First Cambridge Realty Corporation

I would avoid. Buildings may seem like a good deal given location and price, but maintenance is a nightmare. When I moved in the apartment was disgusting. Thick layers of grime on the walls, mouse under the oven, old roach motels from 2006, broken glass, holes in the wall filled in with tissues. Total nightmare. My toilet breaks weakly and once it happened on a weekend to which they refused to come fix it. The lady of the phone suggested trying a YouTube video or a bucket. Thanks, but I pay $ 1900 a month so please send someone. Also, a resident at my property continues to let a homeless man in who walks around drinking and management refuses to do anything about it. When I asked to speak to a manager, the manager was conveniently out of the office and apparently has no voicemail. My refrigerator has not been cool enough since I moved in the month of August. They claimed to fix it but food continued to spoil. They just brought me a new fridge, which was grimy and disgusting when they delivered it. They put the old fridge in the basement, and will likely pawn off on someone else. Avoid these slumlords!

I leased a studio apartment with FCRC for a year and a half in Central Square and the experience has been phenomenal. The apartment itself is incredible modern, spacious (as good as it gets for a studio), has great natural lighting, and the heat/​AC all work splendidly (important for those cold Massachusetts winters!). I’ve never been bothered by noise from neighbors or the surrounding neighborhood.
They are very considerate with any maintenance requests though I’ve ever had only a couple of minor issues (ice breaker, etc). They reply to email within an hour, even on nights and weekends should anything come up. There’s always someone in the office that can help with anything should you go there in person. I once locked myself out of my apartment (like an idiot) and they got me a copy of my keys within an hour and were super nice about it.
I could not ask for a better team to rent my first apartment through. Everyone’s helpful, friendly, and diligent with their work. Thank you FCRC especially Steven, John, and Leah. You’ve all been wonderful!

I have lived in Brookline in the same apartment for 7 years under FCRC management and can’t say enough good things about how they conduct business. I have had really no issue that they don’t attend to almost immediately. If I have a maintenance concern, Steve L., the property manager is on it within hours, and the problem is fixed within a day or two. Absolutely no hassles. I inquired about getting a new larger fridge a few years back (the existing one was small and very old, and didn’t work that well anymore), and he had one delivered within the week. No matter the size of the problem, he has it fixed in a timely manner. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this — Steve is great! I would rent from FCRC again in a heartbeat if I needed to.

I’ve rented from FCRC for 4 years now in two different units at their Washington Square, Brookline property. I lived in one unit for 3 years, and when I wanted to move from a roommate situation to a one bedroom, I called FCRC to rent another unit in their building because I wanted to continue to rent from them.
The FCRC staff, including Steve, the property manager, and Jim the super at the Brookline units, are incredibly responsive to all issues. I usually get a response to an email within hours and the issue taken care of within a day. If I’ve ever had a concern,
Steve and team always listen to the issue and try to solve the problem promptly. If something needs an upgrade, they take the time to look at the issue and will give an upgrade if needed. I hear lots of stories of friends with horrible Boston landlords or buildings not taken care or with pests, and that is NOT the case with FCRC. The common areas and units are all well taken care of. Overall, in 3 – 4 years, I’ve had very few issues.
I really love this building, which led me to staying within the building when I had to move. It is a beautiful Brookline building, in the best location one can ask for. There is a T directly outside, a supermarket across the street, and some great restaurants. The units themselves are large and have a lot of charm. Yes, the buildings are old, so it isn’t a brand new luxury building, but they do have features that these new construction places don’t always have (large walk in pantries, tons of closet space, bay windows)
I highly recommend renting with FCRC.

I’ve rented from FCRC for two years since moving to Cambridge. I contacted them because a friend rented from them and was happy, and I just recently referred them to another friend who has just moved into one of their buildings. The building I’m in is fairly new, and the location in Central Square is pretty unbeatable (close to several grocery stores, super close to the Red Line and main bus routes). Maintenance is responsive and makes repairs within 1 – 2 business days of issues being reported. I’ve only ever had one billing mix-​up which was resolved promptly when I reported it. I do wish there were guest parking available (even just on a temporary/​permit basis), as there are plenty of open spots in our garage.
Overall, I’m happy and have renewed the lease for a third term.

I live in the Craigie Circle buildings in Cambridge and while the location is great, everything that relies on FCRC is not — maintenance, heat/​hot water, etc. As one poster mentioned, it’s great when nothing’s wrong — they take your money and leave you alone. However, when you need something crazy, like heat in a Massachusetts winter, they also take your money and leave you alone. It usually take several phone calls to get even the simplest problems resolved (don’t bother with the online system — they usually just dismiss the notices and mark them completed regardless of whether anything has been done) and they pretty much treat you like crap. In my current shenanigans, we’re having trouble with the heating system, to put it mildly, and we were told to turn the knob on. No way, really? Yeah, the problem is that didn’t work, but thanks for your concern.
Bottom line, I love the location but would not have re-​signed the lease had my personal life not precluded me from moving this fall.

The receptionist is almost always snotty. The building I lived in was very old and in desperate need of updating. You have no control over the heat (radiators) and it’s almost always like a sauna in there — aside from the two weeks this winter when I had NO heat. This winter we also had hot water issues. On at least 4 occasions in about a month I had to call about there being no hot water. The location was great, though, and the property manager was very nice.

