Douglas Elliman Real Estate

The agent who I hired to sell my house has done nothing and I asked to be released from the sales agreement. She said all I needed to do was sign a withdrawal from an MLS agreement and I would have no further responsibility to her or her agency.

That was a lie. The sales agreement with her, a Mona Schechner, said that if I terminated the contract I would still be liable for a commission. She kept arguing it was not true and her agency manager, a Mr. Piscopio, insisted the same thing.

My attorney also said they could soak me at some point for payment and two other agents I know in the area could not believe that clause was in the agreement. My fault for missing it, but it was there, and yet it was not in an earlier agreement I had with her when she had had my listing earlier, for a six-month period.

Agency manager threatened to go after me legally, his emails were extremely abusive and frightening. I am probably going to have to report them to NYS and take them to court as well.

Normally, I don't leave negative feedback for a business or person, but the experience that I had with a Realtor from this firm was one of the worst you could imagine. From the beginning, I had to do much of the leg work to get to the point of home ownership.

I found the home that I purchased online the day it went up for sale. I had been working with Katrina Keogh for a while as we searched for my new home. There was quite a bit of pressure that was placed on us to look above our original price range and she constantly kept reminding us that it would be difficult to find something we would like if we didn't spend more money. The home that I found was a foreclosure home that needed minimal cosmetic repair.

Katrina had never handled this type of sale. Immediately, because of the location and the type of home at the price point it was in, we made a full price offer on the home. We then went into a bidding war where she encouraged us to offer more than we had purposed as our best and final. I stuck to my guns and we did win the bid.

We were then under contract due to close on August 1. I was steered toward a lender that Katrina recommended. It turned out to be a disaster. There was a mix up in communication between Katrina and the lender where the lender was provided false information as to the closing date, which in turn, caused many delays.

We almost lost the house. I immediately had to go to another lender and start the whole process over. Luckily I was granted an extension by the Seller to close by August 12. There were a series of events that took place from this point up until the closing day that were unbelievably stressful and required that I do an exorbitant amount of leg work, even making repairs to the home that I didn't even own so it would pass the appraisal phase.

By the way, my loan was an FHA loan where the house was listed it would go FHA, but the repairs that were needed wouldn't permit the lender to provide the loan. Shouldn't your Realtor catch this? Anyway, I did what I was asked to do because I really wanted this house. The day of closing arrived and we toured the house for the final walk through.

I couldn't believe that on arrival to the home, Katrina told me she would be glad when this *** was over! While we were there, she received a text from the selling agent to say that the closing was not going to happen. From here, she rushed off to the closing Attorney's office to see what was going on. We were less than 2 hours to closing.

The next contact I had from her was a text that stated that the closing wasn't going to happen because the selling agent "dropped the ball". I tried calling her, no answer. No further information was provided from her to tell me what was going on. Katrina's assistant called me to tell me that there was an issue with the deed and that there was an error on the seller's behalf.

A type-o that should have been caught long before now, but we might still close if it could be corrected. We waited nearby to see what would happen. Still no info from my Realtor. In fact, she was on her way to another appointment that she had made.

We then were instructed we should proceed to the Attorneys office to sign the papers. I can't tell you how very uncomfortable I was at this point. I had no clear explanation of what was happening, I had done everything on my end to make this closing happen, and my Realtor was too busy to respond to me and wasn't even present at my closing. I went to the Attorney's office and that too was a total mess .

He had been referred to me by Katrina. When I met with him, he wasn't even aware of what type of loan I was getting as a buyer, made comments about how much he disliked Realtors, and blew through my closing documents with little to no information but just a request to "sign here". By the way, I did have a witness with me if this would ever be questioned. I left his office with no keys in hand and not even a explanation of when I would actually own my home.

Later that day, I got a text from Katrina's assistant to say that the document had arrived at the attorney's office, but it was too late to record. It would now be Monday before it could be done. the next call I got from my Realtor was that evening at midnight when she realized that my partner had posted some comments on Facebook about what had happened and tagged her in it. She called me screaming in the phone, using all kinds of profanity, and demanding he take it down.

Monday arrived and I sent multiple e-mails and tried texting to get information. I was told three different stories by the Attorney's office and Katrina's assistant, everything from a copy of the corrected deed was sent not the original, to it was received but they were still doing a title search. Really, a title search had been done long before this point and when I questioned it, the assistant got totally defensive. I finally called a Real Estate Attorney that is a good friend of my Dad's and asked him to please help me.

He called the closing attorney's office to find out that the deed to my home was actually recorded 5 hours prior and no one had even contacted me. I received a text from my Realtor about 30 minutes later that was "conveniently" at the closing attorneys office for "another closing" and I could come there to get my keys and garage door opener. Again, I had to do the leg work. I forgot to mention, I had asked about a home warranty.

That didn't even get included in my closing and I was told I could just look for one on my own. This has been by far the worst experience I have ever had when working with a Realtor.

I have spoken with the BIC at this office, and though she has responded to my inquiries, no one, not the Realtor or the BIC has even offered to do anything to rectify this situation. I would clearly stay clear of this office and especially Katrina Keogh.

The person Brenda juniors in charge of our account in billing accounting told me that she did not care about me and it was my problem when I inquired if my payment check had arrived. Employees of this company are insolent, do not answer their telephones and do not return calls.

This is a company of crooks. A check takes them 9 days to process but they impose immediately a late payment fee after 10 days.

They cannot pretend we shareholders to pay our maintenance fee in time if they do not process our payments. They mistreat us shareholders with cruelty and are not even licensed to manage properties.