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