Breaking up is hard to do.
But even the most tolerant real estate agents reach their limits and have to bid farewell to a client from time to time, as three brokers shared in interviews with The Wall Street Journal.
Compass agent Cindy Schloz, for example, said she initially leaned into her client’s mysticism, which included breaking out crystals during tours.
But the client took her spirituality a bit too far when she attempted to channel ghosts in a West Broadway loft.
“I had to end the tour, and the relationship, there,” Schloz told WSJ.
Michael Holt, also of Compass, said his first-ever listing to sell went south after he found out his client had run a Ponzi scheme in the past.
“He always wore a suit with an American flag pin, huge pink sunglasses and big black shoes,” Holt told the Journal. “He called himself Gordon Gekko, after the character in the ’80s film, and the Deal Kingpin.”
The situation got worse, as Holt wound up paying to have the Kingpin’s apartment cleaned while simultaneously dealing with his client making advances on female buyers.
Still, Holt stuck with it through the sale and began helping his client look for an apartment. The client’s behavior — including flirtations and making unwanted demands — got to be too much, however, so Holt bid him farewell.
Ashley J. Farrell, real-estate agent, the Corcoran Group, said she was the target of unwanted, late-night sexual emails from the husband of a family she was helping put their Hamptons home on the market.
“He also became nasty about my exclusive listing agreement, threatening to work with another broker if I didn’t give in to all his unreasonable contract demands,” she told WSJ.
Farrell ultimately sent an email to the husband, copying his wife, saying they had to find another agent.
She said she “long wondered about the fight that surely ensued afterward. What I do know is that when they ultimately listed, it was with a middle-age male.”
— Ted Glanzer