Alex Horowitz - Coldwell Banker Diamond

This review is 6 years late but better late than never! I bought a new construction townhome through Alex back in 2017. During the escrow process I dealt extensively with his staff, who was excellent. His team even worked out an arrangement for me to move in a couple of days early. Alex also made sure all loose ends were tied up after close to escrow and he was always very quick to resolve any issues.

Alex is very experienced and there are so many potential hurdles in any escrow that requires a solid agent to help navigate. He's that guy.

I no longer live in that townhouse but seeing the Alex Horowitz open house signs whenever I revisit the area brings back some great memories.

Years ago we went to an open house in Brea...i know it has been a long time, but my encounter with Alex still bothers me. He was short and rude with me and a friend. We may have been rough looking, but we are hard workers and now own 5 homes between us.

How dare you make rash judgements based on how a person is dressed. Or maybe you are just a nasty person. Anyhow, stay away from Alex- he does not treat people right.

Definitely beware before dealing with Alex Horowitz. He has no moral character. He heard me over the phone before even talking normally he starts asking qualifying questions just cause I sound very young on the phone but I'm 40 with 2 children. Anyway this incident happened like 10 years ago and I still can't forget this guy cause I was desperately looking for a house to rent in the La Habra area and I called him asking if a house he had advertised was available? He immediately was like "What do you do for a living?" How much do you make" things of that nature very rude.

I responded with you know what you don't just start asking those questions. I wanted to schedule to see the house, not get harassed like I sounded on the phone I didn't qualify. Overall extremely rude I would definitely stay away and give your business to another agent with better morals.

I know he's going to contact Yelp and request to remove this review because it's false etc and Yelp going to remove it cause he pays for business yelp.

Yelp if you read this this completely true story intact so true I still remember till this date. That's why I post about it.

Alex you know what type of person you are and how you conduct business. God knows you can put up a lie but the truth will always be the truth. If you feel for whatever reason someone isn't worthy of an property you immediately shun them and ask very rude questions without giving treating them like an human being.

Over Due Review:
We purchased our forever home in August 2022. After working with the realtor that I gave my home to sell ( a friends relative) which sold in 2 weeks we started the serious search to purchase our forever home. After 2 months not understanding why with A paper, 35% down and underwriter approval every competitive offer was being overlooked! We finally said we're not buying right now. On 4th of July we went to look at a home I saw listed, in the conversation with the listing agent she mentioned " are you coming from Newcomb listing?" ..with that since we were just looking we decided to drive by. Instantly I feel in love with our home! I ask the attending agent to have Alex call me we were very interested. Within 30 minutes I received a call. I advised Alex I'm not working with an agent- serious buyers with Approval & A paper I'm not getting into a bidding war. Let us know the best offer and we would advise if we would proceed. His response was absolutely Gloria however this is what the sellers are looking for..I responded done. Next evening we received a call from Alex with highest offer we counterd and 30 minutes later we were in escrow. Our closing was actually done in 26 days however the seller needed 30 due to a big move. From the moment Alex introduced himself to me/us I knew our forever home was days away from owning. Alex handled both of our needs in a fair and professional manner. His staff is top notch! In addition the communication with the sellers was perfect! Are previous realtor tho many years in the business just didn't cut it for us. I've thought about it many times and it was a blessing... We found Alex Horowitz's listing and we now own our forever home. He is all that! My review doesn't come easy. I'm a Banker & work for one of the top lenders in the Nation- I've worked with many, many realtors over my long career..Alex and his devoted Team really take care of you and make every effort to make sure at the end of escrow the keys are handed over, both seller& buyersin this transaction were ever so happy!. Escrow, purchase and closing went smooth as butter! Thank you Alex Horowitz! Forever recommend!

