citi habitats - once again slimy and in the news

interesting that a firm that is "slimy" is one of the biggest players in the re market in the biggest city in the country.

so..your point is that if a company exists on a large scale, it must...?

GM
AIG
C

huh?

They screwed me 3 times - many others as well.

This is "news"?
Is there anyone involved in NY real estate who's not slime?

THAT would be a story!

I'm no fan of real estate brokers, but in my experience the brokers I've come in contact with from Citi-Habitats have been ethically challenged to a degree that sets them apart from more reputable firms.

CH discussions always attract me. But they are better than the no-name rental places even if they aren't the same quality as Corcornan or Elliman.

And I don't think that the broker should be taking responsibility for this problem, they refunded the fee and moving expenses (which they didn't earn). seems like the rest of really for the landlord to deal with, right? After all, not only does the landlord rent the place out, they also collected their own fee. How crazy is that. They should be responsible for it. Or they ARE responsible for it. I think that CitiHabitats did the right thing at the end based on the level of their fault.

Plus,

so..your point is that if a company exists on a large scale, it must...?

GM
AIG
C

huh?

GM - It's Toyota that has problems with their cars. GM cars are not crashing.
AIG - No life insurance individual has not gotten paid out. Totally safe.
C - No depositor didn't get their money back.

All the problems at the companies above are finance problems that didn't affect the consumer, so very different from CitiHabitats. Those companies didn't fail consumers at all. Just being hysterical doesn't help.

Someone should be calling Child Protective Services on the parents. Why did they put their child in danger? How did they get into this situation. I agree that the broker messed up, and the landlord messed up before, but they are parents and ultimately it comes down to them. Funny how they are only interested in the refund and an apology, maybe they are trying to remove attention from what they did to their daughter for 10 months.

Most real estate agents are people who get laid off and are looking for something to do while collecting unemployment, or people looking to make easy money. (FYI - there is nothing easy about it!!!) They are by no means "Real Estate Professionals." Anyone who sits through a few hours of course work and can pass a couple of EASY tests can get a license. (You do not even need a high school diploma!)

I work in property management, and I always list our rentals with all the agencies. Most agents are IDIOTS! They only care about a fee and will try to pass off anyone for an apartment. They have no respect for your time, your property or for you. Most of the agents that work for those big firms have no real experience because it is a revolving door of agents coming and going. Companies are always hiring new agents because they do not have to pay them to work, some places make agents pay desk fees, and they are hoping to get the family and friends of that person to list with them, or make deals through them. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain! And it is NOT 50/50 like everyone thinks. Its more like 75%/25%.

jodilynncook that too. Low barriers for the brokers and frankly low barriers for the owners these days. The same boom that made single family ownership easy also made owning crappy rental apartments easy especially if you didn't have to renovate them or in this case even make it legal!

Could it be that the landlord all of a sudden realized the apt. was "ilelgal" after finding out that his new tenants were gay?

"AIG - No life insurance individual has not gotten paid out. Totally safe.

C - No depositor didn't get their money back.

All the problems at the companies above are finance problems that didn't affect the consumer, so very different from CitiHabitats. Those companies didn't fail consumers at all. Just being hysterical doesn't help."

Are you truly that ignorant? Do you think the insurance holders and depositors would have been paid were it not for the largess of the American taxpayer who was held hostage between the rock of bailing these incompetent fools and the hard place of letting them go under and bringing the economy to a halt?

Your metric of "failing the consumer" (by which I assume you're meaning "customer") is myopic. If I put up and sell a building that falls down and takes out the neighborhood, so long as I reimburse my customer, all is fine?

Bah
Regulated subs held the insurance policies and the consumer bank is also regulated and insured. Don't pull a Harry Reid.

Wish they told us who landlord was. But citi should take full responsibility because the tenants see the real estate license and so they assume the broker stands behind the minimum basics, like you can actually live where you are renting. Citi should have minimum due diligence requirements when serving as a broker and should be the first responsible party if they fail, and let Citi go after the landlord to recover the balance.

"Regulated subs held the insurance policies and the consumer bank is also regulated and insured. Don't pull a Harry Reid."

