CARRIAGE REALTY

My sincere advice to home buyers selecting Real Estate brokers in the Twin Cities, Minnesota: if your philosophy is to patronize small companies, it is a noble sentiment, but you are well advised to avoid the Real Estate Company Carriage Realty for your home buying. Based on my experience with this agency, my conclusion is that this agency is not professional, but rather amateurish in their approach. Home buyers are being used as “guinea pigs” while the agents are being “trained” and “coached”. Home buyers, especially inexperienced ones, may face serious consequences if represented by this company. The company is “family owned”, by Karen Stang, having been founded by her father, who “saw a void in the industry and wanted to start a different, family-owned owned real estate company” whatever that void it was that he saw. The company is comprised of three entities, Karen Stang the Broker/Owner, Danielle Berg-Bade, and Kevin Stepka (who I have not met). Karen is fairly knowledgeable, but rather rude and brusque and somewhat arrogant. My daughter and son-in-law, being first time young homebuyers, attended a few home-buying seminars in the Twin Cities, MN area. Karen was one of the instructors, and, believing that they should patronize small family owned businesses rather than large corporations, they contracted with Carriage Realty to represent them in buying their first home. Danielle Berg-Bade was the Realtor assigned; Danielle was totally incompetent, did not know the neighborhoods, did not know the protocols to observe between the seller, the sellers’ agent, and the buyers, did not seem to have even basic common sense, and did not have any communications skills. She did not even understand many of the terms, the terminology, or the language in the buyer-broker agreement between her as the agent and the buyer who she would represent. Even though we had given her a very clear and detailed “wish list” of our “needs” and “wants” in a house (in MS Word “Table” format), she just sent us dozens of random listings with no correlation to those criteria. When we searched on the Internet and sent her links to some listings and requested her to show us those, days would go by where she would be unavailable, said she was busy with her teen-age daughters, and could not take us around. We conceivably lost a few homes due to this, the market being a buyers’ market now. As a mother of three and a grandmother, I find it commendable that she is dedicated to her teenage children, and I applaud her for that, but an agent has also the obligation to make time to serve her/his clients’ needs. I short, everything Danielle did or did not do and which Karen seemed to support, was in direct total contrast to the philosophies outlined on their web-site by Karen’s father when he founded the company with the objective of filling “a void” that he saw. Carriage Realty had been informed at the very beginning, even before they were retained, that as these are young first-time home buyers, I as a mother, and a person with decades of Real Estate experience, would be closely involved in the process, and that I might also be frequent resident in the home selected, possibly staying there for extended periods. Despite this, she was extremely rude and disrespectful to me, dismissing me that “I am not the buyer”. She was incensed when I pointed out some lapses and lack of judgment on her part, and she responded by Karen and her calling my son-in-law with a barrage of complaints and reminding him that he and my daughter are the buyers, and I am not, and therefore she does not need to deal with me. Danielle may not want to “deal with me” – she is indeed being paid her commission from the real estate transaction of my daughter and son-in-law. May I add that she did not actually “earn” this commission: this was a house that I had selected in my Internet search and an acquaintance who also happened to be a Realtor had already shown it to us, and all she did was to facilitate our seeing it very briefly for a second time (as it was listed by an agent and not for sale by owner) and to follow up with the contracts, the terms contained in them being far beyond her level of comprehension! I have had decades of experience in Real Estate in various capacities, and have managed several commercial properties for partnerships comprised of groups of physicians, and have not encountered Real estate agents who rudely dismiss relatives or friends of buyers who are involved simply because “they are not the buyers”. My involvement and its extent is a choice and decision made by my daughter and son-in-law and it is not Karen’s or Danielle’s business to object to my involvement. Furthermore, I am and will always be my children’s and their spouses’ advocate, and will intervene when I know that their best interests are not being served.