Nearly a million dollars Transfered into our account today! We inherited our parents house and went shopping for a realtor on a Sunday June 12. I left a voice mail and was pleased when Alex called me right back, even though he was out of town. I explained our circumstance, that we had inherited a house in the Woodwalk track in Brea. The house was packed full of stuff accumulated over the past 45 years. My parents were the original owners. My thought was to let a couple of agents know it was available, as is, on an off market basis. Alex explained that houses that don't show well can sit for a long time and that with rising interest rates, time was not our friend. He explained a special service he offers, just for sellers in our situation. He said if we get everything we want out of the house, that he would take care of everything else!
We gave him the go ahead the next day, Monday and on Tuesday we met with 4 of his team members at the house, signed the agreement and went over the plan with his project manager, Austin. Once we had everything we wanted out of the house, his team arranged for useable items to be donated and and junk hauled away. Since Alex is also a home builder, he tapped into his network of contractors and arranged for the house to be stripped down, repaired, repainted, brought up to code with new outlets and water heater strapping, etc. and had the place looking fresh and new, staged with new furniture and ready for open house in no time. During all this commotion, we did nothing but stay out of the way!
We quickly received several offers and settled on a clean offer, $50K over asking and today the money showed up in our account.
For all these extra services, Alex did not charge us anything extra. The actual amounts of the bills from the various contractors were simply paid out of escrow. I have sold several houses over the years and worked with some nice agents, but no one who has done anywhere near the amount of work that Alex did and all built in to his competitive commission rate. We come away feeling almost guilty that we owe him more for all he did. On performance, professionalism, helpfulness and sense of urgency , we could not be happier.

I called Alex on a Thursday to ask about a home evaluation for a possible listing. I got an answering machine but surprised to have Alex return my call within minutes. We set up an appointment for the following day for Alex to come evaluate our home. We were completely happy to hear all Alex was prepared to do for us in listing our property for a speedy sale so we listed that day. Later that same day I received a call from Alex saying he had someone very interested in our home and would we mind if she came by to see our property the following morning. We said of course and an offer was made for 29 thousand over our asking price. She was also a highly qualified buyer.
Alex and his team navigated through all of the mandatory items and made sure our home met the needs of the buyer while also meeting our needs. The process took a little more than a month. We found our new home and we closed our deal with Alex today.
If you're looking for a realtor, especially in Country Roads Complex, Brea, Alex and his team will go the extra mile!
Thank you Alex for your professional handling of our transaction. We are grateful for you and your exceptional team.

BUYERS AND SELLERS BEWARE!!!!

My family and I we're looking for a home earlier this year and found one of Alex's listings. It had been sitting on the market for over 2 months and the price had been reduced twice, from $1,000,000 to $950,000 to $900,000.

We had my agent submit an offer, but we never received a response. My agent followed up with Alex multiple times, to no avail. A generic "we are reviewing all offers and will get back to you" is all we ever received, only after submitting 2 additional offers once the first one expired. Not knowing if the sellers were even receiving our offers, I sent them a hand written note to let them know we were interested in their home and that we had not heard back from their agent.

Finally! We received a correspondence from Alex. Not through my agent, but directly with me (keep in mind the property was now on the market for over 4 months). He began negotiating with me directly, asking to waive all contingencies and a placing a larger than normal deposit, along with saying he was hoping to get into a bidding war. I asked him to submit a formal counter offer to my agent and we would respond. He never did.

Fast forward a couple months, and we find a new home we love, down the street from the home Alex was representing. As soon as our offer was accepted by the sellers (That looks pretty bad for 'Brea's Best Realtor', when a house down the street sells in 3 days and your listing is sitting for 4 months), our phone, email and text messages blow up. Multiple messages to our agent from Alex's office asking if we were still interested in the property on buckthorn. We of course declined, and we're are glad we did. We love our new home.

The home on Buckthorn is now sold (as you can see from the flyer I was sent by Alex). Curiousity got the best of me, so when I looked up the property to see how much it went for and who represented the buyer. It wasn't surprise to see that Alex represented both the buyer and seller. Double dipping. In my opinion he didn't want to sell it to us because he was waiting for a buyer he could help to double his commission. Dirty.

