My Life In Brooklyn

It has been five years since we were in the midst of a real estate search here in Brooklyn.  I was looking through my former blog and decided to post the preceding entry because now it just seems absurd, though at the time was far from it.  Definitely one of the more frustrating NY experiences.  I guess ultimately the final success allows one to let go of the “in process” negative experiences.

Being a homeowner from a smallish town in Massachusetts, it was a bit of a surprise to learn the mechanisms of realtors and house-buying in NYC metro.  That is, of course, an understatement.
 
We nearly bought a place at Newswalk.  Walking in the first day, we made a tremendous error. We spoke to the agent on the premises and she managed to acquire our names.  Now, this seems incidental to you perhaps, but the company for whom she worked from that point on refused to allow us to speak to any other agents employed by that company.  It isn’t like we contracted with her or anything, and I  understood the competitive nature of the business and the rationale of the policy. Still, it was downright odd from a consumer point of view.  This realtor was, we felt, inept and way more concerned with her personal social calendar than actually working.  Ultimately she had an incident of hospitalization, during which time the company only allowed another agent to speak with us after we screamed (very loudly) about it several times.  A couple of days with no one to contact in that market can make a huge difference.
 
We didn’t buy a Newswalk condo.  And we vowed not to deal with that real estate company, and by some miracle, managed to uphold the  decision. But our time at Newswalk was memorable and if there is one valuable lesson I learned it was to never permit a realtor to think there is any kind of commitment by you to work with him or her exclusively.  We were not in a position to hire a buyer’s agent.  Honestly, from that point on in the house-hunt, we feared being stuck with a lame agent.

By the way, the preceding post is not at all embellished.