Maven Realty

[dangerousface.livejournal.com]

I have totally had the best experience with Maven Realty on Highland. I saw a place that I loved yesterday and signed the lease today with absolutely no hassle or run-around or anything confusing. The fee was reasonable and the agent I worked with [Eddie] was great and personable and, when I arrived to see him for my first appointment, he had a half-dozen places lined up for me to look at with no pressure on any of them. The landlords that Maven works with apparently have long relationships with the company and that made the process that much smoother.

I have NOT had good experiences in the past when apartment-hunting or renting, but I'm incredibly happy with the results this time around and, as January is a crap month to try and find a place, I thought a little hope might be helpful for other folks in the same position as me.

Comments

[damsel-ophelia.livejournal.com]

good to know - I'll be looking in a few months!

[dangerousface.livejournal.com]

They are GREAT. They have a ton of good stuff and they'll be expanding their office with a second location in Brookline.

[jennyelfenmass.livejournal.com]

I've heard good things about them too. My co-worker used them and was very happy.

[glowroper.livejournal.com]

Yes, but are they queer-friendly? (prompt prompt)

[dangerousface.livejournal.com]

:) Very, in my experience..I'm moving in with someone else who is kind of female and the agent thought we were dating/romantically involved and didn't bat an eye when I said no and my new roommate talked about her ex-partner.

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

what did you get? Any indicators of what the market is like for 1-2 bedroom places @ Davis these days?

[dangerousface.livejournal.com]

I got a second floor two bedroom about a mile or so from Davis, up near the end of Powderhouse Blvd. Free W/D, wood floors, huge walk-in closets, two living rooms. He didn't show me anything that was absolutely awful.

According to Eddie, if you want to be IN Davis and on top of the T, you need to move between August and September and the competition is pretty fierce for in-square and very-close apts...nevermind expensive. Apparently, if you don't mind walking a bit, there's a LOT of good stuff outside of the square...and you can get good stuff now, so Eddie says, for really cheap. Most of the stuff I saw was 1100-1300 for two bedrooms.

[phoenixy.livejournal.com]

www.rentometer.com

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

The landlords that Maven works with apparently have long relationships with the company

huh. that sword cuts both ways, though. bear with me a bit - the relevant parts are after the exposition:

i rented my first apartment (637 Cambridge St. #4, in East Cambridge) through Maven Realty in the fall of 1999. the landlord at the time was Sharon Hsu. the place looked decent enough at the outset, but come winter i discovered that the pipes were uninsulated, as a pipe above the bathroom ceiling froze and burst. the same thing happened the next winter, but that time it was also the pipe supplying the sprinkler system that burst, so rather than sluicing (relatively) clean water down into the bathroom, what came down was rusty, vile, dark goop (as the sprinkler system had not been drained and flushed in who knows how long).

the second winter all the tenants in the building met and considered our options for addressing the problem; in addition to withholding rent, we started laying the groundwork for a lawsuit against Sharon, but that was all cut short when the city condemned the building and gave Sharon a week to fix the problem (after which point we would all be evicted). fortunately, after the shoddiest of last-minute patch jobs, water was restored, and all the tenants decided that we would be moving out as soon as our leases were up.

so, yeah, landlord horror story - everybody’s got one. how is this relevant? read on.

while we were gathering information for the lawsuit, i had several conversations with John Fallon at the Cambridge Inspectional Services Department (http://www.cambridgema.gov/~Inspect/). during these conversations i learned that Sharon Hsu owned a number of apartment buildings in Cambridge, that all of these buildings had a list of code violations as long as my arm, and that Sharon herself had been cited many times for failure to appear in court and failure to fix code violations in a timely fashion. in fact, one of these conversations ended with me talking to an officer at Cambridge PD, who told me to call him immediately the next time i so much as laid eyes on Sharon Hsu, as Cambridge PD had a warrant to serve against her, but they were having difficulty tracking her down since she changed addresses monthly (seriously - she did! we were supposed to deliver our rent checks to a PO box).

more to the point, John Fallon told me that any realtor who wanted to do the most cursory background check on Sharon Hsu could have called up the Cambridge ISD and found out all this information.

i called up Maven Realty and spoke with a manager, who told me that Maven saw no reason to check up on any of their landlords, that they were sorry i had had a bad experience, but that they were not going to change their policies.

so, in a nutshell: let the tenant beware! Maven will rent apartments from any slumlord, and they don’t care if you the tenant get screwed in the process as long as they get their cut.

i won’t do business with them again (and now i’m a landlord, so the shoe is on the other foot).

-steve

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

Well, what incentive does any realtor have to screen landlords? Or tenants, for that matter?

Anyway, that reminds me that the next time I go looking for an apartment, I'll need to check the name of the landlord with the Inspectional Services Department myself.

[dangerousface.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, that's been my experience with other realtors I've worked with in the past--their knowledge come from the agreement with the landlord, not from seeking out information further...as that is time and money and will get passed on to the tenant. If I'm in a shitty situation, it's my responsibility to fix it and I don't see transferring the blame to someone who does business and got me a place to live as useful.

On the flip side, the realtors I've had experience with don't screen the tenants practically at all..

[natef.livejournal.com]

I really dislike the broker system for Boston apartment rentals. The only other city where it's more firmly entrenched is NYC (which is admittedly a lot worse). If you want to find a decent place right on the red line, though, you either need to get lucky (through a friend of a friend who's about to move or something like that) or go through a broker. Especially if you're moving from out of town - if you're already here, it's at least possible to ask around, use Craigslist, talk to landlords, and work around the system.

Luckily there are some scrupulous and competent brokers around - I can't say whether or not Maven is. So you might get great service, but you pay dearly for it.

Cities like San Francisco have just as tight housing markets, and the tenants do not have to bear such a disproportionately high share of the transaction costs. Gah! It's ridiculous. Rant over.

[dangerousface.livejournal.com]

My fee was fairly inexpensive given the other examples I have seen--I paid a half fee and, since I have a roommate, that was split in half again. I think it was totally worth it to avoid the hassle of negotiating with a landlord and the headache of trying to track down places on my own.