Venture Real Estate

For someone who was just moving from out of state and didn’t know the Boston area well, I found it really difficult to find a nice and affordable apartment. Jack, from Venture, made the moving process really easy and fun. He definitely took the time to keep in consideration everything I said I wanted in a place and even drove us to the properties personally. All in all, he does a great job delivering and was very honest and professional.

It’s always a stressful process to find an apartment but Sean was able to help my daughter & her room mates find a great apartment. They had been with a few realtors already & saw the similar apartments but most agents did not explain fees etc upfront & gave a lot of pressure to make quick decisions. Sean remained professional throughout the whole process.

It’s pretty upsetting that so many of the other reviews are so negative, but the trend I see is that none of them worked with Sean. Seriously, the guy is hands-​down the best in the business (and during my Apartment Fire Crisis in 2011, he was the only realtor we spoke to in the entire neighborhood willing to work with us to find us an apartment that didn’t suck on such short notice).
Unilocal keeps hiding my review, which is sad.

We had a great experience with Venture Real Estate. I feel sorry to read many bad reviews here. I think it is really specific for each case/​realtor.
Chris was our agent and always impressed us with his hard work and responsiveness. He found us a great unit and secured us a parking spot. He was the only realtor agent that met us on time despite the bad weather. He was also very responsive and flexible on the time of appointment. He understood our needs and tried very hard to get them for us. The whole experience with Chris was great and we are so satisfied with our current apartment.

STEER CLEAR OF VENTURE REAL ESTATE! Casey especially!
They will take your money and you will have to hound them down in order to get it back.
CASEY L showed us a place we liked, but she had absolutely NO information when we began asking her questions (laundry? Owner occupied? etc. etc.) She also said she had never spoken with the landlord. Looking back, we should have paid attention to these warning signs and the pressure she put us under to put money down, but we ended up filling out an application and writing a check for upwards of SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS, which supposedly was only going to be cashed if we got the apartment.
Several days later, I hadn’t heard from Casey but the money had been withdrawn from my account, so we assumed our application had been approved. Not the case. After hounding Casey, we finally learned our application had been rejected, even though THE CHECK HAD BEEN CASHED. I called her demanding a refund of the money and she promised to mail me a check.
One week later, no check. I contacted her and she told me she had mailed it, but would cancel the first one and have another sent express to me.
Two weeks later, no check. I recieve a text form her saying her financial guy had been on vacation, but is back now so he would mail me the check (indicating there had been no previous checks)
Three weeks later, no check. I left her a message saying I was going to get the police involved if she couldn’t get me the check.
Four weeks later, no check. I told her if the check wasn’t in my mailbox in two days, I had all the forms filled out… after a million excuses the check finally appeared at my home.
Casey and Venture real estate LIED to me three times and, I believe, had no intention of refunding my money. They should never have cashed the check in the first place, but not getting it back to me FOR A MONTH is completely unacceptable and probably illegal. DO NOT trust them with your money.

Apartment hunting is exciting and yet horrible, right? My husband and I have been searching for apartments for 3 months. Thank goodness we met Peter. After having been stood up by a realtor, numerous unreturned phone calls, and inquiring about several new listings that were, «just sold yesterday,» Peter was a miracle. I found our apartment on Craigslist, I called Peter, and within 15 minutes, we had an appointment set up for just a few hours later. When we met him, he was friendly, helpful, honest, and made things happen quickly. I feel like he really cared about treating us well. Furthermore, all of the realtors we met at Venture seemed very genuine and helpful. Goodness all around.

Like everyone else working at a real estate office, these guys talk WAY too fast. And can be a little pushy. Thankfully Sam — part-​time worker who showed me the apartments — was really nice and used to attend my school, which made things a lot easier. At least he seemed to understand the concerns of a student (mainly rent), unlike many other agents who are typically brash and overly businesslike.
Things went pretty smoothly, saw a few apartments, decided on one, signed the lease right away. Being in the office always feels a little awkward, you walk in to several rows of desks facing you and everyone is ALWAYS busy for some reason. It’s not too hard to get someone’s attention but every time I ask for help with deciphering something on the forms I just get a bunch of words thrown at me at light speed. A little awkward.
BUT I do have to say that my experiences so far have been fairly good… when things started malfunctioning in the building Sean was quick to respond to emails/​calls and get maintenance people in. Haven’t had any issues with miscommunication or listing inaccuracies either… hopefully won’t run into any in the future!

The agents at Venture are helpful, professional and have a wealth of knowledge about the different neighborhoods in Boston.
I had a great experience with Venture and recommend them to anyone who is looking for housing in the Boston area.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check out the TWENTY-​SEVEN filtered reviews! Another example of Unilocal bullying small businesses who don’t want to pay for good reviews.

