Citi Habitats

As I tenant, I have never been treated so badly. It is absolutely disgusting how this company treats the tenants. If you are looking for places to rent in NY, please make sure to NOT go CitiHabits. There are plenty of options available through apps, or other companies where you can get better deals.

You might think that if you hire an agency like Citi Habitats, they have a fiduciary responsibility to you. This is not the case. When you hire them, they will ask you to sign a contract that contains a number of tricky clauses that allow them to take advantage of you.

A rental contract is a little bit unusual in that it requires the person who signs the contract to subsequently recall the contents of the contract years after it is signed. This is a Trojan Horse. They rely on the person signing it to subsequently forget its contents (or, as in my case, to lose the contract like a total idiot). They then give the person who signs it an unexpected surprise. In this case, Citi Habitats placed a clause in a contract does not seem to be cognitively related to the issue at hand.

For instance, Citi Habitats’ contract to lease clearly states “Contract to Lease” at the top of the document. However, the contract contains another clause (in my case, item 7 in a list of items) making it a contract to sell as well. If I sell to my tenant, they have a right to a percentage of the sale. They do not have to raise a finger to help you sell the apartment, they just wait in the wings for the sale, and, boom! They receive a significant percentage of the sale.

I fell victim to this. I remember crossing out relevant clauses in the contract when I signed. But memory becomes vague over time, and contract copies get lost as months and years go by. A day after I sold my apartment, Citi Habitats called to collect their $100,000 plus “commission” from the sale. Since I could not find my copy of the contract that I remembered scratching off, I was on the hook. They produced only a PDF that did not contain the relevant section crossed out. It is likely that I simply thought, “what are the chances that I will actually sell my apartment?”

Don’t get me wrong. I am the fool here. But why should one be fooled by one’s own client–in this case, my agent? One should know better than to deal with real estate agents unless one absolutely has to. Citi Habitats has a D rating with the Better Business Bureau, so I’m all that much more an idiot for using them and not doing due diligence.

Had we gone in front of a jury, I certainly had a case. For instance, I had some evidence that the agent, Dicky Tsuarte, had been less than clear to me about the contract in our text communications. However, because they use arbitration rather than a judge or jury to gauge the validity of the contract I had little choice but to pony up. (See this great New York Times article on how arbitration stacks the deck against people like me.) Her team at Citi Habitats, which included Johnny Lal and Seth Hirschhorn, jumped into action as soon as the sale happened. They said a contract was a contract, that it would go to an arbitrator who would favor them and that I was on the hook for the full amount. If I fought it, I would only end up adding to the cost, with my legal fees and theirs to boot. It was not until I brought up the text that I was able to move them a little bit on the price. But I wasn’t able to move them much.

Brittany is very helpful and sweet. Ask for her. She takes her time to explain things and is very enthusiastic about the apartments.