Greater Boston Properties

I have been a tenant now at two different locations in the South End over the past 12 years. Both buildings have been managed by Greater Boston Properties. My property manager is Becky Long. Becky has always displayed the highest degrees of professionalism and conscientiousness to meet any concerns that arise from time to time over the years. She works very hard to help tenants. If I give her something to deal with, I know that she will respond. Likewise, the maintenance department is responsive to the maintenance requests that arise from the usual wear and tear that happen living in any building.
I have been very happy living here and I rest secure knowing that if something does come up, Becky and GBP will respond to it.
I see that other reviews were not as kind, but for me, I have had a very good experience with GBP.

Great experience from start to finish with GBP, and Becky Long in particular. Conscientious, considerate, and thorough, it was a pleasure renting through GBP.

This is literally one of the most unprofessional, disorganized, rude organizations I have ever had the misfortune with whom to work. Perhaps they are better for some building than others, but because my building is primarily college students, they treat this building without care or respect.
Since I have lived here for three years, I’ve had a couple of roommates move in and out. They had to virtually stalk the property manager to get their security deposits back, in some cases for more than 2 months. They schedule and reschedule maintenance, including nonstop bed bug inspections, without regard for their tenant’s schedules. Recently, a maintenance event was scheduled for noon in which all tenants were told they needed to be out of the building for an hour. GBP showed up an hour early without regard for the fact that I work from home and had arranged my entire work day around their scheduling, disrupting a client call.
We’ve had a fire, 2 or more evacuations from the building, units without fire alarms (and several requests from tenants to have them installed/​repaired to no avail)… The list goes on and on. I cannot wait to move out of this building and work with an organization that cares about its tenants, regardless of how much they pay in rent.

I had a long review going and without copying I am remiss to write it again but trust me I will and it would be more scathing.
Nothing but more expenses from what is never a Reserve, and thus end up an assessment. This location is Seaport in Lynn. Taxes go up due to the sanctuary city designation, topped off with the FIND WORK, truly not vetted and really not bid and not always needed.
This Condo firm is here to profit knowing there is only so much time before the next Condo Management Firm is here. I believe we are on our 4^th in 15 years, I could have all work done here by people I know, licensed and bonded for at least 20% less and will vouch for these trusted people with monies of me own. Not this tragedy-​Du-​jour that is being jammed down everyone’s throat and exhausting their retirement funds. It is disgusting.
Throwing money at a problem is most benefits the direction it is thrown.
Seaport Condo Lynn. 154 Building U-​207
Respond. I will get back to you. Respond to my email not Unilocal

I just moved out of an apartment in Quincy that is managed by this company, and they returned my security deposit minus $ 120 ($ 60 per hour/​2 hours for OT cleaning). Their reasoning? Excessive grime on floors and appliances. That’s funny — seeing as this apartment is at least 30 years old, and we were told before we even moved in last September that this apartment is OLD. I cleaned before I even moved out — to avoid any type of deduction for cleaning and figured I was all set. I’m stupid for not documenting what it looked like when I left, and now they’re going to get away scotch free with my money. They should be ashamed of themselves — that’s my hard earned money and they use their crappy residences to mooch people out of what is theirs because they don’t want to put the effort into renovating anything. Scumbags.

Rented an apartment from GBP for two years. They were great. Responsive to my needs, fair in prices, and friendly. Gave my entire expected deposit back when I moved out. Highly recommended!

