Mackin Group

Having worked in the same industry (real estate), there is no excuse for the poor response time and the way some of the staff speak to their clients/​tenants.
Our mailbox and buzzer have been broken for months. As I write this, our buzzer is still broken. I have called the management office repeatedly requesting they repair it and a few other items. Some days I would get a «we’ll send someone right over» (and no one would come), another day I was told «we are busy with construction» (I might add my building/​complex was having no construction done at that time, so basically they are telling me they are too busy servicing someone else’s property!). After getting no where for weeks, I called on the weekend and left another message stating it was very unprofessional to not get back to your tenants when they are trying to properly notify you of maintenance concerns. The property manager (Brad Mackin) immediately called me back and screamed at me about how dare I contact him on a weekend, and how some of the things I was requesting were done before they became our management company (So what? So the management that we pay should not have to put my name on the buzzer or mailbox because someone else before them did it incorrectly??? What a LAZY and illogical argument). He yelled at me throughout the entire conversation, I was so disgusted.
Since then, I have filed maintenance requests on their website so I won’t have to deal with Brad’s disrespectful attitude. After doing so, I received an email from Brad Mackin in the first week of May stating that our buzzer would be fixed that week with an explanation of which company would be fixing it (etc). It has been 3 weeks since he claimed it was going to be fixed by Schmidt Electrical. How long does it take to fix a buzzer??? Absolutely ridiculous.

Mackin gets one star because I can’t give them –5. This is by far one of the WORST management companies I have EVER dealt with, and I have been renting apartments for over 10 years. After two years of living under their care, I have had to deal with bed bugs, cockroaches, and numerous burst pipes, as well as what they claimed was an «emergency» (the details of which no one will call me back to explain) which they claimed the right to enter our home without any notice despite countless phone calls for explanation. They are rude, never call back (I’m looking at you, Chelsea), and have entered our home numerous times despite me telling them (countless times) that NO ONE is allowed in our apartment without permission. Did I mention last time they entered our apt without notice an expensive item went missing from our home? You can bet no one was willing to offer any sort of help. This is a DECEITFUL company, whose interests lie solely in themselves. Moving to a home under their supervision is a big mistake. RUN THE OTHER WAY. I will NEVER deal with this company again.
In response to Mackin’s reply to my rating, I’d like to say that this entire time all this has happened, despite numerous requests for someone at their company to tell me what was going on, asking for someone to SIMPLY call me back, Mackin NEVER ONCE made any effort whatsoever to discuss my concerns. They can try to cover their butts however they choose, but the truth of the matter is no one ever tried to directly contact me. Truly pathetic. You don’t want a management company who you can’t even get in touch with.

It was a Saturday morning.
The lock on my door was broken and I got locked out. I called them, and an «answering service» lady picked up the phone. I told her about the situation and she said that she couldn’t do anything about it because all she does is pick up the phone and no one with authority was in the office at the time.
However, she gave me the number of a locksmith that is partnered with the Mackin Group, and told me that I needed to personally pay it for the moment, and then claim the refund later when the manager is back in the office.
The locksmith also told me that the broken lock was definitely not my fault and I should be able to get the refund from the management company.
Okay. I was a student and $ 200 in cash was a lot of money for me. But ok. Three days, I can do it, I thought.
On Monday, I call the Mackin Group to get the refund. The lady said «the manager is not in the office, but I can leave a message to him if you’d like.»
«Yes, please.» I said.
On Wednesday I called them again. A nice lady picked up the phone and said «the manager is not in the office, but I can leave a message to him if you’d like.»
«Yes, please,» I said.
A few days later, I called them again. A lady picked up the phone and said «the manager is not in the office, but I can leave a message to him if you’d like.»
«I already called twice but yes. Could you tell the manager to contact me when he gets the message?» I said.
After that I got pretty swamped with school, and had to take care of other real life shit.
A couple of months later, I emailed my agent about the $ 200 refund.
She said that she was going to talk to Ken, who was the manager at time.
I waited for her reply and well, guess what? Apparently he never got the messages and he said that he is «willing to cover half of the cost.»
I emailed him personally but he completely ignored me. Well, enjoy my hard-​earned $ 100 that I just gave you for poor management and poor communication.
I know that this might not seem like a big deal to some of you.
Well, what I am trying to say is that these guys don’t care and there are better management companies in Boston.

If I could give Macking a 0 I would. Horrible service. We recently moved away from them managing our building, the reasons are too numerous to write in this review, but here are some of the more critical issues.
— Never seeks to resolve financial issues until it is critical. Trustee intervention was chronic. The association constantly ran in the red and Mackin seemed to have very little interest in resolving this.
— Accounting practices are purposely obtuse, seeking clarification is a dead end.
— Building maintenance is done by Mackin staff and tend to be higher priced tasks, the just as important less expensive repairs are not addressed.
— Monitoring of usage of heating fuel and water was never done. We had an entire winter with a broken heating system that cost the building thousands of dollars. There was the promise to do a water inspection of each unit to figure out water usage problems, this was never done.
— Visits to the building by managing staff to do a survey happens infrequently enough that repairs are not carried out in a timely manner.
— A very questionable professional attitude from the management. Management should not yell at property owners nor should the management cause more issues with the collection of condo fees that then need to be resolved by a trustee.
— There is something to be said about intuition, mine says this group is untrustworthy.
— I have talked to numerous people that work with or in the property management field and I could find no one that said anything positive about Mackin Group. To give credit, a number of years ago this was not the case.
— When we moved to a different property management company, Mackin was unprofessional and needed to have legal action threatened to get the records moved.
— When I was elected as a trustee I worked with Mackin to rectify many of the problems there were seen with how they operated. Despite giving the group a year to correct how it operated, nothing ever changed. I found Mackin to be unresponsive to change and often created problems rather than provide solutions. Simply put, Mackin did not care about the property it was managing.
Seek out other solutions to your building management needs.

Ugh. Terrible management company. The only way to get stuff done is to threaten to call the Health Department. If it were up to them, all of their buildings would fall to the wayside. Ask before renting a place in the Allston area if it’s managed by the Mackin Group. If it is, think twice before renting!