Compass Real Estate — Local services in New York

My experience with Compass was the worst experience I’ve ever had with real estate transactions. I’ve been involved in real estate for 25+ years, as both a buyer & a seller, across multiple countries. By far, my experience with Compass was the ABSOLUTE WORST. Of all the business transactions I’ve had across multiple sectors, my Compass experience was still the worst.

There were a series of problems that initiated with my seller’s agent. The issues ultimately led to termination of the sale, literally 1 day before the scheduled closing. Both the seller’s agent (my agent) and buyer’s agent were Compass agents.

Although the issues originated with my seller’s agent, things got escalated to Compass corporate. Compass corporate added no solutions, and instead blocked a possible solution because they did not want to set a precedent for potential future problematic situations. In my opinion, based on my experience, Compass is not a trustworthy or reliable company to work with, regardless of location.

Some of the issues I experienced:

Seller’s agent admitted to making some actions and decisions based on “pressure from the buyer’s agent and buyer”. That seemed highly unethical to me. Seller’s agent expressed regret, and offered to sacrifice her commission to try to save the deal and to avoid further complications (there was acknowledgement of potential cause for legal action). Compass corporate would not allow that, stating they refused to set any precedent related to the reduction of commissions.

Seller’s agent was unsuccessful in having my communication delivered to buyer. I suspect the communication was never delivered to the buyer’s agent from seller’s agent. This continued for several weeks, despite my expressed urgency. I eventually contacted the buyer directly, and the buyer confirmed he never received the communication from Compass.

No Compass agent was present for the home inspection arranged by buyer. I told my seller’s agent in advance that someone needed to be present while the inspection was done. That was ignored, and the Compass agents provided key access to the inspector, who then had solo open access to my property and personal belongings for 3+ hours.

Seller’s agent arranged work to be done on my HVAC system without informing me or receiving my approval. The HVAC technician damaged my system. Compass refused to reimburse costs for those repairs, even though they acknowledged their agent hired the technician without my knowledge or approval.

When the sale was terminated, Compass told me I had to sign to give liability indemnification to Compass, to prevent potential legal action. This was not actually true, and I was able to maintain my ability to pursue legal action against Compass.

I can share additional details if desired.

Do yourself a favor, use a...

If anyone is interested to find out the individuals I worked with at Compass I am more than happy to share through a private message so they can avoid the horrific experience I had. Because I am so spooked from my experience, I am terrified to share their names in a public manner.

If I could have given no stars, I would have because they don't even deserve a star. I should have known something was off from the moment I reached out to see a unit. Prior to the tour, I sent over some financial information to the agent and he did not even reply with a confirm or received email. When the agent arrived to the tour, he was unfriendly and cold. He seemed annoyed answering my questions about the unit and it felt as if I was running the tour. Immediately after leaving, I sent in an email to the broker providing a written offer along with more financial documents later that night. I did not receive any form of a response again. I reached out multiple times to see what the progress was on my offer and if it was approved. I was ignored multiple times through text by both the broker and his manager. After 3 days, they mentioned that there was an issue with my offer and I tried asking for suggestions on other things that can be provided or done to secure the unit. The broker and manager kept saying that the documents were not substantial enough to meet the requirements yet never even mentioned what the requirements were. I specifically asked what the requirements were for all things relating to income, assets, etc and my questions were completely ignored. I mentioned to the broker and manager the ways of approval for my current unit (which is the exact same price as the one I was looking at and typical city standards) and they did not even have a response. I had to send over math calculations of my finances to prove that it met the requirements and continued to ask what the requirements were as they were being shady. The broker then responded in an unprofessional manner. This made me extremely uncomfortable as this individual still could access to personal financial documents and was dismissive when I was trying to better understand and find ways to make a deal. I then called the head of the group to discuss my concerns and thankfully he was more sympathetic and understanding. He was unsure what happened and was confused when I presented the information. Although he was much more professional, I asked for any record of my information and finances to be deleted from their system immediately and to have a confirmation either through email or phone that this action was done. I still have yet to receive an...

Whatever you do, do not under any circumstances work with the MVMT team / Desmond Eaddy at Compass. My partner and I experienced some of the most unprofessional and incompetent service we've ever witnessed this past weekend.

I had an appointment for 10am on a Sunday. At 8am the day before they texted me asking if we could do it that day instead. I canceled another appointment I had so that I could accommodate them, thinking that Saturday must be a better day for them. We showed up at the office and waited downstairs for 25 minutes; only after calling and texting four times were we even let into the building. Then we seat in a conference room alone for another 25 while an agent was allegedly "reviewing our profile" which I had sent the day before - surely something that a capable team would have done before we arrived for our appointment, not afterward.

When an agent eventually joined us, he asked us all about what we were looking for in an apartment; apparently he had not been reviewing our profile at all, because all of this had already been covered. Then we were brought to another conference room, where we waited another 20 minutes. Then a different agent walked in and asked us...what we were looking for in an apartment. We told her that we had just had the exact same conversation with her teammate; apparently they were not on the same page about this. She left the room.

Finally, the first agent we spoke to returned. He showed us two listings that did not come close to meeting our requirements; it was clear that they had never looked at the profile we submitted, or paid any attention to the details we provided in person. Having wasted well over an hour, seen zero suitable listings, and decided that this was clearly going nowhere, we got up and left.

The most comical part of this Kafkaesque experience was that, as we were on the way up to the second conference room, the administrator accompanying us boasted that they were a high-performance team. If that's the case, I shudder to imagine what an average team is like.

You're much better off searching by yourself on Streeteasy. It would be a cosmic tragedy to part with a substantial broker's fee for non-service such as this, even if they managed to get their act together enough to actually show you...