Gardner, Realtors

It saddens me to write this review when 2 years ago I gave a glowing review but I believe in letting the truth speak for itself. If you’re serious about renting or selling, FIND SOMEONE ELSE! Christopher Sherman went from being a heaven sent, hardworking, dedicated, and truly agent to a lazy, disrespectful, uncaring, and unprofessional agent. My phone calls and text messages went unanswered most of the time. After my listings were up for 6 weeks, i STILL did not have pictures posted for my rental listing and the sale listing only had pictures of two of the 8 areas of my house. I showed the house to perspective renters all except twice because he wasn’t showing up for appointments or was extremely late. He acted in the position more so of a secretary answering calls to make appointments instead of actually working to find a tenant or buyer. I am truly angered and let down by someone who when he helped me buy this home was an exceptional agent. But I guess time changes people. Beware! Find someone else!

I have never in my life had to go through so much to sign a lease. Let’s start from the beginning.
Charla Zenker is the 74 year old woman whom we met with to view the rental property. She was a very nice lady but, very senile. She was unable to answer many of our questions on the property and wandered in and out of relevent conversation at random. At one point she told us her son had gotten her the job to get her out of the house. Despite her inability to help us, we loved the property and decided to procede with the lease application. She was unable to tell us where the office we were to fill out the information was located so we had to look it up online. Once there, we asked if the deposit could be paid with our debit card or if we needed to go to the bank to get cash. She then handed us HER debit card and told us we could use it to pay… We were very confused and handed it back to her and attempted to explain that we could not use her card to access our funds. She then told us that we didnt need to put any money down until we were approved, contrary to what we had been told when we were shown the house. During the lease application process she continued to be confused and unable to follow along with our questions on deposit amount, whether pets would be allowed with deposit, move in dates and most importantly, the amount of income required to lease the property. My fiancé is a full time student going to school to be a radiologist and working full time. He recieves a nice amount monthly as housing allowance. We asked if it was neccessary to report this income since it was not from current employment. We were told that the amount of income we had shown between us was sufficient and wouldnt be needed. We then were required to fill out the lease and sign it before being approved for the property. We did so and gave her the money for the credit check and were told we would have an answer by the next day. The next day we were called and told she did not know if they would accept our move in date because it was half way through the month. This was not what we had discussed. Once again, we explained that we wished to move in the next month and she told us that that was too far away and she didn’t think that would be acceptable. She then explained that her son was a realator and that she would have to ask him about that? We became aggrivated with her inexperience and called the customer care line the next day after no response. At this point we were directed to the person in charge of the branch. After explianing to her what we had been through and telling her we did not have faith in out representatives ability to communicate with the listing agent and the owners she told us she woulld call us back. 15 min. later Mrs. Zenker called us confused about our communication with the branch manager. She told us the listing agent hadn’t called her back and that she would contact us when she did but, our credit check came back great and that we should look for a different property to lease. We declined stating that the time and money had been wasted on this and that we did not wish to persue another property through them. The next tuesday afternoon, a week after the initial lease application, we were told we had been denied and were finally given the listing agent’s number to eliminate the middle person. The listing agent is Deborah Laraunt. She was very short and aggrivated at our call stating that we didn’t have enough income. We explained about the housing allowance and she told us to put in another application and resubmit it to the owners. We had just over 3 times the rental amount in income and needed 3 and ½ times the amount. Our housing allowance put as at almost 4 and ½ times the amount. After filling out another lease application we were told to call her and let her know we had done so. She never answered. Two days later we finally got her on the phone. She said she was going over the new application and would call us within an hour. She never called. We called her, left a message and tried again later only to be rolled to her voicemail. We were obviously getting the run around for whatever reason. On a whim, we called from a different phone number which was answered immediately and cheerfully. When my fiancé explained who he was and why he was calling he was then told that she was waiting for the owners to approve it and that we would be called back that day. She still has not contacted us. I am 7 ½ months pregnant. My current home is being sold by my landlord 3 weeks before I am due to give birth. We were told this the day before we filled out he initial application. I need to sign a lease and know where my family and my new child will be living. It has been 10 days since we filled out this application. There is no reason we should have waited this long with no answer. The process has not only left me stressed but also wasted the little time I have to find a place to live before my child is born.