Lan Liu Bowling — Local services in Palo Alto

I originally listed my property with another agent a year ago but was not sold. When I decided to re-list, I was very much in distress due to prior year experience. That was when I met Lan and John. They listened very attentively to my expectations and worries, as well as get a full understanding of why my home did not sell the first time. Then they strategized and developed a go-to-market plan which catered specifically towards my needs. Long story short, they were able to quickly put my home on the market within 3 weeks of our first meeting and secured multiple and competitive offers within 1 week of listing date!

To summarize, the following attributes are what impressed me the most about Lan and John:

1. Knows the Market and Superb Pricing Strategy: Lan has a keen eye on the Palo Alto market and knows when/how to grasp and ride the market momentum. For example, Lan planned way ahead to allow the flexibility in our listing date. Her strong network amongst agents equipped her with the right “insider information” on the market to enable her to make the executive decision on pushing our listing date 1 week earlier which turned out to be the best strategy. Additionally, her pricing strategy is logical, clear, and right on point. We all know that even in this hot market, if a property is not priced right, it will just “sit” in the market. Her pricing strategy struck a perfect balance amongst my (seller’s) expectation, current competitors’ pricing, and overall market level.

2. Strong Marketing Strategy and Exceptional Negotiation Skills: In today’s competitive real estate market, how to market a home competitively has become one of the most important factors in securing a successful sale. Lan had demonstrated her strong competence across all aspects of property marketing: Staging, Photography and Listing. I had a very disappointing experience with staging during my previous year sale. After hearing my concerns, she worked very hard with her designer/team to ensure my house gets a complete make-over! Her photographer is also exceptionally good, who knows how to capture the best light exposure while accentuating strong attributes of my house. Lastly, when Lan and John developed the marketing verbiage, they know how to emphasize on my property’s unparalleled/inherent competitive advantages, not the plain vanilla laundry list of attributes that every house might already have.

When it comes to negotiation, Lan struck a perfect balance of pull vs. push strategy. She is a natural strategist who knows how/when to leverage. That is exactly why she successfully secured multiple, highly competitive offers for me.

3. Always Put Seller’s Interests and Expectations First: Even though my property was on the lower end of Lan and John’s typical real estate portfolio, they probably ended up spending more time in helping me strategize and getting the property ready. I always feel like as if I were the only client to them, since all my questions, concerns, worries were always get addressed very promptly regardless how late or inconvenient it might be. For example, even though Lan had a dental surgery already scheduled weeks before, she still decided to pull up our listing date which ended up causing herself more inconvenience since she had to work through the dental surgery while in pain! When she learned that I had bad experience with open house last year, she purposely strategized and organized in such a way that significantly reduced foot-traffic and only attracted people who are serious buyers. Finally, she worked so meticulously that she even caught the mistakes made by the buyer agent when reviewing offers, which saved me money!

Overall, Lan and John make a great team that any seller can possibly have. Lan is the true embodiment of “under promising but over delivering”. I consider her not only as my agent, but my trusted advisor in all aspects of real estate needs. I will recommend Lan and John to all my colleagues and friends...

Lan Bowling is one of the people that we will keep remembering and being grateful to in our lifetime.

Before we met her, we were not ready to buy our home at all. She introduced the lender who kindly educated us from the beginning; how the loan structure works and what we should prepare for. Then, we started to search for housing in our budget and provided the list to Lan.

We went through the list together and finally chose the one we really liked the most. In this process, she was so honest about choosing the house. She is definitely not a typical realtor who just makes the customer buy the house and doesn't care how and where they live. She was more like a family member who carefully checks every single detail about houses to make us live happily in our new house.

While we toured the houses, she kindly explained what was done right and what was done wrong by checking very small details of each home. From the information she provided, it was much easier to compare homes and to make our final decision. It was more than helpful for us because this is our first home and we were not sure what we should pay attention to.

After we chose the house to make an offer on, she first made us feel comfortable by telling us that she will do her best to make an offer that the seller will accept but also that it will not be the case that the house will be sold without us knowing about it.

She checked the documents with us very carefully and told us what we should be aware of. Also, she informed us of her opinion about the offer price, but also considered our opinion as well. In the end, she did her magic to make the offer accepted.

Not only that, from the date the offer was accepted to the closing date, she helped communicate with the lender and gave invaluable advice to us with respect to the title company and insurance company.

She is a super experienced realtor. She truly cares about the house you buy. More importantly, it was more than a relationship between a realtor and client. She offers personal care and provides quick responses in a timely manner. She treats her clients as her own family. I would recommend her to my family and people who I love. We will never forget about everything she did for us. If you read this review, you are so lucky that you will have her as...

I had the experience of buying and selling several investment properties in the Bay Area, and worked with several top notch realtors in the past. When I decided to sell my rental in Los Altos, I approached my past realtor, but found out that she retired. So she suggested that I contact Lan Bowling. I didn’t think that Lan or anyone would match the credential of my last realtor, but Lan has proven to me beyond any doubt that she is simply the best to hire now. Lan Liu Bowling, with her team mate, John M. Chung, provided a top notch service. Immediately after I showed the property to Lan, she advised me on a plan on how to prepare the house for sale. She knew what kind of repairs and minor remodels would pay off, and which ones do not. Lan and John were willing to undertake any of the remodel supervision, to basically off load me, but being retired and having some of my own professionals who worked on my rental for decade, I handled some of the prep work by myself while Lan handled the rest. We jointly completed the house preparation on time on a very tight schedule and Lan took over to supervise the staging and handle the advertising. Her advertising was of top notch quality and generated a lot of interest. Through this stage, Lan’s vast network and connections was extremely valuable. She was very proactive, connecting with potential buyers. During the offer’s day, she worked the phone. She managed to flawlessly handle the communication with buyers’ agents and we had a contract in our hands that same day, in less than a week since the house was listed. She clearly demonstrated during the negotiations that she makes recommendations that purely represent my interests, and none of her own. Lan and John also made sure that every paperwork was handled meticulously and precisely, (as we say "all the t's were crossed and i's were dotted"). This was a key element in having the sale close escrow w/o leaving any room for hiccups, and to my full satisfaction. And last, Lan and John’s responsiveness was always prompt, and they mastered the art of knowledge how to collaborate with me as their client. In summary, Lan and John are simply the best agents to work with. I was so lucky and to have the opportunity of hiring them as my agents, representing me and selling...