I'm going to let you in on a couple of little secrets. First, the "insurance"-providing FDIC doesn't a few hundred billion sitting around in its collected fees to pay out overnight the day Citi goes belly-up. Guess on whose door they'd need to knock to get the money? Try to guess why the government didn't bother letting it get to that. Second, you might think that granny's $23K checking account is big money, but $100K-insured deposits make up less than 20% of Citigroup's liabilities. And please stop yourself before you try to explain to me how it's now $250K-insured, and think about the source of that "free" extra insurance.

Get a clue about who is really providing the insurance. It ain't some magic elf.

Sorry inonada, my point, and clockdethar's point I think is that there was no risk to the average customer or consumer at those institutions. Yes, the government stands behind it because that's part of the model, backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Just as if you bring your dollar bill to the Fed and ask for it to be changed they'll give you another dollar. Trust is part of the system. They maintained trust. And it didn't fail. And the government didn't have to step in and put money into those subsidiaries for consumers to keep them going because it has been involved throughout.

YOUR example is poor. No building fell on or around the customer. The consumer was not homeless. The GM car didn't crash.

columbiacounty wanted to prove that large institutions do fail their customers as a retort to jimhones point about CH's size. Well, GM didn't fail its customers. Citi didn't fail its customers. AIG didn't fail its customers. You might want to talk about your theoreticals and call me ignorant but all you have as evidence on your side is hysteria. In the CH example, at least there's an example of a problem.
Find me one customer who bought a GM car that had a Toyota like problem? Find me one customer who put her $100K in the bank and can't get it back. Find me one heir who isn't collecting on a life insurance policy at AIG. There isn't. Except for your "what if" scenarios. My "actually happened" continues to prevail. "But it would have, it would have if, waaaah, waaaah"

I'm a Citi customer. The taxes I pay are going to pay for the losses at Citi through explicit and implicit means for years to come. You want to pretend that it's not costing me because my right hand is still holding the money even though my left hand is paying out, fine.

Say someone takes a bunch of people hostage. They negotiate, hostages are released. Inonada says, what a-holes, they put lives in danger. Then ootin comes along and says they never put any lives in danger, everyone came out alive. In fact, it is known that negotiators will intervene and keep lives safe, at least most of them. Besides, nothing happened here. Stop making stupid analogies, inonada.

Interesting, hostages.

Another irrelevant situation.

Ask anyone who is a customer of Citi, GM, AIG if they were held hostage.

How about this analogy instead: Terrorists come to the U.S. They visit Citibank and use the ATM to withdraw cash. Then they leave in a GM car and drive 100 miles, where they plant a bomb. Someone dies from that bomb who happens to have been insured by AIG. AIG makes the payout to the beneficiaries. Directly or indirectly, Citibank, GM and AIG aided the terrorists who DID kill someone. Therefore, Citibank, GM and AIG are terrorists = inonada logic.

Your turn, try something with Martians.

lets make this a little simpler.

ch is presumably in business to facilitate the rental of apartments---both for the renter and the owner. seems like there's little dispute that they routinely screw renters; to the extent that potential renters are turned off by their prescence, they also don't do the owners any favors.

gm was operated for years in a stupid mindless way; as the world's (and US's) largest car maker (at least in the past) there should have been some thought by its executives and key management about their responsibility to its workers and shareholders. saying that the cars don't crash and therefore everyone did the right thing is hilarious.

similarly c and aig were managed in a reckless manner with no appreciation of the place of the institution.

sadly, its clear that many among us don't get this at all.

GM continues to exist today. It's capital structure has changed, shareholders got hurt, creditors got hurt, workers got hurt. Cars still work.

If CitiHabitats went bankrupt, or didn't pay its brokers their fees, but the renters were all happy with their apartments, then why do the renters have an issue? This discussion was about how the renters were cheated.

If a GM car crashes, does the accident victim care if there was thought by its executives to responsibility to workers and shareholders?

If a GM car glides along smoothly and gets you to and fro, does the the driver care about the pension of the workers or the stock price?

new UWS rental listings on SE are all double or triple posts by multiple citi habitats brokers.

