Ha ha.

Funny story in the Times today about an agent-client relationship gone bad.

Guy Benhamou is a businessman who had three properties he wanted to sell.

His real estate agent, Patricia Warburg Cliff, thought they were worth around $16 million.

Mr Benhamou thought they were worth $28 million. Or, more.

Things got testy. Eventually, Ms Cliff had had enough, and fired her client, by email.

“I think that you are an expert and should be in the business of selling your own apartments,” she wrote to Mr. Benhamou. “Good luck with your newfound career in real estate brokerage.”

That's great!

Mr Benhamou had the last laugh.

The property she wanted to list at $2.75 million ended up selling for $4.225 million.

Mr Benhamou seems like a difficult kind of guy.

On his second property, he got a full-price offer. What did he do?

He turned it down.

And increased the offer price.

On the third property, he received an offer of $10.8 million. What did he do?

He turned it down.

And increased the price.

To $15 million.

That would be kind of annoying, if you were a prospective buyer, right? You'd see one of his homes, you'd make an offer, a strong offer, then he would say, no, I won't accept your offer, actually I'm going to increase the asking price 30%.

You'd probably write him a testy email, too.

More: Condos That Sell Themselves - By Josh Barbanel, The New York Times