Agree with prior review, the customer is 90% of the time not right with GBP. Management and property managers cover for each other instead of admitting any mistakes. Property managers are overwhelmed.
Trustees have to pay close attention to what is done and what is forgotten. We had several projects quoted and billed at a different amounts, updates on issues and resolutions were not provided timely we had to ask multiple times before a straight forward clear answer was provided. There were lack of updates/​communication/​miscommunication, yearly budget was never prepared by due date.
We questioned why legal collection fees are different than the written contract says and were told that the previous board approved verbally. Emergency, maintenance fee was also increased without a written contract and were were told that they charge «per industry standards»…
In few words GBP is there to «help» the trustees but not to manage buildings. Trustees have to do a lot of extra work to have successful building operation.
Only reason why I give 2 stars is that they have good systems in place…
12/​01/​2013
Thanks Scott. Obviously it is for the best to go apart and for us to work with a new management company. Per our meeting back in August we already wanted to give you the notice but decided to try one last time with a new property manager. Yet improvement was not satisfactory. Never heard back from you about your opinion of fee changes without written notice so I assumed you were in agreement.
For now we are dealing with the crisis of owners calling the board constantly as the elevator is down since Wednesday 11/​27/​2013 and no response or any communication form GBP nor the elevator maintenance company…

These guys are pathetic. Not only are they rude, but they have no clue how to even manage a building. We had multiple checks lost by them and they don’t appear to have any clue how customer service works. Just steer away from any building managed by these clowns. Pure embarrassment.

I think GBP is quite reputable and fair. Their portfolio of properties is vast, their buildings are in good shape, and the rent they charge is fair. I cannot speak about them from a condo management perspective but as they have all of the mechanisms in place to operate such a management business I would imagine they are pretty great. Inmy experience, the staff is always available, they have modern conveniences (automatic w/​d of rent payments, etc. and a hotline /​electronic submittal system for reporting of maintenance issues. Their administrative staff is attentive and polite. I think their accounting could use some work as (in my experience) they take quite a while to cash checks and took a couple of attempts to get a direct withdrawal set up correctly. I have had two minor work orders and both issues were addressed within the DAY. GBP is HIGHLY preferable to working with an absentee (or non-​absentee landlord).

This is no better than the trash you can find in Allston, which might be ok for some people, but I was expecting more. I am not a college student and I didn not want to live like one. I was with Micozzi before, and that is what a management company should be like.
Before moving in– The Realtor was lazy, lied to us, and was not helpful at all. Not worth the massive fee we had to pay for him to unlock a door. We took it, hoping the company would be better, and because of the location. The realtor told us we could move in early and get in contact with the current tenants. But then we found out we couldn’t have their information and couldn’t move in early because the management company wanted to use those two weeks to get the apartment ready. That was bullshit because we saw what the «getting ready» process involved and it wasn’t much and was done after we moved in anyway.
While living there– we had mice and it took them forever to do something about it, people smoked pot on the fire escapes, we lived next to Section 8 housing (noisy as hell in the alley), and they did half-​assed repairs. Some of us were uncertain about if we could resign a lease in Feb (that would be over 6 months before our lease was up…), and we asked for a 6 week extension to hear back from jobs/​schools. We were told that they would have to consult with the Realtor (you know, the ones who make money if we leave) and they basically did not care. We were good tenants, but I guess they would rather have college students.
After moving out– I still got charged for rent, which caused me a lot of problems. I even had the foresight to expect that they would screw it up, and I asked them to make sure it didn’t happen. The property manager’s robotic response was enough to make me write this. She didn’t care at all even though it was her fault.
On an upside, some of my room mates had positive experiences with management, the location was awesome (view out my window amazing), and it served it’s purpose… cheap living in a good location. I guess I just expected more from a professional company.

** Condo management company! Excellent! **
I am on the board of my condo development, we were transitioning from developer control (awful) to self-​run (exciting) and looked through 25 management companies in the area! We interviewed our top 3 and it was obvious that GBP was the right choice.
They have been truly amazing! Tim Paoli works with our property directly and he has made a wonderful transition from our scrambling to deal with major issues with water seepage, mold, etc to now, we are organized with a reputable engineering company inspecting our development, and we have a website set up! We are much better organized and on our way to being a smoothly run condo community! If Tim isn’t available, the president of the company, Scott Wolff, steps in immediately!
We are extremely happy with Greater Boston Properties. Especially surprising, they had the lowest quote but the most services!

