Citylife Real Estate

This was my first Boston agent experience and it left me feeling extremely discouraged. My agent ranted and raved about this perfect apartment in the south end that was available the entire drive over. We got there and she couldn’t get in for about 10 minutes because it turned out she had the wrong apartment. The apartment that was available was completely the opposite of what she was talking about for the last 30 minutes. AWFUL. Then she dropped me off on the side of the road outside another agency and said I’d probably be better off checking out their selection. Now I was across town from my own car in an area I didn’t know. Thanks lady, that’s just great.

Ick. That’s the best word that comes to mind when talking about this company. One of the owners of this company is so sleazy, I couldn’t trust a word he said. The male agents are very pushy and not pleasant. I have other friends in the business who tell me that Citylife is blacklisted by A LOT of management companies in the city (ie. they will not allow citylife to rent their apartments) because the owners are so shady. Check them out on the Better Business Bureau website, they have an unsatisfactory rating due to poor conduct, so i’m not the only one that feels this way.
There are so many real estate firms in Boston, especially for rentals. Don’t bother with this one, trust me if you meet the owner, you will not want to do business with him.
Ick.

If you’re into unnecessary added stress to your daily life… c’mooonnnnnn down!
The guy we dealt with tried to be buddy buddy with us… saying things like «a washer in the kitchen? That’s clutch!». and telling us how awesome our school was because his wife graduated from there too (although he couldn’t quite recall her major). He whisked us away (myself and 1 other roomie. the other one was out of the country) in his sports car and showed us a couple of apartments. One was pretty shady but in our price range. Then he skillfully showed us an apartment out of our price range that he knew we would fall for. My roommate and I left town for the summer after signing leases and that’s when the issues started. First, he said it would be okay that only two of us were signing the lease. Then he changed his mind and asked for the third roommate to sign it, after we had both left town. So we overnight-​ed the lease to our respective states and then to our roommate that was in another country. We ended up signing at least 4 leases, had to cancel checks made out to the wrong apartments, and at the end of the summer we had no idea where we were living or if we had an apartment at all. He said we weren’t fast enough in signing contracts, which was a lie since we were overnight-​ing the leases. He got a fee (about $ 2500) and he pretty much made our life hell.
We did manage to get an apartment in the building we looked at. It took us forever to get the keys on the day we moved in (mind you we had rental cars/​regular cars that police were asking us to move). He did get the building to knock off a couple hundred for our troubles. so that’s the one star.
I feel a Hulk-​like anger when I walk by the office and so I always cross the street… after giving it the double middle finger.
NOTE: Apologies goes out to the valet guys that were there one night. Those fingers weren’t directed towards you!

I had a great experience with my buyer’s broker, Jennifer Athas. I’d highly recommend her to anyone in the market for a condo. She’s very knowledgable about the market and can easily identify great units for any customer. Plus, as a former professional in the financial services industry, she has great financial savvy and business acumen.