Full story on 1 star review

Reason for Full Story

Hope you’re all doing well! I wanted to put together a response to this review, which isn't consistent with any of our other reviews that we have. To us, any time we receive anything like this, we first look internally to see if we did anything wrong, and then the other question we ask ourselves is, “Is this true?”

I want to make sure that we share our side of the story of this 1-Star review as this review posted has many holes in it. If I was considering either buying or selling and came across a 1-Star review, I'd really want to know why. From both sides. If you take anything from this full response, you will note that taking the time to put together a video, screenshots, and actually describing everything that happened goes to show that our reputation is extremely important to us. If at any time we receive anything outside of our world of stellar reviews, as this review is, you know we take it extremely seriously and will address it fully.

Upfront clarifications

Let’s start off by clarifying that the buyer that purchased and wrote the review is not our client, we represented the seller in this transaction. The buyer’s had an agent, however prior to even getting into escrow, the buyer and their daughter came to an open house, gave us their contact information, said yes please write the offer for us, provided the contact information to their lender (1st set of screenshots below), and then at the last minute changed the information previously provided and said that they had an agent. So obviously that's a red flag for us, especially if someone gives their word and all of a sudden changes it, but nevertheless we moved forward even with there being multiple offers.

For this review, let us go point by point as this is going to be a little bit longer of a response than others. Video is completely not edited, simply raw and going through the review point by point.

Response to reviews “EXPERIENCE”

They stated, “1st, at offering time, I was informed of what my competitors were offering.  I do not know the source or legitimacy but I found it Interrsting”

and obviously that is absolutely incorrect. We had reached out to the agent and we told her there was no way that we would share that type of information. To us our goal is always to maximize our sellers bottom line because that's our fiduciary responsibility to our client. Not to every person involved, but to the client that we are representing. If you were in a lawsuit, and the other attorney does a really good job and when that other attorney does a really good job you're upset at the other attorney for doing a really good job. I’ll use this metaphor as it represents what occurred here, but know that we never gave competitors info of what was being offered. That's unethical. We would’ve had an ethics complaint against us, so in this statement being made, it is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to be detailed in our response.

Response to reviews “asbestos”

Next is “when I learned of asbestos presence upon inspection, he offered to clean up the asbestos and repaint himself.”

Now if you know anything about me and how I work, you know that we have a lot of extremely talented people that are in our world who help us with any and all repairs that anyone may need. From contractors, handyman, dry-wallers, and just about everything and anything that's along those lines. I stay in my lane, I do real estate. With everything else, we surround ourselves with good people that do good work. So to state that I was going to come do the asbestos work, if you know me or have any personal connection, you know that's not me in any regard. Now if it's a physical task needed, I have helped many families move and am definitely there! I will continue to do so and will roll up my sleeves in that sense, but when it comes to asbestos and painting? Not a chance.

solution we provided

As a solution, we offered to have the same person that did the work on the condo previously, come back and replace/repair the area affected. An important note/fact about the area that was in question was about 5 sq. ft. of popcorn ceiling. The popcorn ceiling was removed in the unit originally, however there was a linen closet that was 1’ x 5’ wide and that was the part that was overlooked because it was probably taped up and they didn't see it. Anyway, so that was the asbestos area that was agreed upon to be removed. The agent or the buyer reached out to supposedly an asbestos company and they gave us a quote for seven hundred or six hundred and seventy-five dollars for 5 sq. ft. of asbestos removal. Now, if you have any handyman bone in your body, you know seven hundred dollars to scrape 5 sq. ft. of popcorn ceiling, is a little expensive. Most people would not pay that, however since it was an “asbestos company” there's a certain way that they dispose of it, so we agreed and said ok. After four or five attempts, the asbestos company (which is not really an asbestos company by the way) did not want to provide any type of invoice. I don't know about you, but for me, any time I'm going to pay someone for any repair, I want some sort of paper that states I paid you, this is the work I'm going to do. Main reason being, if the work is different and expectations are not met, then I have proof on paper of what was agreed upon. All we received was a text message (see screenshots for more info) and that's why I hesitated to send money upfront because I had kept asking for some sort of invoice, which we were not provided initially.

still tried, but…

Finally, after I reached out to the company multiple times, they sent me an invoice. (see the type of invoice that I received in additional screenshots below). It was a word document that looked like someone opened up and just typed in information. Not what you would expect, especially if you're paying for an asbestos removal at a higher cost. Then to add to it, the other factor was that the company is not even in the asbestos industry. The asbestos owner, which was actually a contractor, had told the agent that he was not an asbestos company. We were told by the agent that it was an asbestos company. Obviously we were told something different and we were willing to pay top dollar to get something repaired, however that wasn't the case. That was obviously a huge turn-off for us.

more false statements clarified

Another part of this section states; “My agent secured and paid for the clean up, only to find delay in reimbursement and only after several chases.”