Greater Boston Properties is a HORRIBLE property management company. I think giving GBP one star is generous.
GBP is notorious for either not responding to maintenance issues at all or very late. My husband and I had to deal with losses of hot water, heat, a broken lock and MICE!
You would think GBP would address a rodent issue immediately, but no. Despite numerous calls and emails to Becky Long, it took 9 days for someone to come over. The maintenance person filled holes with steel wool, but didn’t have enough. The holes were not packed tight and the mice squeezed through.
We finally decided to leave. We had signed a lease extension in March (required that early) to begin in September. GBP withheld our security deposit because we refused to pay a realtor’s fee for prospective tenants. I would totally agree that we should pay the realtor’s fee, except it took 9 DAYS to address the rodent issue.
GBP is rife with miscommunication. If you call the after hours emergency maintenance phone number and someone doesn’t respond — that work order almost NEVER makes it to GBP employee. You have to call GBP and request a person again. You will spend a lot time waiting, wondering and calling for someone to get your hot water on.
Even if you are homeless looking for shelter — you would be better off in a North Face tent set up in the Boston Common than signing a lease with Greater Boston Properties!

I have to say I’m surpised by some of these reviews! I think finding and living in an apartment is a really personal experience, so when you have a good experience, it’s really good, and when you have a negative experience, its REALLY negative, so it sounds like that’s what happened in a few of the situations above.
In any case, I’ve been really happy with GBP. I found my apartment in the S End 2 years ago through them with Tim Anastasia as my broker. I told him my price range in advance for the South End and exactly what I was looking for, which was very low (My roommate and I wanted a 2-​bedroom for around $ 15 – 1600). That’s a challenge in and of itself, so I really wasn’t expecting too much. It took a few weeks, but when something in my range finally came on the market, Tim called me up and showed me the place THAT DAY. It was a good apartment, in a good location, so we went directly to GBP and filled out the application. In response to someone else’s comment, the application is pretty in-​depth, you need to provide a lot of references/​contact information, so if you’re not prepared with that in advance, then its going to take some back-​and-​forth to get your application completed in full, and they won’t take an application unless its 100% complete. So be prepared for that. Luckily, my roommate and I were ready to go with everything we needed, and Tim got our application in right away. He called me later that day and let me know that we got the apartment, which was awesome because there were several applications for the place since it was so cheap. Again, important to make sure that you have all the information you need in advance for the application! So I was pretty psyched to get a nice place in a great location in the S End for that price.
Since then, for the past two years, I’ve worked mainly with Becky Long (previously Becky Pettit) as the property manager. We’ve had 2 small maintenance issues and the people have always showed up within a day to fix things (they leave a note on your door to say when they arrived and give status on the repairs). So I haven’t had any problems like those reported above. Becky has always responded quickly, within a day, to both voicemail and email.
***This review actually gets 5 full stars because last year I got a bullsh! t $ 40 ticket from the Boston PD saying that my trash was out too late for trash day (they actually went through my trash to find my name and address on an old envelope – gross!) and I complained to Becky. Becky actually had me drop off the ticket to her at GBP AND THEY PAID IT!!! Plus she called the BPD and complained on my behalf. That’s above and beyond, in my book.

