Professional Philosophy

WHEN IT"S TIME TO MAKE ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS OF YOUR LIFE... You deserve the best. That's why you deserve a Real Estate Team, that acts in your best interest at all times - a team you trust, have confidence in, and feel comfortable with. Through the years our clients have taught us that it's important to take the time up front with an initial consultation -- a two-way interview, where you discover if we are the right team for you, and you are the right clients for us. What should a Real Estate Team do for you? We believe that no matter how busy you are, no matter how successful you are in your business in real estate, you require deserve team members that are:

SKILLED CONSULTANTS: Helping you understand real estate market values, loan programs, and taking the time to ask what's important to you your family when buying or selling a home. Imagine them asking insightful, intelligent questions to clarify your goals and values so your choices will be easy. Imagine them not giving you advice until you've confirmed we've heard what you said.

TOUGH NEGOTIATORS: It's YOUR money! What would it be like to have your Real Estate Team treat your money like it's their own -- to make sure you don't give away any of your money. Imagine a team that is focused on getting you the Best Possible Price and not focused on just getting a quick commission.

METICULOUS MANAGERS: For all those voluminous details, from implementing successful marketing system, to structuring the offer loan programs, to handling legal documents and requirements from city and county ordinances, California Law and Federal Regulations -- dotting every “i”; and crossing every “t”; so costly mistakes are not made.

That's what a real estate team should do for you -- they are your fiduciary agents, legally ethically, always acting in your best interest at all times with utmost care. And that's what we do.

Let us help you make your dreams come true.

Education

California Real Estate License

* Real Estate -- Tax Benefits of Ownership

* Real Estate Courses in Principles, Practices, Law, and Economics.

* Real estate law and practices in California.

* Extensive computer training for real estate applications

* Certified Negotiation Specialist; Extensive training in negotiation and communication skills

* In depth experience in Corporate Project Sales

* Willoughby: Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry with honors, Phi Lambda Upsilon. Bachelor of Arts in Sociology.

* Alan: Bachelor of Arts in Social Science. Real Estate Finance, Real Estate Appraisal Principals and Procedures

Professional Experience

Willoughby has over 25+ years’ experience in Real Estate helping people successfully market and purchase their homes. Prior to joining Coldwell Banker in San Mateo, Willoughby helped clients buy and sell their homes at Coldwell Banker's, San Rafael office in Marin County. Before entering real estate Willoughby held a career in management, working for various employers including Tom Peters (author of ln Search of Excellence) and SRI International.

Alan worked for 16 years in high-technology firms, managing major account sales and systems integration projects. In 2006 He began his real estate career in the residential mortgage business prior to joining Willoughby at Coldwell Banker in San Mateo.

Professional Affiliations

National Association of Realtors

California Association of Realtors

San Mateo County Association of Realtors

Personal Background

Willoughby loves interior design, gardening, health, nutrition, music, and dance. She is very interested in the history of the Bay Area and its entrepreneurial spirit. A long-term resident of the Bay Area (36 years) Willoughby has watched with amazement as the Bay Area's forward-thinking culture, has invented and re-invented itself throughout the decades.

Alan a lifelong resident of the Bay Area, spent many years in the back county of the Sierra Nevada enjoying sailing on Pinecrest Lake at his family's cabin as a child. Later, he spent several decades enjoying hiking, off-road motorcycle riding and snowmobiling. A high-tech junkie: he loves the newest and greatest electronic gadgets.

Testimonials

Chris and Claudia

We liked the selling strategy you presented; with the main concept of Visible Demand being the best way to sell our home in this market. It just made good sense to us. It was amazing to watch it actually work, just fabulous! From my own experience, I've been in the control systems business and the competitive bid process for decades, so I understand the psychology of that process. I understand that the market is the market and what someone is willing to pay is what it's worth. Therefore, I was very comfortable with your pricing strategy, it just rang true with my own experience.

In the beginning when we knew we were going to put our home on the market, and we asked you over to the house. We wanted you to tell us what we needed to do to prepare for the sale and how much money you thought we needed to put in to fix it up. You both came over gave us your opinion and did not do anything to try and influence us about using you as our realtors. We are really appreciative of your clear advice, recommendations, and no pressure.

We felt really good with you on a personal level. A team of a man and a woman working with a man and a woman is a good concept. We think it helps balance the personalities, the interests and motivations and makes a better team. Alan I could work together on the technical side of things as technical types and we could all work on the relationship side together. It just felt good and at the end of the two-way interview process it just reinforced that we could work very closely and very effectively together.

Nevertheless, we felt we needed to interview multiple realtors to make sure we had thought about this carefully. We interviewed three realtors, Willoughby Alan, another realtor in the neighborhood and the gentleman who helped us buy our home. When we interviewed those other realtors we are glad it turned out to be you two because we think we selected the best. You're great to work with, you're so pro-active, you keep us constantly updated on everything, it's so refreshing to work with somebody that way, and we feel it's just been a great experience! When we listed our home with you we did not know what to expect and we were hoping that it would be reasonably more. With your strategy you put our fears to rest quite well. We also got the benefit of your experience selling other homes, the things that we hadn't thought about doing to get the home ready you brought to us and helped us understand the value of them. That helped a huge amount as did the companies and resources you brought in to do the work.

I've been involved in marketing long enough to know there is a difference between words and action. With other realtors we heard more words, you showed us action. We felt the way you described your marketing was more of an experience we could understand. How we would work together, what would happen and how it would happen as an effort together. That really rung a bell with us.

Tom and Tania

We felt you were good people we could level with; we had a great energy between us! We felt we would not just “work with”; but could thrive with you and really find something we enjoy. You are very honest and that comes across strongly, you really do want to help other people find a home, we appreciated that. Everyone has motivations and sometime those things don’t all align, you do a wonderful job of making sure those things are close as they can be. Our best interest became your best interest. We are so happy we got here it’s very thrilling and very hard to put into words.

We feel totally comfortable, 100% comfortable about referring you to other people. We gave you a tall order to educate us on what we can afford, how we should finance it and helped us understand what we really wanted. You guys had our back and then oddly enough forcing us to do the right thing and guide us to get it - was wonderful, it was great. Thank gosh we bought the best house out of the 30-40 we were interested in.

We thought we knew what we wanted before we met you, yet in the end we needed your wealth of knowledge, fantastic realtor skills and obviously, to educate us, guide us and make it happen. You helped us get the house we loved more than any other house and did it with enthusiasm, positive energy, and optimism.

We had to forget where we came from and everything we thought about value when we bought in the mid-peninsula. Otherwise, our value was going to be skewed. We became patient and raised our budget as the market kept moving up. We did our own research as well and always followed our gut feeling. Both were important to us, as our research allowed us to feel confident about our gut feeling.

The multi-city Grand Tours were tremendous and gave us a leg up, helping us understand the type of house and location we wanted, which was a very different then what we were thinking before we met you. You are always willing to work, are flexible, available and could meet with us on very short notice to view homes. Touring 30-40 homes was necessary for us; to see the number of people in the homes during open houses and understand how fast they can go pending - some in several days. The tours gave us the knowledge to understood values and the confidence to make a winning offer on the second try!