TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE!!…read more
I've written maybe 2 or 3 reviews in my lifetime but this one is worth my while.
We had a really bad first home buying experience with Donna Choucair with Remax Excellence (oxymoron?). Everything started out great, but as time went on we began to have feelings of concern, which turned into real concerns over real issues. Read on.
The first red flag (that I didn't think was an issue at first but I was clearly mistaken) was that although I was her client, she had a long standing business relationship with the seller. We retained her with this knowledge trusting that she would act in good faith and fulfill a "feduciary duty" to us as her client. Turns out that I was third on her priority list behind precious number one and a regular customer.
Any specific wishes or changes requested in the early stages of the process were met with resistance and stubbornness - and this is stuff that was trivial for the seller but meant something to us. It wasn't long before we realized that we were going to have to be strong headed with her to get what we wanted. This is when the trust started to break down.
Her attention to detail was seriously lacking throughout the process - incorrect dates on documents, very poor grammar and spelling - to the point where I sometimes couldn't make sense of her communications, conflicting and ambiguous contract terms, incorrectly negotiating for the wrong type of flooring in the house we were purchasing (even after given specific instruction of what to negotiate for, which I then followed up to confirm that she had negotiated for the right thing!! Not so.), not getting back to us on important details, and most egregiously of all, mislabeling the purchase price of the home by $100,000 on the contract!! You read that right. One hundred thousand dollars.
Luckily it turned out to be $100k less than what I intended to pay for the home so all of a sudden I had some bargaining power to have the flooring issue corrected. However, as if she was working for the seller (**see "long standing business relationship with seller" above**), she advised me to sign an amendment to increase the purchase price back to what had been originally agreed but not not to correct the flooring issue in the contract. If I had acted on her advice, I would have completely decimated my bargaining position and ended up with a house that I wasn't satisfied with.
It then took 3 days, a whole lot of back and forth with her and my lawyer, and a whole bunch of stress to get the contract corrected where everyone was satisfied. And I'm sure the only reason that I got what I wanted out of the deal is because I happened to have a $100k gold carrot in hand. There must have been 3 or 4 revisions of the contract amendment - she couldn't seem to come up with an unambiguous and clear contract that didn't conflict with previous amendments. It was a serious struggle just getting something in writing that actually made sense.
During this back and forth process, she decided to start a conversation about how I should "trust the process" and let her do her job. Did I mention this was after I was advised, by my realtor who has a fiduciary duty to me as her client, to sign away $100,000 and agree to terms I was unhappy with?? Hmmmm. She then proceeded to yell at me over the phone and inform me what a picky client I was and that I was "impossible to please". Somehow, I think she may have forgotten that I may have been the only reason that she would have actually gotten a paycheck in a month where Covid hit hard, oil prices tanked and house sales dropped off a cliff.
After the sale was closed, I didn't hear another word from her. No thank you, no guidance through the rest of the process, nothing. Total radio silence. She didn't even show up on the possession date for key transfer. Very unprofessional in my opinion and very disappointing.
The very reason I hired a realtor in the first place was for guidance through a process of which I was unfamiliar and to avoid stress and issues like this altogether. Turns out with Donna, I was wrong.