It is now time to write the review I soooo wanted to write for so long. Now that I have escaped the evil clutches of GBP and have my deposit back, safe and sound I can say this: GBP is, without a doubt, unequivocally, the worst company I have ever dealt with. They are liars, jerks, and bring incompetency to a whole new level. I have a deep rooted hatred for this company– they are why people don’t like real estate agents and rental companies. They epitomize everything that is wrong about their business. If I owned a property I would never let them manage it. And, if I ever go back on the rental market, I would never rent one of their properties.
There are many reasons why this company is on my shit-​list, but I’ll relate just a few anecdotes:
Winter, 2003/​2004, the coldest winter in Boston in over a century. Fucking ass cold. We had no heat. None. Nothing was coming out of those vents– cold to the touch. We call. They send someone over– they say it’s fixed. It’s not. I start documenting the temperature on a daily basis. During the month of February it only hits legal minimum temperature a handful of days. We continuously call and complain. Do they fix the problem? No– they decide to blame me. They tell me it’s my curtains and furniture blocking the baseboards that’s causing the problem. Of course, this is idiotic– any normal, rational person would see that. Not GBP. They actually had the audacity to come into my apartment while I was gone and move my furniture away from the walls. (Never mind the fact that the largest baseboard was completely free of any furniture or curtains– if they had touched it they would have realized it was cold). They’d come in from the freezing temps outside and claim that the apartment «felt fine to them.» Of course it did– 55 degrees does feel warmer than the 32 degrees you just came in from. Their next solutions? All illegal, according to the housing inspector we finally called. First «solution»: Plastic. Plastic all over my doors and windows. Second «solution»: Small electric heaters. Never mind that we pay the electric bill, while they are supposed to pay for our heat. How convenient. And a fire hazard. Final «solution»: Get a giant heater and heat the apartment up to over 90 degrees then let it cool down so we have warmth for a few hours. No, I’m not joking. They actually did that. Finally, after calling the BHA, withholding rent, and threatening legal action they got someone in qualified to handle the problem. It only took four months. It shouldn’t have taken four days.
And finally, we come to John, the person they’ve hired to show properties to prospective renters. When we finally decided to leave our apartment (they raised the rent over $ 400 dollars in three years) it needed to be shown. I had just gotten back from my uncle’s funeral out of state, and was coming home from work when I receive a call from him saying that he is going to be showing the apartment in 45 minutes. I said, «I don’t feel comfortable with that– we just got back from out of town, the place is a wreck, it’s not a good time.» He responds, «Well, I wasn’t asking if it was okay, I’m going to be there in 45 minutes.» Ho hum. Well then. Ya see, it’s the law, you have to give notice. No notice? No come in. 45 minutes is not proper notice. 24 hours is. I had to have husband deal with that man from then on, because he was such an incompetent boob that he made me want to scream. I like my blood pressure down low, where it’s supposed to be, and Husband is much better at dealing with these things. Needless to say, after we demanded 24 hours notice he didn’t follow it. He constantly called a few hours before wanting to show the place. Ya know what? Maybe if he’d shown just a little bit of respect we would have let him come on short notice. But they burned that bridge a long time ago. Oh– and I know they were in our house without our permission at least once during that time. He asked to come over and take some pictures– we said, no, not 24 hours notice (and the place was a wreck). He said he’d do it another time. But then we see the ad on craigslist for our place– with pictures of our messy apartment. Awesome. Oh and the ad? It’s no wonder it didn’t rent quickly (it wasn’t rented by the day we moved out) he called our crappy galley kitchen «large» and boasted about all the ample storage space that was non existent.
Good riddance, GBP, my life is much better without you. Too bad you are still out there tormenting other tenants.

