July 23rd 2014
BrickUnderground
New York City real estate brokers don’t exactly have a reputation as shrinking violets, and yesterday, stalwart British newspaper The Guardian published a piece confirming (and exacerbating) everyone’s worst fears about how they operate. A “training manual issued to new agents” from a supposedly legit New York City real estate brokerage–left at the writer’s apartment–bestowed gems of advice like these on brokers: “You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure” (fair enough), and “WORRY ABOUT THE APARTMENT LATER … JUST GET THE CLIENTS INTO THE OFFICE” to “Please do not date clients until after we rent them and collect the broker’s fee.” There were also plenty of cheesy scripted lines to use on clients, like “This is a TV apartment!” and “For every great apartment there are five to 10 people you are competing against who want it!”
Yeesh. While it’s unclear which firm the manual came from or whether it’s even real, we ran it by a few brokers for a reality check. Here’s what they had to say:
“The vernacular is completely foreign to me–I don’t even know what a TV apartment is! What does that mean? Are there people who even fall for these lines at this point? I don’t think I could use this script with a straight face. A lot of it is borderline and dishonest, and not about having your client’s best interests at heart. It’s amusing but it’s sad, too, because it’s not a fair representation for how people perform in the industry. ” -Jason Haber, sales director and associate broker at Warburg Realty