About Rachel Weiss of Halstead Property

Very upsetting. Similar thing happened to me at Maison East, and I even went with a broker to see it. This was being shown by the Jacky Teplitsky Group at Prudential Ellman. My broker and I were furious at them, especially since my broker had called the day before to confirm the units we were interested in. Suddenly they were no longer available, but more expensive units were (although of course the less expensive units remained on the market for several months to lure people in). This was all pre-lehman --have to say it makes me smile when I see all the price cuts in that building now.

Would be great if there was some way to indicate that bait and switch on streeteasy so that others are warned (other than on this board).

I've never encountered a bait-and-switch on a purchase, so quite surprised to read that it actually does happen. These are exactly the kinds of brokers that give the industry a bad name. Let's hope the current situation weeds this kind of behavior out.

Weiss was the original Halstead broker for 5SL when it opened in early 2007. A friend had gone to the sales office back then, but was basically given the broker's equivalent of a pat on the head, with the essential message, "come back when you actually have money to spend, little girl." It was quite a brush off, apparently.

e-mail Rachel and ask what that was all about.
You time has value too!
If you care to, post her responce here.
If the community of potential buyers that pass this way know that there is a chronic documentsd liar before us it would do us well to know.

is rachel weiss an actress?

I went there a few months ago and she said "Make me an offer, I'm looking to sell." Anyone else getting that kind of response?

Julia: You might be thinking of...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Weisz
Hope you're doing well. Good to have you back.

thanks west81st...all's well and yes that's the rachel weisz i thought of.

My sense is that the strategy right now is to price 25-30% higher since opening bids are probably starting at 50% below ask.

FYI, 3 years ago, the strategy was to price lower than market since everyone was expecting a bidding war and a nice low price had the power to ignite one. Times sure have changed!

watch - you are right. we priced slightly below what we thought we could get and had 3 offers (2 above ask) the first hour of the open house. we were in contract within 5 days. how times have changed indeed...

watchnwait -- you make a very interesting comment. Do you think your percentages are right? Is the expectation really that offers will come in 50% below ask?

thanks.

Is this agent so glamorous that she is also a major actress? Is it a normal level commission? How are her negotiating skills?

Also curious about watchnwait's percentages. I'm going to call Rachel and request an appointment for the open house noted for today, tomorrow or Friday. We'll see what happens. I might try to record the whole thing on my flip camera. If it's a line of bull/bait-n-switch, though, what can really happen?

You can try calling REBNY; I would think that they have a PR component & this behaviour does seem a little much. About recording people - there are laws governing that sort of thing so you might want to be careful.

What laws, drdrd? If Kambric films or tapes Rachel and catches her in the act of fraud, do you really think someone is going to prosecute Kambric for doing that?

I don't think so. I'm not aware of any laws. It might be illegal to misrepresent yourself -- if you said, "hey Rachel, I'm not recording this conversation in any way," and then you proceeded to record it in some fashion, either with notes or a camera -- yeah that might be misrepresentation and illegal.

But I'm not aware of any law that forbids you from taping someone you're doing business with and who you believe is engaged in fraud.

Someone should call "7 on your side", to investigate, then this whole thing would be blown all over the nightly news.

Hi, Kambri C -- As I understand it, the law in NYS has always been that taping/recording is legal as long as one of the parties knows it's being done. So if you're a party to a conversation and you are taping it, you have given consent and the other party doesn't have to know. That's been the law, as far as I know, for at least the past 30 years. You'll find it in the Penal Law, probably section 250. Before the ravening hordes of lawyer-haters descend (and you know you who are!) I hasten to add that certainly the law might have changed in the past few months, but I doubt it.

If a broker commits fraud, they can be fined or have their license revoked by the NYS Dept of State.

Yes, the world needs to know about scum like this.

Ha! The problem is that this is normal behavior for brokers which is seemingly tolerated by everyone. I don't understand why the government is so interested in investigating banks rather than implementing some serious reform in the real estate market.

The market will probably screw these people worse than the government ever could.