Bob Dubno Robert Dubno Did not read the contract, poor client skills, unavailable, poor attention to detail Brooklyn, New York

I definitely would not recommend Robert (Bob) Dubno as a real estate lawyer. I recently read this review of him, and while it is poorly written, I agree with a lot of the qualities that the writer complained about:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/attorneys-legal-services/bob-dubno-real-estat/bob-dubno-real-estate-attorne-bae7b.htm

Robert Dubno's website came up while I was researching New York real estate attorneys. It makes him out to be a reputable lawyer and during initial phone conversations he was all smiles and spent a lot of time with me. He seemed a little brusque but I thought that maybe it would be good to have someone kind of pushy to fight for me.

However, after the contract signing (which he rushed me through) he became extremely uncommunicative. I ran into some troubles because the sponsor's lawyers wrote some unusual clauses into the contract (which Bob missed) basically stating that I had to close within 30 days or risk having to pay penalties amounting to about $100/day. I only found out about this a couple weeks later when they sent me a letter telling me this. I also discovered that they had sent this same letter to Bob Dubno's office earlier via certified mail, but Bob had never bothered to inform me.

I then spent the next couple weeks completely stressed out, rushing around trying to get my mortgage approved (which in most home purchases, takes up to 60 days). By this time, I was having troubles getting in touch with Bob. When I would call his office, he never seemed to be available and I was only able to speak with one of his paralegals. I would ask him questions via email and I got a lot of terse, 1-sentense replies such as "Not that I'm aware of."

I finally had to read the contract in detail myself and saw the penalty written there, pretty clearly, with a 30-day close specified. It made me realize that Bob had probably never really read the contract in detail. I finally got Bob on the phone and it resulted in an extremely unprofessional argument. He was unapologetic despite missing these important details in the contract, and tried to push the blame onto everyone else including me, my mortgage broker, my realtor, and the sponsor's attorneys.

I strongly considered switching lawyers at this point, but after a conference call with my real estate agent and the prospective attorney, they both suggested that I just stick it out since it was late in the process, it might alarm the seller, and it would probably result in a fee dispute. I ended up closing a couple weeks late and the seller ended up not charging me the fees, but it was a truly stressful period for me that I wish I hadn't gone through. Even during the closing/signing Bob rushed me through the process. When I stopped to read the paperwork, he told me, "Look, we don't have time to read through everything, you're just going to have to trust me on this."

I think buying your first house is going to be stressful anyway, but my suggestion is to spend a lot of time researching your prospective team. Talk to them in person, talk to some of their past clients if possible, and if they are not client focused at the beginning, drop them. As another real estate agent wrote me, "Having had the experience of working with an incompetent attorney I can tell you that things can get worse as all the closing docs have to be prepared and you want someone at the table that can rise to the occasion if need be."

I hope this is helpful to those researching attorneys. I did have a great real estate broker, (((competitor's name redacted))). He was a bit pushy at first, but in a nice way, and it ended up being to my advantage because he facilitated communication between everyone and if things weren't getting done, he would try to resolve them in other ways. He also always picked up the phone, even on nights and weekends.

My mortgage broker was excellent and I can not recommend him enough. (((competitor's name redacted))) at (((redacted))). A friend had recommended him initially, and he turned out to be extremely responsive, prompt, and courteous, despite my multiple stressed out calls and emails to my team, and got me an interest rate that was a quarter point lower than any of the other quotes I had received.

If you are looking for alternate real estate lawyers, my real estate agent recommended these:
(((competitors' names redacted)))

I didn't work with either of these people, but I did speak with (((redacted))) on the phone when I was considering firing Bob Dubno. She seemed very competent, professional, and courteous. She definitely seemed to have her clients' concerns at the forefront; after walking me through what I should expect up until the end of my closing (this took about a half hour, free of charge) she ended up recommending that I not hire her and stick with Bob due to the reasons I mentioned above. And she came recommended by my real estate agent who I trusted.

Hope this helps.

sorry, allowing you to give a competitors name would instigate others to just file against their competition, to only come back later to suggest their company, ..plus, if you post a competitors name more than likely they will show up on search engines as a Rip-off! - - your comments on this policy are welcome. CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report. In this case we removed an alleged competitors name