Century 21 Block and Lot Real Estate

Review: Hello,

I'm writing you about the experience that my wife and I had at your [redacted] office. On November [redacted] we were shown a few apartments in Sunset park with [redacted], a broker with your agency. We were very clear with him that our most important consideration was time. We needed an apartment that was ready for move in as we had intended to vacate our current apartment on the [redacted], and the latest we could move was the following weekend. The agent had said he understood and that it wouldn't be a issue.

We were shown 3[redacted] and, although small it seemed to adequately suit our needs. [redacted] said it just needed to be cleaned and we could move in right away. Hearing that, we decided to go ahead and put a deposit down on the apartment.

The application process seemed unnecessarily long and drawn out and our agent was inefficient and evasive. We had to repeatedly call to remind him to send us the important document we needed to fill out. My wife's father was needed as a guarantor and both of their credit was run, amounting to $60 in fees. A few days later everything was all set paper work-wise and we were told through email that we were approved. My wife asked [redacted] if we could sign the lease right away since we were in such a hurry to move and asked when the move in date would be. Much to our dismay, [redacted] informed us that the landlord needed to do some work on the apartment over the weekend and he was not sure when it would be ready. Also the lease would be ready the following day. We needed to bring 3 months rent up front, first last and security. Although there was no broker fee, we were told to bring two cashier's checks, one month's rent made out to Century 21 and two to the landlord. We emailed back asking why a check was needed to Century 21 when there was no fee and stressed that we needed to know the move in date as soon as possible and would need to know for sure before signing the lease. By the following day, November **, we had not heard from him and ended up heading down to the office on [redacted]

At 4:30 pm when we arrived we had asked our questions about the move in date again because we never received a answer we had been planning to move over the weekend. [redacted] told us that the landlord had some construction to do on the apartment and he didn't know when it would be done, but that hopefully, we could move in on the [redacted]. We reminded him that he had told us the apartment had merely needed cleaning and that this had been the deciding factor in our taking the apartment. If he had not known when we could move in, he should have told us and we would have gone with another apartment that was ready for move in. He proceeded to tell us a probable date we could move, at that point I asked if we could call the landlord and ask for more information. The agent said yes and retreated to the back of the office, presumably to get in contact with the landlord. A couple minutes later a corpulent older gentleman who had been sitting behind our agent approached us saying "if you don't want the apartment you don't have to take it." in a forceful tone. We pointed out that we had been mislead and that now over a week our our time had been wasted. "No one's time has been wasted here" the man bellowed down at us angrily "This isn't gonna work, get the [redacted] out of here!" We asked for our paper work and for our deposit check returned to us. They had a great deal of sensitive personal information of ours as well as my wife's father's. The same gentleman proceeded yelling the same thing followed by "Get them their money so they can get out!".

When we should have at the very least received an apology for their deceptive business practices, we were verbally abused, threatened, and humiliated. I am appalled on this man's behavior. I thought this was a professional setting and yet we were blatantly lied to and aggressively reviled by a man who represents your agency. My wife left your agency in tears. I plan on reporting this incident to the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Revdex.comDesired Settlement: We would like our $60 refunded for the credit check and the $16 for the two certified checks they made us get.