Ardor New York
Customer ServiceI don’t know if they still handle sales or only rentals but when I had the misfortune to cross paths with them I was buying.
I’m always going to hate these guys because they pretty much cost me the deal of a lifetime.
When I turned 30 I decided to buy an apartment in NYC which all my friends thought was a crazy idea.
I was young, single and didn’t make a great deal of money. But on the plus side I had great credit and worked for a bank where I qualified for an employee mortgage and had lots of financially savvy co-workers giving me advice.
The real estate market in NYC wasn’t totally insane yet though it would enter a bubble two years later.
Long story short: I found a building in Brooklyn in an obscure neighborhood I figured correctly would be nice one day and the previous landlord from before it turned co-op was liquidating all his holdings way below market as sponsor sales ( no board, no 20% down).
I found a gorgeous one bedroom. Enter Ardor. I could tell during the walk through the agent wasn’t listening to a word I said.
I kept trying to show him my mortgage approval and bank statement showing I had the downpayment and he didn’t care.
A week later I called and they didn’t know who I was. They never put my bid I e-mailed them in and somebody else snatched it up.
Was it because I was a young woman? Did the low price mean he didn’t care about the consequently small commission? Did he not want to deal with the complications and transfer tax of sponsor sales? Who knows but I will always resent Ardor. If it was actually discrimination that’s illegal.
A few months later I did buy a sponsor sale in the building on my third try.
It’s smaller and un-renovated but on the plus side it’s on the top floor.
My agent? An aspiring filmmaker who moonlighted as a broker and worked from his apartment.
Not the most professional guy on earth but he took me seriously as a buyer and really helped me out.
Lots of aspiring artists moonlight as real estate agents.
Don’t write them off. Sometimes they can be more decent than elitist sleazebags like Ardor.