Against my better judgment, Sonia was engaged by my partners and myself as an agent in a private real estate sale. Since it was a private sale, she elected to forego the usual commission rate and charged a discounted (discounted by about 80%) flat fee for her services. That is the only good thing I can say about working with her, and in spite of that, I still feel we paid too much.
From our first meeting, Sonia rubbed me the wrong way. She talked for the first 30 minutes straight, and in the last 15-20 minutes of that meeting, whenever my partner or I made a comment or asked a question, she'd interrupt and shift the conversation back in the direction she wanted, which was largely about promoting herself and attempting to convince us that she had far more experience than she actually had. We literally spoke for a total of about 10 minutes during the entire hour, with Sonia taking up all the oxygen in the room.
At the end of that meeting, it quickly became apparent that my partner had fallen for Sonia's entire act. I was honestly stunned, since I came away from that meeting with a diametrically opposed view. But in an effort to be a cooperative partner, I very reluctantly agreed to sign with her. What a mistake that turned out to be!
Starting with our first meeting, and continuing through the time we worked with her, Sonia openly criticized other local agents, some of whom had many more years experience in the area than she did, and other professionals, including one of the people at the title company we worked with. Her lack of professionalism was quite breath-taking.
The information she provided regarding comparable properties was deeply flawed, and only comparable in the smallest sense, and grossly undervalued our property.
Initially, she was going to be the agent for everyone in the private sale, but the buyers quickly realized they didn't want to work with her and engaged their own agent.
In every telephone meeting, she spent far more time talking than listening, and she repeated herself many times, as if repeating everything 4 or 5 or 6 times would convince us that she really did know what she was doing. Phone meetings that should have taken 5 or 10 minutes took several times longer than was wanted or needed. In regular email correspondence, it often required asking a question multiple times to get a straight answer. The emails she sent were often confusing, and we occasionally received multiple emails requesting we sign a specific document because she was not well-organized.
Sonia made an already-challenging real estate sale even more so, and I'm writing this more than a year after the sale was concluded. I wish I had insisted that we work with a real estate attorney, which would have been simpler and would have cost far less, but regardless, I will never recommend Sonia Leclerc to anyone seeking to buy or sell property. read more
