James Chen is amazing!!!!! We cannot say enough good things about him! He is responsive, trustworthy, patient, knowledgeable, responsible, hardworking, caring, and kind. James will represent YOU 110% and is an excellent advocate. He is not out to just make his commission off you or work a shady deal with the other side.
And trust that our review is 100% truthful because my husband and I are NOT AFRAID to fire bad agents! As first-time homebuyers, we decided to work with James after going through a great deal of frustration and stress, having fired two other agents in the span of about two months. Our first agent tried to force us to sign an exclusive, for-compensation representation agreement on the eve of our offer being due, and our second agent essentially refused to go to bat for us in negotiating with the seller during escrow, when the appraisal came back significantly lower than our purchase price. Working with James was like night and day compared to our first two agents — we wish we found him sooner!
We did not know anyone who had previously worked with James, but were introduced to him through my mom (James is a customer at the bank where she works). James helped us navigate the process of a canceled escrow (resulting from our former agent’s failures), including making sure we got our earnest money deposit back. We then found our current home in Culver City on our own through Redfin, and James represented us throughout the process of making an offer, escrow, and then finally closing escrow after a difficult time with Chase as our lender. Although James is not physically based on the westside, he is generally familiar with the westside neighborhoods and had worked with the seller’s agent before, which was helpful to us.
James is phenomenally responsive at all times, which we really appreciated. When we first met, he told me that he typically tried to respect family time and would not answer emails after 7 or 8 pm, but we found that actually, James would often answer emails until around 10 pm — going above and beyond. He also answered all sorts of neurotic questions from us in a lot of detail and with much patience.
When we were making our offer on our home, we were very nervous about not getting our offer accepted in such a competitive market (we had already been through a few rounds of being up against 14-15 other offers with our other agents), but James actually convinced us to LOWER our offer, saying that he did not think we needed to go that high. HE WAS RIGHT! We still received a counter and ended up where actually lower than where we originally thought we’d be with the purchase price after counteroffers.
During escrow, James helped us research and determine what to ask for as a credit for repairs (our last agent just had us figure it out on our own). He also stayed on top of various deadlines for removal of contingencies and was on top of badgering the seller’s agent and the escrow company when we weren’t getting information we needed such as HOA documents. James also helped us deal with an extremely frustrating delay in closing escrow due to the delays of the Chase underwriting department. James helped us harass Chase about the delay in an attempt to move things along, tried to keep the seller’s agent calm for as long as possible, and also negotiated with the seller’s agent re the final number for a per diem penalty. We were finally able to close escrow about 10 days late, and James held our hands the whole time.
We cannot recommend James more highly for anyone’s real estate needs!
— Christina & Jon, Culver City
