Key New York Real Estate Corp

Between Y.R. and Yuri, they’ve pretty much encapsulated everything that is wrong with Key.
I had the bait-​and-​switch. I was shown a few poor-​to-​mediocre apartments that I had no interest in, instead of the beautiful one in the ad. The agent called me hour on the hour at work the next day, trying to instill panic in me that the least awful apartment was going to go soon. The only bit of color I can add was that she kept saying the night before that she loved eating at «Cheepoltee» and that it was the best Mexican food ever, which only added more irritation to the entire pointless visit to their office.
Do you know that band GWAR (, R.I.P., Dave Brockie)? They had an album called Scumdogs of the Universe. They are these people.

New York real estate sucks all-​around. Save yourself the additional headache of using this unprofessional, careless, and all-​around disorganized company. Once my fee was paid, my agent said they were «unable to help me anymore». Do yourself the favor and look elsewhere; even Craigslist is a step-​up over this place.

This place is pathetic. I found an apartment online about a week ago, and then saw that I had to e-​mail a company named «Key New York» if I wanted to view it. I was a little hesitant at first, since I had some experience with real estate in NYC/​Brooklyn, and I had never heard of this company. I wanted to see this apartment though, so I contacted them anyway. I should have went with my first instinct. After I had contacted Key New York, I was instructed to view the apartment that was supposedly on West 14^th Street. When I get there, I find that it is not in fact the apartment I wanted to look at, but instead it was the Key New York office. Classic bait-​and-​switch; I should have figured. It only gets worse from there though. I figured I would just go through the motions at that point, so I could get out of there as soon as possible. I sit down with two women, and one of them asks me what I want in an apartment, so I tell her briefly. She then goes through her computer and finds an open house for an apartment located on East 4^th Street, which is about 20 blocks away. (This particular apartment was actually one I already knew about that another real estate agent wanted me to look at, and I declined.) I told her I had to be at another appointment at one pm in Brooklyn (at the time, it was around noon). She then notices that the open house was going on right then and would end in only 15 minutes, so her ingenious plan was to: first, ignore what I said about having another appointment at one pm and then send the other woman (or should I say girl, since she looked, spoke, and acted like she was no older than 21) to quickly take me over to this apartment on East 4^th Street that I wasn’t too thrilled about seeing anyway. It only gets worse though. I leave with the other girl and we start walking to the apartment. When we’re about five blocks into our walk there, she realizes that its still another fifteen blocks to go before we get there, and the open house ends in ten minutes. So this moron decides to start running. In one hundred degree heat. With her potential client behind her. Are you fucking kidding me? How unprofessional can you be? We ended up running approximately fifteen blocks to the apartment. Luckily, I am young and relatively fit, but what if I was 300 pounds or an old woman? Or what if I had twisted my ankle while running with this imbecile? They would be liable for me to sue them. And I would probably win. Oh, and when we did finally end up seeing the apartment, the one bedroom that I would be sharing with my roommate could hardly even fit one bed, let alone two, so I’m glad we ran all that way and I was late for my next appointment because of it.

Emailed one of the brokers, and that alone already showed that they are unprofessional. the broker gave a condescending and sarcastic tone in the emails alone (which says a lot considering you can edit what you type…). Would not recommend using this company.

I worked with these guys over the past week and they’re an unprofessional bunch who have no reason for being in the business. Here’s how it went:
I saw a listing on one of the no-​fee listing websites and called the number provided. The guy I spoke with told me that he can show me some additional listings if I can come to the office. When I got there, they said that listing I came for is gone, but they have many other properties. Of course, this was a bad sign, but I thought of that as a sunk cost and continued forward.
I saw 5 apartments with them on that day, none of which remotely fit the requirements I had mentioned. The apartments were either too small or too dreary or advertised a 4×6 eat-​in kitchen as a living room and so on. Fine. It can happen. I said, and moved on.
The following day I saw 3 – 4 more apartments, and in fact, I liked one of them. So much so that I was ready to move with the paperwork within 2 hours. I told them that another broker had guaranteed me a 8.25% rate, so I am not going to pay more than that, and that they need to make sure that the apartment accepted pets. The guy who showed me around (who was actually a fine guy) said okay. I said fine, I will go the office to fill out the paperwork.
I get to the office and now this guy’s boss ‘B’ started dealing with me. She said that it has to be 15% fee. Now, I am having to renegotiate the entire fee structure. She said that the guy I spoke with does not have the authority to confirm a fee, and that he shouldn’t have done it. First of all that’s a horrible way to run business where the front man doesn’t have negotiating power, and second, they knew that he had promised this and they still didn’t say anything before I got there. Even ‘B’ doesn’t have negotiating power; every 2 minutes she’d have to run back to the Big boss to relay back what I said. At one point she comes back and says — «my boss told me to stop wasting his time.» As a client who’s about to give them 3k business for not much work, this is exactly what I want to hear.
Next, they come back saying that apartment doesn’t accept pets, and that they just learned of it. So clearly they don’t have the right relationships with the landlords.
Overall, I spent over 10 hours with these guys with nothing but wasted time. Of course, I am taking my business someplace else. You should too.

I had a terrific experience with Chris Plummer and Elana! Both treated me with respect, and really did everything possible to help me select the best apartment. They are both very honest, and gave me their true opinions. The level service, attention to client desires, and knowledge of the NYC area were top notch. Thank you both for making such a stressful process so much easier!!!