a generic sign and had to be told to put up a box with flyers. He complained noisily about the cost of flyers. The agent tried to have open houses without advertising and did not know that there was a section in the UT that advertised open houses. The photographs placed on the MLS where in no particular order and do not represent the house well at all . They talked me into lowering the price so as to lure customers. When I received a bid at the lowest possible amount, which was less than what I paid for the house, they tried to get me to sell at a ridiculously low price. When I tried breaking the listing agreement, they refused to sign off on it even though I told them I would not let them sell the house and banned them from the property. Furthermore they tried to get me to pay for their out of pocket expenses ( the cost of flyers) and said they would let me out of a contract if I paid them to do. the broker ben, was no better than the salesman. read more

bob wolff misrepresented a property for sale that we ultimately bought. numerous undisclosed issues/building faults and illegal construction. not only was he unwilling to work w/ my agent or myself to correct these issues, he lied about every item that was brought up. H E kept assuring us that everything would be corrected. .2/3/ months latter, he was still lying.......he felt if he put it in writing , it was our fault. claims to be all religious are just a cover up of his cheating business practices .HE WAS GLAD TO TAKE THE COMMISSION/FOR WHICH OUR AGENT DID ALL THE WORK. Had to resort to attorney's to get compensation for the items that ultimately cost us $4000 plus. the most fake smile, glad handing miserable excuse for a human being.. have since heard from several others that he's a con artist.......be careful read more