Simple rule: don’t rent from these folks. Ever. And if you do, find a good real estate attorney, since you’ll need them.
My ex lived in a GBP managed unit for a year. A parking space came with the apartment at the gas station next to the complex, but she got screamed at by the idiot owner — ‘you not park there, this is MINE’ — a number of times. Property manager Becky Pettit was informed of this and didn’t do a thing. Turns out when Becky had rented the unit she neglected to mention that a parking spot at the gas station meant you had to give keys to them and play roulette with your car. Strangely, the ex wouldn’t have rented the unit in the first place if she’d known that. Duh.
Once the guy threatened assault and was going to get his tow truck and jack the car, and a lawyer got involved — breach of lease could have cost them 3 months rent for each incident — it took over 2 months to even get a parking space reassigned which Becky considered a ‘favor’ (only after they forced all tenants to sign a new agreement about parking to CYA for Becky’s gross misrepresentation)…and then GBP retaliated by not renewing her lease.
Got worse. After that fiasco the Tim Anastasia another reviewer mentioned would try to show up at the door with 30 minutes notice to show the unit. This was just perfect when I was visiting at 8 in the morning on a weekend after taking the redeye in — and when reminded of the Massachusetts law that requires ‘reasonable notice’ (24 – 48 hours) to prevent such stunts from ruining ‘quiet enjoyment’ of the unit he yelled at the ex about how a provision in the lease allowed him to enter when he chose to do so. Wrong. He left another unit’s front door wide open twice when that guy wouldn’t let him barge in… and once it stayed open for a week. And he did it to her apartment too. I got an affidavit from the neighbor and ended up videotaping another agent that randomly showed up with no notice for the court appearance that should have come, but since the ex wanted a positive reference from these morons she never filed what would have been a suit that probably would have gotten her more rent back than she paid in a year.
The unit itself wasn’t bad, despite neighbors at 3 am routinely shouting in the hall, slamming their door, and getting stoned. Bad being relative, since the water went out for large periods of the summer (not their fault, but reimbursement for bottled water, never!), the hot water heater didn’t work consistently for four months before it was finally replaced, rather than fixing the laundry machines they just took the notes from tenants saying they were broken off of them, rain gutters fell down a three story building and stayed there for a month, and what was a nice courtyard with trees got mowed once all summer — right before they brought potential tenants around. If you called, versus writing a letter, nothing would get done. Personal favorite: front door to the complex broke and stayed open for a month despite calls from at least the majority of tenants. Took a certified letter — the front door has to be self-​closing under state law — before GBP bothered to fix things (next step was housing inspector). Becky then yelled at the ex in a voicemail for resorting to a letter, since they were versed enough in the law to try to eliminate a paper trail, but fortunately, we saved and dated all the voicemails and letters with timestamps.
Oh, yeah, and on move out they ask you to sign a statement indicating that you’ve restored the apartment to ridiculous condition (you MUST clean the windowsills of dirt, seriously, it’s one of the 20 requirements they impose) or that your security deposit is at risk. That’s funny, since on move in they get you to sign a statement saying you understand that it’s a busy time of year and you might not get your apartment in good condition and they are under no obligation to get things right. She got her security deposit back, but probably because they knew we’d hire on them if they didn’t and that screwing around with a deposit when we took pictures of the unit before and after is the easiest way for a landlord to end up in big trouble.
You’ve been warned.
Edit: No surprise Tim and GBP have been using sockpuppets and whining to Unilocal to delete reviews so as to raise their deservedly bad reputation. Oh, and for the sockpuppets that claim there is no such thing as reasonable notice? Don’t even need to hire a lawyer like we did to find they’re pulling their standard routine. Try googling «Massachusetts Bar Association Reasonable Notice» and you’ll find one good reference, and if that’s not enough, look under the Mass Courts system website under Home/​Courts/​Trial Departments/​Housing and look under the FAQ for reasonable notice. It exists, it’s based in case and statutory law, and their denial that it does should give you pretty good independent verification as to whether or not you want to rent a GBP managed unit.

I would not deal with these guys at all…
If I could give a zero I would. Tim Anastasia is absolutely a nightmare… after trying numerous times to get in touch with him over a rental I gave up. When trying to get an apartment through him and GBP, filling out the paperwork was horrible, they miss so many things that it took 3 or more visits to the office. Then when you do put down a deposit on a rental you wait and wait to hear back. In my personal case, I was told by Mr. Anastasia himself in the morning that I had my apartment… then in the afternoon I get a call back from Mr. Anastasia saying that it went to another person (WTF is that!!!)
When I went to their office on Tremont Street to pickup my deposit, Tim Anastasia didn’t have the decency to even come up and look me in the eye or say sorry for letting the deal fall through. Not good at all!!!
I have also talk to many people who have said the same thing has happened to them, one that actually had the same thing happen to her. Same apartment a year earlier /​Same Tim Anastasia running people in circles!
Personal I think that they play games at GBP, and I would not trust any of them. Go talk to the people at GibsonDomainDomain. So much better then these fools at GBP!

