Celtic Realty

We have had wonderful experiences with realtors, and both of us (husband and wife) have immediate family members who are superb, professional realtors. When our own realtor showed us a condominium unit whose seller was represented by Celtic Realty, we immediately liked it better than anything else we had seen and put in an offer. However, we encountered at least 9 serious problems with the broker/realtor, Patricia Harris who is owner of Celtic Realty. She is the worst realtor we have ever seen, and she caused us a massive amount of stress, wasted time, and inconvenience. These 9 problems are outlined below: (1) Patricia Harris expected us to sign the official document, required by the state of Florida, saying that we had received all relevant condo-association documents. However, when we looked at the package that she handed to us, none of the current financial documents of the condominium association were in the package, and we said that we could not sign the paper, saying that we received documents, unless we had in fact received the documents. She walked away. (2) For two weeks, Patricia Harris did not provide all the condo-association documents, as required by Florida law. Instead, she said that if we would not sign the paper (claiming that we had received all the documents), she would hold an open house. Only when she had no new buyer, if there even was an open house, did she finally provide the legally-mandated documents to us, so that we could sign the paper. This caused much wasting of our time, many delays, and much unnecessary stress to everyone. (3) Patricia Harris told us that the condo had sold in 2005 for more than $400,000. However, we checked the county database and found that the condo sold for $350,000, not what she claimed. (4) When Patricia Harris provided us with the owners? ?acceptance? of our offer to buy the condo, this contract ?acceptance? did not have the owners? initials on every page. Nor did it have the signatures of both owners of record (according to the county database), husband and wife. Instead (1) only half the pages were initialed by the owners, (2) not all the contract changes were initialed by the owners, and (3) only the husband (not also the wife) signed the contract, although the wife?s name was listed on the contract. Harris said that if we wanted the condo, we had to accept this incomplete contract ? with errors (1)-(3) on it. We said that our attorney warned that the errors (1)-(3) had to be corrected, and all needed signatures and initials had to be obtained by Harris. It took Harris another 3 weeks to get these basic signatures from the owners. Instead she kept saying that the contract was ?good enough? to send to the bank. (5) When Patricia Harris added material changes to the contract, she repeatedly made the contract inconsistent, did not realize that she had done so, and then refused to fix the inconsistency. For instance, the partially signed (see (4) above) contract ? whose inconsistent changes she expected us to initial ? said on one page that all appliances were staying in the unit, but another page said that all appliances were not staying in the unit. Likewise, one page of her contract said that window coverings were included, while another page of the contract said window coverings were not included. Whenever we pointed out these inconsistencies, Harris tried to claim the owner ?really meant? one thing, and not the other ? and Harris refused to have the contract amended so that it was fully consistent. (6) When Harris added changes to the contract, these changes were incoherent and unclear. It sometimes was impossible to tell exactly what these changes were saying, because the language was so ungrammatical and incomplete. We finally had to say that we needed a contract that had complete, grammatical sentences, because we could not tell what she was trying to say. We ourselves had to rewrite the contract to eliminate all the inconsistency and unclarity, and we resubmitted it for the owners? signatures and initials. (7) When Patricia Harris was supposed to allow our professional inspector to examine the condo, instead she said she arranged with the owner and renter, to have the renter let us in and see it without her present. The result was that we wasted a half hour, at the condo door, trying to get in. Both the renter and the owner said that there had been no such appointment. Moreover, when we phoned Harris, to try to get into the condo, she did not answer her phone and we had to leave a message. She should have been with us, when the condo was inspected. (8) Whenever Harris was supposed to deliver documents to us, from the seller, instead she would call our realtor, and try to get our realtor to come get the documents from her. She repeatedly tried to get others to do her work. (9) Patricia Harris repeatedly told us things that were not true, as (3) above shows. For instance, she told us that the bank had rejected prior offers on the condo, because the offers were not high enough. However, we later learned that the people withdrew the offers and got tired of waiting for Harris to act. The bank never rejected these earlier offers. We believe that consumers should work with Patricia Harris and Celtic Realty, only at their own risk. Our own realtor said she had never, in all her years of experience, seen such a mess as that created by Harris.