He also claimed on the flyer that it "Just sold! Over asking" but doesn't mention that from the day it was listed to the day it sold, it took 7 and a half months and a 10% price reduction to get it sold. But that's OK for Alex, because in my opinion he made much more by waiting for a buyer he could represent to come along to make double his commission.

So buyer and seller, beware. You might receive a pretty flyer in the mail saying 'Alex is the best!' Hopefully you are doing your due diligence by reading this before you go with him. I dealt with a couple fantastic realtors with my purchase, and would love to share their information with you. Just send me a message.

For the record, our last offer on this property was 900k.

We're glad we went with Alex to help sell our house. We chose him because he has a marketing mindset and presented a very smart and logical strategy for listing and selling.

We were in a tight spot - we had only owned our house for 2 years but needed to sell, and we had already invested a lot into remodeling. Our biggest fear was that we would lose money on the sale and come out worse off.

We gave Alex what we needed to sell for to cut even, and he was able to sell our house above that amount, so to our surprise we came out making some money on the sale (fees included).

The house was only on the market for 2 weeks before going into escrow. From the time we first met with Alex, we dropped off the keys and got our money in under 2 months.

Alex has a full team that manages a lot of the marketing and listing, but it was nice that we had direct access to his email and cell.

This review is long overdue, but I have to share the incredible experience I had working with Alex and his team.

My first conversation with Alex, he was attending a conference in Las Vegas. I knew he was so knowledgeable. My house was in S. OC, so not his traditional market, but it did not matter. I learned on his way home from Vegas, he surveyed the area in which I lived, to better understand the market, community and house that I owned.

Our first appointment, I met Alex, so personable, genuine, honest. passionate professional with the utmost integrity. He presented me with a complete real estate portfolio for everything I would want to know and should know about the sale of my house and walked through every page so I could make an informed decision on what to do. He did not rush our meeting, in fact we spent probably (3) hours together of which Alex listened very attentively to me and what my goals were for selling as well as being the expert he is to provide information necessary for me to make the right decision. Above and beyond any realtor hands down.

Fast forward, December 2017, Alex listed my house on Friday, hosted two open houses Saturday and Sunday. Numerous offers received that weekend and following week. Offer accepted on Thursday - SOLD. Alex made it point to check in with me throughout the transaction, even just to say hello and to minimize the stress of selling a house and created a seamless real estate experience. There are not enough words to express my thanks and gratitude to Alex and his team, but I am so thankful to have met him and worked with him and would highly recommend.

Alex continue to shine and prosper and thank you again for who you are and the great work that you do.

Edit 3/20/18 in response to Alex's comment below:

How would I know the details of this property you said it yourself -- you had over 50 offers

Very unprofessional, does Alex Horowitz even exist? I see his signs everywhere but have never seen him at any open houses. Maybe we're looking at the lower cost houses that Alex doesn't even bother with.

We've been interested in a property that was listed earlier in February for $450K. Then we noticed 2 agents on the listing and for whatever reason, Alex had it listed for $500K. Okay, a bit confusing but whatever. We submitted a CASH offer for far above the asking price and then nothing. We never heard anything back from Alex.
A couple weeks later, the property is relisted at $600K and my broker can't get a callback from Alex or anyone at Coldwell Banker.

I think that is incredibly unprofessional but I guess this agent and Coldwell Banker have the luxury of dismissing perfectly good buyers. Are you really that busy that you can't take a minute to call people back? I'm really irritated at the waste of time and effort we've taken to try to buy this property, only to have an agent who doesn't seem to care about people, or at least the lowly people. I guess cash offers aren't even good enough these days in this competitive market, maybe we needed to offer $100K over to at least get a call back? Whatever the case is, I will think twice before pursuing anything with Alex Horowitz or Coldwell Banker name on it in the future.

Side note: I have noticed Alex responds to each review left here which does say something. Customer service goes a long way, but unfortunately we haven't experienced any with this agent.