Rant Du Jour: A Broker Stole My Apartment!

Thursday, August 19, 2004, by Lockhart

Apropos of this morning's post about a Slate article decrying real estate brokers, a Curbed reader writes to relay a personal tale of hell with one overzealous sort. We're not always inclined to publish rants of this ilk, but what the hell—it's a lazy afternoon and we're feeling charitable.

I read the real estate agent rant you linked to on the site and wanted to share my story with you. We're selling our beautiful 2/3 bedroom pre-war coop by ourselves and originally listed it in the Times real estate section in mid-June. Although the listing clearly said NO BROKERS, we got lots of unsolicited calls, emails, letters from them anyway, which we tossed or ignored. One agent in particular kept calling and asking me about the place.

She said she had a buyer and that the buyer was willing to pay her commission. I pressed her on this and she said, "Well, I just need to get into the apartment to look at it." I told her no and hung up. Over the following weeks, although our apt. was no longer listed online, she kept calling. Finally I told her that we weren't interested in working with her and said that we had an accepted offer (we didn't, but couldn't deal with her anymore). So, fast forward to yesterday � I'm looking around on the Times real estate section online and I come across a photo of our building with a listing that sounds similar to ours. THE AGENT LISTED OUR APARTMENT AS HER LISTING AND JACKED UP THE PRICE 5%! My husband called her w/o identifying himself and asked about the place. She said there was an offer on the apt. He then said that he lived in the building and he knew the only apartment that was for sale was FSBO and that he knew I didn't want to work with an agent. After much protesting on her part that she did nothing wrong, she finally said that she would need to hear it from me that I didn't want to work with her. I was on the phone with my real estate attorney when my husband called back to say that she called him again to apologize and that she will take the listing off their site. They're sleazy, really sleazy..... I'm going to file a complaint with the real estate licensing board, and wanted to share the story with you.

Filed under Manhattan: Gramercy/Flatiron District, Real Estate Miscellany,

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