We had Greater Boston as our landlords for years. (The apartment was that good.) It took two years of calling the housing authority for them to get the apartment adequately heated. They were pretty unresponsive in general, and the turnover’s so high that we were constantly getting used to new property managers. Repairs are barely adequate. Yard’s still an absolute wasteland, despite my offers to take care of it for them if they’d reimburse me for grass seed.
Not like you’re used to rental companies being all lovey and whatnot. Just saying, these guys are no exception.
Update October 2007: After something like four years, we finally bought our own place. The property manager we dealt with for the last couple of years, whose name is Becky, went to a lot of trouble to try to improve our relationship with Greater Boston Properties, and I think she personally did a great job. I enjoyed working with her.
We were still very unhappy with the maintenance staff, though. An example of their competence: they replaced our vanity a year or so back, which was lovely of them, but they did it wrong; they had to glue one of the drawers shut because pipes were in the way. That’s sloppy work, and it detracts from the value of the apartment.
I also had major problems with their agents while they were trying to re-​rent the place. They almost never gave 24-​hour notice as they are required to. (I kept being a big softy about it, to my shame.) One of them — John — lied to me at least twice, asking me if he could bring a prospective tenant over (on short notice) and excusing it by telling me they’d already agreed to rent the place and just needed one last look. (We asked the prospects when they got there; they flat out denied any such thing.) He (and his colleagues) were frequently late, leaving prospects standing awkwardly at our door. Once he never showed at all; we showed the place for him. He was rude to my wife, and he didn’t leave our apartment as he’d found it even after I specifically asked him to, for example, leave that one door closed because we don’t want the cats in that room. I can’t remember the other agent’s names — John was the one who really stood out in his douchiness — but I didn’t particularly like any of them.
What I’m saying here, in case it’s not clear, is that John the agent from Greater Boston Properties is a douchebag.
I’m leaving this as two stars; the second star is solely for Becky. If I were just dealing with her, GBP would get five stars.

Yeah… John was awesome. My girlfriend and our future roommate were in Boston for one day looking for a place and we had numerous real estate guys show us four, five, six places and all of them were crap. John showed up… led us through two places at Perkins Square and within an hour we were filling out the paper work.
EDIT: Okay, I’m going to edit some stuff now that I’ve lived in my apartment for about six months now. John still rocked, but GBP as a whole has been less than spectacular. The rent, although still reasonable, is going up. It is next to impossible to get anyone to fix things. We had been living here for two months before they finally sent someone in to paint the walls. This is because people move out the day before new tennants move in and any repairs have to be made around the new tennants after they’ve moved in. We also had two wait nearly three and a half months before they finally mailed us as copy of our lease.

I have to agree with Ruth P… John at Greater Boston Properties is AWESOME. After weeks of looking at nasty apartments in Back Bay/​South End and other realtors thumbing their nose at us and telling us we’d never find anything in our price range, we called this place. John listened to us and showed us ONE PLACE-​we took it right there on the spot. It blew anything else we’d seen out of the water in terms of amenities, space, and closet storage. And it was in our price range!
I think John earned his realtor’s fee in about 30 minutes of work with us-​which made him happy, and us happy too. :)

John at Greater Boston Properties is faaaabulous. He’s funny, considerate, and seems to have a good idea of what is and isn’t a good deal. He only showed me places that were appropriate for my desires and price range, and during the few months that I was looking for places he called about once a week to tell me about a new place on the market and then show it to me if I was interested — very good job keeping the customers happy.