“I met Rayni my first week,” Mr. Williams said. “It was like meeting my best friend — someone that liked the same music, the same style, who had an old-school mind-set.” And, “she came from mortgages, knew contracts, and I was thinking, if I have to do contracts and stuff, I’ll never make it in this business.”
They have different but complementary personalities.
“Branden doesn’t hold people’s hands,” Mrs. Williams said. “He doesn’t think that hand holding is efficient. I am a mother and a woman that’s more emotional, so I tend to be the coddler.”
Bruce Makowsky, a developer, called the couple “without a doubt, the two best brokers in Los Angeles.” He enlisted the Williamses in 2017 to sell a 12-bedroom Bel Air mansion with a Louis Vuitton-branded bowling alley for $250 million, making it, at the time, the most expensive home in America.
“I needed a billionaire to buy that house,” Mr. Makowsky said. “Unfortunately, it went on the market right after the president decided to alienate China and Russia.” After three years, the Williamses sold it to a local businessman for $94 million, an outcome that, given the circumstances, suited Mr. Makowsky just fine. “They sell the dream of living in California,” he said.
The Color of Money
The Williamses are “on” to the degree that a casual observer would figure they must be on something. In fact, Mr. Williams got sober at 29, and Mrs. Williams at 25, after he commented, “You know, you’re a good agent, but you’d be really good if you stopped drinking.” She goes to recovery meetings once a week, he goes once a month.
“Every now and then someone will be like, ‘What? Come on,’” Mrs. Williams said. “But then they’ll kind of look at us: ‘Wait, you’re having this much fun and you don’t drink? Branden, you’re this crazy and you don’t drink? Oh, you’re handling our biggest asset? Yeah, stay sober.’”