This is another obvious untruthful statement, as that was not the case. The work didn't get started until they took possession of the property. Before we closed, the commitment of $300+ was sent directly over to the company before any work was started, making their statement absolutely false. The only chasing that occurred was of me chasing the company to send us an invoice (which you can see screenshots of the text communication above with the “asbestos company”)

understanding everyone’s role

Next is “3rd, due to the holidays, I had challenges closing on the 30 day closing mark, thus facing potential of per diem charges. I requested for the per diem to be included in the escrow papers as the per diem would be due seller not seller's agent, that never happened. ”

To say that we were going to ask them for $50 is just ridiculous.  Let’s backtrack a little bit to gain perspective; the mark/goal was 30 days to close and I understand the holidays and I know things don't move as fast as we all would like them to, however if I were to tell the seller to go back to his mortgage company to say hey mortgage company, I know we told you we're going to pay you off by a certain time, can you forget the 10-12 days of interest? That just doesn't happen. This is another point that's really important for everyone to know, we had to protect our sellers. Note, the per diem itself was never charged to the buyer. Our goal was to make sure that we were still on track to close and not have anyone incur extra charges. There were delays though! The buyer themselves were told by their lender and their agent to wire over the money, which they took an extra day to wire over their money to be able to close. These delays are not of the sellers control, but of the buyers. Even in the end, nothing was charged to the buyer and just because they weren't able to close on target date, that's just not our fault. If we go back to the attorney example, just because you have people on your side that are not doing whatever they need to do to be able to close, how can you blame the other side doing their job?

curtains…

The statement about curtains on the property, let me touch on that so you know more of the context. The property was professionally staged and our stager brought cloth curtains for the property. We had told them that they were going to stay. Typically the stager takes all items that were placed in the property, however we had them leave them there since I told them they were going to be there. What ended up happening is the curtains stayed there, which is hat was said in the beginning, Note, curtains are personal property and are not part of the sale in all transactions because they're not attached to the property. Although the hardware that holds the curtains are, the actual fabric in our case was left, just wanted to point out that comment, hopefully it wasn’t more confusing :D

buyer responsibilities

The statetment about the pool key, “Finally, after closing, I'm told that since the property was previously a rental unit, the sellers agents never got the mailbox or HOA pool key.  Shouldn't this have been disclosed up front?  No HOA pool key, I suppose it happens, but no mailbox keys? Interesting...”

One of the things that the buyer signs is called a transfer disclosure statement. It states what's being transferred with the property and it was signed by the buyer on 12/4 meaning that they acknowledged seeing and reading it. It specifies on section C-14 that it's a rental and it's been a rental for many years. Regarding keys, in the purchase contract (this is for any purchase) if the property is a condominium or located in a common interest subdivision, the buyer may be required to pay a deposit to the homeowners association (HOA) to obtain keys to access HOA facilities and that's in the purchase contract page 4 section 9-F. With keys, those are one of those things that if we had the keys we would’ve turned them over, but the renter of this condo/unit just never used the pool. So that's something that we were not going to pay for because that's the part of the buyer responsibilities.

interesting feedback

The last part of “as with all yelp reviews, take it or leave it and it's up to you what you make of my experience and decide what you want to do with it.  For me, it left a very bad feeling in my gut about this guy.  
Post yelp posting:  let's just say, I received some interesting feedback..”

Honestly, I'll be damned that the feedback was interesting. That is when you know this review was false. Again, our reputation is the most important thing to us. To have a 1-star review with all these holes in it, I think is not fair. Our reputation helps us feed our families, put food on the table, and provide all the client appreciation events that we do throughout the years. And if you follow anything we do, you can see that we go above and beyond for our clients. For someone to share these types of words, it seems unfair and I wanted to make a stand for myself, for our team, for other business owners that get false reviews, that you know that's not right. Just because someone that's anonymous could post something and really have no impact on their side, but that impacts our business, we take that extremely serious.

thank you

Sorry if this message is longer and not as joyful as most of our other content we put together, but I wanted to make sure that we addressed the details of what the 1-star review is. Initially I wanted the buyer to remove the 1-star review, but at this point we're making this detailed blog post out of it so you could see the whole story behind it.

With that, we appreciate you, we thank you for your time, thank you for reading/watching, and thank you for your consideration of helping you either buy or sell.

If you’re a past client and you want to chime in on this, we'd love your feedback of your experience with us, with situations like this.

 All the best, I hope you have an awesome week and we'll see you guys soon!

Remo