OMG
These people nee their money back. The broker should pay and chase the landlord. Citicorp didn't do it.

The real issue here is: why the hell did this couple pay a broker's fee? In this market, haven't heard anyone doing that in a while.

CitiHabitats is the worst. I have had a string of sketchy and unpleasant dealings with them over apartments at a building where they are both the exclusive brokers and partners with the landlord on renovating the building. Don't trust them. There are many other brokerages in this city who are much more above board. See the thread I posted athttp://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/19753-56-7th-avenue for more info on that specific building.

I don't know why this thread has gone down this C/AIG/GM tangent, but it is clear to me that Citi Habitats (and the landlord) was responsible for knowing whether or not the apartment was illegal.

It is their business to know that people can't live in commercial/retail zoned space or in a basement or rooms without windows.

But once again it comes back to what are the real consequences of their actions? Pretty much none other than giving back money they shouldn't have received in the first place - and they only did this AFTER some bad press.

The real estate business in NYC is full of firms and individuals that are willing to openly break the rules because REBNY and the NY AG could careless (and don't want to mess with RE lobby). The fraud and lying won't stop until there are consequences - but with the RE industry actively lobbying to fight money laudnering rules (so drug dealers and dictators can buy US real estate), I wouldn't count on them any time soon.

Of course not ALL brokers are slime, as one commenter put it. But I'm a broker who concurs that too many brokers are unethical. I complained in my series of posts just last week that enforcement of ethics in New York is a joke.

There is no barrier to entry in this industry. If you wanna be a broker go do it. Its not hard to get a sales or brokerage license so why do you all always act surprised when this stuff happens. Bate and switch has almost become the only way these rental brokers get deals done. Its a part of the industry that actracts more scum and more pieces of shit than any other sector. The big guys losing buildings to bad loans arent scum bc what they are attempting is beyond the level of complexity that any rental broker could comprehend. The real scumbags are the people that try to swindle 1500 bucks from unknowing students and young professionals. Brokers are glorified middle "people" that do absolutely nothing in a world where all information is available online. I wanna hear from the leasing agents on the landlord side that hate brokers that do nothing.

why don't you people make your voice heard or at least post a review of the broker to help other people out... http://www.rateyourbroker.com

> The GM car didn't crash.

the toyota car did.

At least when brokers were mostly just bored housewives, they weren't predators...

Talk about slimy, did you hear about the woman who went without a toilet in her apartment after her husband broke the seat? It was more important to have the landlord pay for the $8.99 seat than to fix it himself and actually have use of the toilet.

columbiacounty Ignored comment. Unhide

haha

I doubt that there is a company that cares more about customer satisfaction than Citi. I work there. The training is intense and constant. I'm not saying things don't go wrong. The worst thing that happened to me was getting an approved aplication on probably one of the most outstanding apartments I've ever seen >$40K per month and the tenants decided to stay. 6 months of hard work doen the drain for me and my client. The clients went on to buy a large apartment (at the hight of the boom) against my advice and from another broker and got stuck big time. We're still friendly and they're fine. Get an agent that you can trust and understands your needs. You deserve great service no matter what your size and price requirements are.

"I doubt that there is a company that cares more about customer satisfaction than Citi."

OK we get it realguy, you have company pride, but let's not get silly.
Citi Hab...is average, which is not a terrible thing.

It def saw better days, and Andrew couldn't have timed his sale better than if he had a garbage eating Delorean.
And I know several of your agents and an office manager or two.
I've also read some of the amusing in house memos.

Quite while your even and let this thread get buried

Quit ..not quite

Please there are over a 1000 agents in the company.... can't assume generalize that all the agents are bad....each agent is a independent contractor and everyone has their own ethics....the company has been around a long time... many renters or buyers in Manhattan use them..... have you seen broker's from Craigslist?

What I don't understand are landlords that list with them exclusively. Why?

Landlords list with individual brokers stupid. And usually only after proven performance. Citi has a lot of agents that rent an awful lot of apartments.

Yes, I didn't do due diligence and was screwed out of $64,000!! https://wordpress.com/post/citihabitatsisrotten.wordpress.com/3