Adele Gillis

Adele was patient with us as we prepared our home of 38 years to be sold to a new family. It was a challenging time to sell, yet Adele remained upbeat and positive, encouraging us along the way. In the end, our home found a wonderful family to take the reins. Highly recommend Adele to help you in your sale!

It gives me no pleasure to report that I would not recommend Adele Gillis at this time. We had two good experiences with Ms. Gillis in the past, but recently had a transaction with her that had me questioning her ethics, and her understanding of the law and her fiduciary duties to clients. I issued a detailed written addendum to a contract that Ms. Gillis was to send verbatim to the seller's agent immediately, as we were on a very short timeline (5 days until signing, movers scheduled, time taken off, etc). This addendum was intended to address an undisclosed potential defect that purported to run with the property, and we had made it clear to Ms. Gillis immediately upon discovery and throughout the escrow period that we would not close until the defect was addressed in the contract. Ms. Gillis assured us she would immediately follow the written instructions. For three days we heard nothing from Ms. Gillis. When I contacted her to find out why the seller was taking so long to sign and return the addendum, and the huge amount of stress the delay was causing, Ms. Gillis admitted that she never sent over our addendum because she didn't agree with our written instructions, and decided to handle things her way. (Her way of curing the potential defect was to ignore the defect.) Ms. Gillis said that her managing broker Adam Betta agreed with her that our written instructions could be disregarded. Whether Mr. Betta agreed with Ms. Gillis that she should keep her failure to act from us is unknown. After threatening to get attorneys involved, and to hold Highland Partners liable for any expenses related to the extension of escrow, Ms. Gillis finally drafted the addendum and sent it to the seller's agent. It was signed and returned in about an hour. I tried to resolve my concerns about Ms. Gillis' conduct privately with Ms. Gillis and her firm, Highland Partners, by asking that Highland Partners apologize for the wrongful conduct, and have Adele Gillis and Adam Betta attend Continuing Legal Education specifically on fiduciary duty. Both Ms. Gillis and Highland Partners (Heidi Marchesotti is the managing partner) refused to even acknowledge the wrongful conduct, and instead implied that we should be happy with how we were treated because we got the house, and that the ends justified the means. Being ignored, lied to and manipulated did not seem to be important factors in their analysis (they had all the emails, HP did not need to take my word over Ms. Gillis' about what had transpired.) As multiple private attempts to address the conduct have failed, I'm unfortunately having to move on to the California Department of Real Estate licensing board, the Better Business Bureau, and am considering legal action. I am an attorney, and I am always concerned when professionals who have fiduciary duties to clients do not actively and effectively exercise those duties to protect their clients' interests. Real estate agents must always put the interests of their clients before their own financial gain. If Adele Gillis and HP were willing to do this to an attorney, what are they willing to do to a client that is not familiar with fiduciary duties?

I had the pleasure of working with Adele on a recent transaction. Adele is a true advocate for her clients. She is very transparent with her communication which is absolutely essential in a real estate transaction. She made it very clear what her and her clients expectations were, so everyone was on the same page from start to finish. I would highly recommend Adele if you are looking to buy in the Oakland/Piedmont area, you will not regret your decision!