I lost out on a nice property because of the seller's agent, Larry Lefkowitz of Keller Williams Realty.
It is partially my fault--I figured out the guy was a piece of work, to put it very lightly, from the beginning. He harassed my realtor when my initial offer was $110,000 and the property was listed at $129,900. The comps in the neighborhood topped out at $115,000. Let that sink in. Then when our offer was rejected kept coming back to my poor realtor. First he insisted that I pay $120,000, and "not a penny less" regardless of the appraisal report. I said no. He came back later and stated he and his client would lower to the appraisal should it appraise lower than $120,000. I loved the property and it was agreed.
Here is where it gets ridiculous.
I schedule the property inspection for a Saturday at 11:30 A.M. Mr. Lefkowitz CALLS my inspector, and RE-SCHEDULES my inspection that I paid for. If he had asked me, or my agent to go through me, "hey I can't do 11:30 and the seller wants me there to oversee her property, can we do 1:00 instead?" it would have been fine. Instead I get a call from my inspector saying Larry Lefkowitz re-scheduled and wanted to confirm with me.
So he re-scheduled to a time more convenient to himself and then FAILED to inform anyone else. I am glad that I knew the inspector and was alerted to this fact or I and my realtor would have showed up three hours in advance to an inspection I was paying for.
Then when the inspection comes Mr. Lefkowitz topped himself out in unprofessional behavior. My father is handy around the house and was discussing with me the various things that were sloppily done, potential issues, etc. Mr. Lefkowitz interjects into my conversation to insist that it is all cosmetic and I will accept what I can accept or break the deal.
I must have heard "do you want to break the deal? Do you want to break the deal?" at least a dozen times during the two hour inspection. He went on and on about the other offers they were receiving on the property.
It got to the point where this supposed professional annoyed my realtor into following me into different parts of the condo to get away from him. And he followed on his crutches to hear himself talk some more.
After some time he verbally accosted my father, who is of course looking out for my best interests, and was yelling at him to leave. To get out of the property! My realtor had to verbally engage this man who is insisting "I have never in 10 years gotten into an argument!"...
Very, very hard to believe.
You're a grown man trying to get into bets with my father on the difference between porcelain tile and ceramic tile and then failed to answer your own question. Yelling and raising your voice. Making threats, etc.
After the inspection Mr. Lefkowitz calls my realtor non-stop, my home inspector non-stop and insists something is missing from the property. I am deeply upset by this as one can imagine.I had to wait to find out what was missing.
It was a fridge shelf. I repeat: a f-r-i-d-g-e shelf. Mr. Lefkowitz threatened to call the police on everyone.
My home inspector took pictures of everything before he did anything further and lo and behold the supposedly missing fridge shelf was not there. In the picture there were four door shelves, the top having more room for items such as the wine bottle in there. My home inspector pointed out that there would have been no shelf with the wine bottle there and that the model typically has four shelves.
So a threatened police report over a "missing" fridge shelf that did not, in fact, exist. Methinks he was trying to get me out of the deal because of his bruised ego. Not very professional. My realtor had to block the man's number and limit him to e-mails only. Absolutely astonishing.
Once we moved past the "missing" fridge shelf and tried to have the realtor, Mr. Lefkowitz, taken off the deal they "replaced" him with Jackie Ellis who did nothing except try to cancel the deal within the inspection period. Mr. Lefkowitz's wife, Joan, was still emailing my transaction coordinator, and Larry also called my appraiser with comps when not supposed to be involved whatsoever. So if that is Keller Williams' idea of replacing an unprofessional realtor on a transaction I will be avoiding their company altogether.
Skipping to the appraisal, and several other shenanigans, the property was appraised at $112,000. They did not lower their price. Mr Lefkowitz, who the whole time insisted the property will be worth $150,000 within the year had advised his client to overprice her listing by over $17,000+ and then ruined a deal scheduled to close in under two weeks (and the seller was in a hurry to move to boot).
Look, if you are a seller and want a used cars salesman to represent you, look no further. Mr. Lefkowitz is a cocky, lugubrious windbag who thinks he knows more than anyone else in the room and I wish you the best of luck!
Very disappointing ordeal. read more
