Douglas Elliman Real Estate – Tribeca Gallery

Our experience was that the broker would tell us something but never follow up. We received bad advice throughout the process resulting in thousands of dollars of losses. When I tried to talk to someone higher up in the company I was ignored and told there was nothing they could do. I would never recommend using this company.

My wife and I recently moved from Chicago to Manhattan. After reading tons of articles about the perils of apartment hunting in NYC, we enlisted the help of Sean Copello at Dougas Elliman. Sean listened carefully to us describe what we were looking for in an apartment /​neighborhood. I would expect that from any decent broker. What Sean did best though is he somehow managed to figure out the things we didn’t articulate. He put together a thoughtful list of apartments he thought we might like. He even «entertained» me by showing me a couple apartments that I had found on the internet. I say he «entertained» me because he knew we were going to hate those apartments, but I think he didn’t want to tell me that. He was correct. Lesson learned.
Sean found us the perfect apartment! We moved in a couple weeks ago and couldn’t be happier. Long story short, if you want a broker who will do the work for you and not waste your time, listens carefully, and has a good, hard working attitude, Sean Copello is your guy. If instead you want to be daring and deal with unscrupulous brokers, and lots of wasted time, well then, there is always Craigslist. We will definitely be using Sean again.

I have been working with Marjorie Tornatore to buy a Co-​Op in Whitestone and she has been extremely helpful, always available for my questions, works around our schedule, and very knowledgeable regarding the market. Spent hours helping us with our board application and has lots of contacts to help out! I would highly recommend her if you are looking to buy or rent!

Seems like every broker here is inclined to leak the identity of prospective buyers to the press in order to drum up interest in their listings. The tell-​tale sign is when at the bottom of the article it says «So and so from DE has the listing, they declined to comment.» That was a big Dolly Lenz move that seems to have caught on at DE after she left.

I’ve been using Sean Copello for my apartment search.
He’s been nothing my professional, sincere, proactive, energetic, and understanding throughout the whole process. If you’re looking for someone to use, I would definitely reach out to Sean!

I was hired and cheated at DE. I don’t trust any brokers. Chris Peters and Dottie Herman are unethical and ruthless brokers. I worked hard for them and thought they had class. I learned that they were common beggar and uneducated. I had a woman sign up to list an apartment, my first exclusive and never got paid. They let their brokers do anything to customers and to the «junior» broker. Corcoran did pay out the commissions but because of Elliman, I wasn’t the nicest person. Remember they all Barbara and Dottie sit in lemo’s together and really don’t care about anyone or anything but their money. Sadly it costs me over $ 20,000. to hire a lawyer and the commission was not more that $ 50,000. But years later if you see their top broker Dolly Lenz left them because she was cheated too. I hope they go out of business because they are bad for NY. Sad that they were not shut down already. Both Peters and the managers operate like a cartel, and if your not a gay man beware! It was the worst experience of my life after working at Harvard University. They really made me suffer and I felt discriminated against and largely let down. The legal staff was horrible too, really unethical. I plan to write lots of blogs and tell the world my story!

I had a similarly negative experience to the other reviews posted, except I actually went through with a closing a deal on an apartment. The agent we used, Jesse Bertomen, was such a slimeball he almost seemed like a cartoon villain. He lied about literally every available aspect of the apartment (rent, broker’s fee, dishwasher availability, if the windows had screens or not), then placed a bid for us to the landlord without our permission (!). When we pointed out how egregious this was and demanded he re-​submit the (lower) bid we actually wanted to pose, he refused, counting on us being in between a rock and a hard place.
Unfortunately, he was right and the apartment looked amazing, so we went ahead with his sham deal. On the day we signed the lease, he showed us this document that specified none of the changes he said he had brokered between us and the landlord. When we wrote in our changes before signing (little things like «the apartment will be cleaned» and «all renovations to the apartment will be done before occupancy») Jesse started yelling at us, asking, «Why are you being so difficult!?» and declaring, «I don’t understand why you’re being like this!» After we just ignored him, revised the lease, and signed it, he took our money order for a broker’s fee and said, «This deal is done, so if you guys default or whatever, I’m keeping this money,» then left without saying goodbye.
I found out later from my roommates that Jesse referred to me as the «bad roommate» when I wasn’t around because I had lived outside of the United States for seven years, and as such didn’t have much of a credit history. Frankly, I found him to be ignorant, uneducated, emotional, and borderline racist. I’m beginning to sense why the address for this Prudential Douglas Elliman outlet is listed as «4 Leonard Street» but the Unilocal page is for «90 Hudson.» Methinks they’re aware of the bad publicity but would rather dodge a bullet than fix a problem.
Moral of story: If you go with a broker, don’t feel like you have to put up with a human version of Snidely Whiplash. Christine Ra, for example, is like the Mother Theresa of Manhattan real estate, and is in no way, shape, or form affiliated Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Prudential Elliman has a great reputation, but some of the agents at this particular location are unprofessional and unhelpful, like Russell Emery. I sent an inquiry through the website being very specific about what I wanted and this agent contacted me via email only. Each time he contacted me via email, he just wrote two lines — the first would be a vague answer to a question I asked in the prior email and the second would be a question confirming that I knew about the New York rental process. There were six emails of vague answers and confirming that, YES, I know that some apartments have a brokers fee and that I realize that there may be required paperwork and that I may have to be flexible in my schedule for viewings (but having received from this agent only vague direction as to the specific paperwork, fees, and even if there were available apartments he would show me at a vague time and undefined meeting place). I felt like I was wasting time with all of the back and forth emailing with no definite answers, so I decided to go with a different broker at a different Prudential Elliman location. The UWS and Brooklyn Heights agents are well reviewed and highly recommended, but STAY AWAY FROM RUSSELL EMERY.

Save yourself time and do not use them! My agent never responded to my e-​mail, even though I was planning on spending a lot of money. I guess she just didn’t care about the commission enough!