One of the smoothest rental processes I’ve ever had. Went in, saw a few great places and immediately fell in love with one of them and took it on the spot. The agent made it incredibly easy and I had absolutely no problems at all. Would highly recommend Venture to anybody looking for an apartment and I’m sure to use them again in the future

After weeks of apartment hunting, I’d hoped we’d really get down to business by adding another realtor to our arsenal. We’ve been working with Michael Langone at Preview Properties, who has been extremely helpful and patient through all our bad luck. Even so, we hoped working with Venture would help us find somewhere to live fast.
My boyfriend and I worked with Jean Felix, who seemed like a nice guy at first, but ended up being extremely pushy and disrespectful. We’re first time renters but we aren’t idiots: we asked at the very beginning of our meeting whether we would need to pay him anything today due to some wording on the forms you sign. He said no– though, actually, he said «you don’t have to pay ME anything,» which should have raised a red flag because I think he used that wording to trick us. Later, he told us we had to put down the $ 1000 rent right then and there for an apartment we were considering. When we said we said we weren’t comfortable with that and had forgotten a checkbook, he gave us an attitude and then tried to get us to pay the application fee for a unit we were telling him we wanted to go home and think about. When my boyfriend explained that we were told we wouldn’t need to drop that kind of money today, Jean gave even more attitude. He actually told us to go to an ATM and get him the money to run the credit check so that we could apply even though I think we were clearly not comfortable at this point.
In the end, we didn’t fill out the applications and just left. It was a waste of everyone’s afternoon.
All in all, due to this experience I wouldn’t recommend working with Venture.

Had a GREAT experience with this group and with Sean in particular. We have dealt with so many different realtors in the area and were just exhausted with all the crappy places we saw. We are in our late 20s, didnt want to live in a slum, while at the same time we have a dog– so we understood that it was difficult. Had NO idea we would be shown such awful places!
Sean and the Venture group were wonderful. I was worried that he would show us what we had already seen (crap), but he proved them all wrong. He showed us two AMAZING places. VERY easy to deal with and really cared about what we wanted.
If you want a realtor who LISTENS to what you want and actually finds what you are looking for– then I would absolutely use Venture/​Sean.

Dear Brian — you rock.
My boyfriend and I met Brian Kinzler at Venture midway through our apartment search and we were bummed we hadn’t met him earlier. Not only is Brian one cool dude, he is responsive, hard working, and was attentive to our needs. He really understood what we were looking for and helped us better understand the confusing Boston rental market. Thanks Brian!

It is interesting to see that each of these «stellar» reviews for Venture Real Estate only has one review and no friends per account.
My relationship with Venture was based on the fact that my roommate found an apartment she loved and couldn’t pass up on. At first, I was really excited to move in and begin the paperwork, but when it came to dealing with the customer service at this establishment, it all went downhill.
Zach was incredibly unprofessional and amateurish. When I tried to ask questions about the process, as I have never gone through a realtor before, he became extremely defensive and attacked me, the customer. For someone who claims they work with people of all professions, it certainly did not show.
So, I called to complain to his manager.
1) Zach told the owner of the building that I no longer needed a parking spot, even though it was one of the biggest points I stressed about having at our meeting.
2) Gave my number to the previous tenants without conferring with me first — obviously he doesn’t care about privacy issues.
3) he paid no attention to details — the lease agreement he wanted us to sign had several typos and errors and had to be revised several times. If this is his job, why can’t he get it right the first time?!
4) lastly, he posed as the manager when I initially called to rectify this issue and said that since «no one was in the office, he technically was the manager at the time». SERIOUSLY?!
The owner of the company ended up closing the apartment deal, which I was happy about. If you HAVE to go through this company, deal with Sean.

Despite an initial good impression, my long term experience here was not good. Very inattentive and slow customer service.

Walk in pantry.
Walk in closet.
Disposal.
Dishwasher.
No fee.
These are just some of the things Venture Real Estate advertised in their apartments. Only when I looked at them, all were missing.
I called Venture after seeing some really great sounding apartments advertised on craigslist. I made an appointment to see some. The guy called me back a few hours later to confirm the appointment I just made. Ok, random, considering I JUST made this appointment, but maybe lots of people are no-​shows. Regardless, I did show up but when I saw the apartments, the kitchens were completely different. I asked about the details that were advertised and he had no idea what I was talking about. I asked if maybe the one I called about was a different apartment, and he said to me that based on my budget (yes, it is low), that’s the best I can do. Thanks for the help. And thanks for judging me.
Also, I had to sign a form saying that the fee is one month’s rent. Funny, because they also advertised no fee.