I started renting with this company in the winter of 2008, and it was a small one bedroom at the back of central square. It was small, and the walls are as thin as paper so I could hear the noise upstairs (I lived on a first floor). But all the neighbors are very considerate, even on weekends they quite down around 12 am. Which I can live with considering that I’m a very noise sensitive person. I’ve only stayed at this apartment for 3 months, but when the pipe froze, they came and fix it right away.
I later on move to another «townhouse» like 2BD huge apartment around harvard sq at the end of the year, because my hubby moved in with me. The first few days, the water tank broke and the water was just everywhere. It was a Friday night and we called the realtor that rented the place to us, he came right away (luckily he live next door) with his towels to soak up the water and called the plumber on the spot. The plumber came next day and fix the problem.
I stayed at this apartment for 2.5 years and have never had problems with them. Whenever there are snow storm, they come the very next morning and shovel the snow. During fall, they clean up all the leaves. They also perform a regular CO and fire alarm check-​up twice per year.
Keep in mind that most of the houses around greater Boston area is old and need regular maintenance. When I had a water leak problem in my bedroom (window frame), I called John (my realtor) on a Sunday morning, they came the very next morning. I also did an online repair request the same day, which they came again just to make sure it was fixed. Unlike most of the reviews left here, I actually was quite impressed how efficient they are.
I guess I was very lucky that John is my realtor. He’s been very flexible with my lease term and was very helpful when I was thinking about moving to a smaller place when my hubby got transferred for work.
When I moved out this summer, I actually had a emergency surgery that I had to delay my move out date a few days. He was very understanding and tried to help me.
I’d definitely recommend this company to others. Of course, this is my personal experience, though it was quite pleasant.

Apparently they don’t feel hot water is important here. Well, maybe they give you a heads up when it’ll be out for days at time so you can make other arrangements? Nope! Ok, maybe they will at least tell you when it’ll be back on? Nope! Who doesn’t love freezing cold showers first thing in the morning for days on end?!

First Cambridge Realty Corporation aka Stu-​Lin management aka other things as well, is run by an asshole who may, after you have rented from them over the course of years, call you not explaining who he is and swear at you and tell you and your family or roommates «I want you the f*ck out of my building» for things like storing clean stuff in a basement that you weren’t forbidden from entering in your lease. He will also show up one day while you’re at school or work and take all said things, and then taunt you that he took, er, stole them from you. He doesn’t care who you are or that you’ve paid him reliably a lot of rent for years. I echo the same disrespectful treatment as from the other people. The Steve guy or any of Stuart Rothman’s minions seem nice sometimes to start, but of course are all spies for this whack-​job spoiled brat son of the guy (who seems all right, but is now retired) who started this company in the 60s. As for maintenance, this is an average C– typical slumlord operation that has a lot of buildings in prime locations, but does them disrespect through their neglect and botched ‘maintenance’ or ‘management’ of them over the years. Far from first, F.C.R.C., is truly a Third — rate «realty corporation». All in all, too bad Central Square has a worse infestation of F.C.R.C than it does cockroaches – ouch! That all said, it’s unsurprising that I will conclude by saying our fair city would be without a doubt better off without them.

These guys suck. They suck so much that I finally made a Unilocal account just so I could tell you how horrible they are. The property managers are bullies, more interested in convincing you that repairs are either not needed or that you are being unreasonable in requesting them in the first place. I have water leaking into my apartment. Part of my ceiling has come down. But apparently I have to wait until they feel like fixing it and asking for a timeline of repairs in writing (something I’m only doing because my heat was broken for weeks while they were ‘working’ on it) was met with a refusal and an eyeroll. I ended up having to call for a city inspection because of the leak. They’ve been ‘installing’ a sprinkler system in my apartment building off and on for about 4 months now. The workers always show up unannounced at my doorstep to do work in my apartment. Last week my gas was turned off without prior warning. I hate coming back to my apartment which makes me sad because I was so excited to move in in the first place. Now I can’t wait for my lease to end. Do not rent from this company!

My apartment in Cambridge is charming and in a great location, but my experience with FCRC has been very frustrating. When you have no problems in your apartment, they operate just fine and collect rent and answer the phones just as well as anyone else. However, when you do encounter problems, as I did this month, I felt ignored and disrespected.
I have a horror story from this month to illustrate why I feel this way. I returned home from Thanksgiving to scaffolding over my windows and a notice informing me that construction would be happening on the exterior of the building (no time period specified). I grumbled to myself, thinking it would be a pain, but resolved just to get through it. I thought I could just deal with the noise… but over the next week things kept growing worse and worse.
The next week they wrapped canvas all over my windows, blocking ALL light from the outside, and started drilling, hammering and sawing at 7 am daily. Dust from the outside was constantly getting in my apartment through cracks in between the windows and the walls, and it was so bad at one point that my super agreed to send a cleaning crew. I was constantly sneezing and coughing inside, and my floors were covered with dust daily. To address the dust issue, the nice construction workers taped plastic tarps over all my windows on the interior of my apartment but it only partially helped. I was literally living in a construction site and could not be inside my apartment during the day. As a student studying for finals, this was certainly horrible timing.
When I requested a rent reduction for the month from FCRC for the inconvenience, I was ignored, and then when I did finally manage to hunt down the building manager, he was extremely unsympathetic and I was told, «if it bothers you so much, you can get out of your lease and we can fill your apartment quickly.» I was told there was a waiting list of 20 people for my apartment complex, and they would be happy to rent my apartment. It almost felt like a threat, not a solution to the problem.
I consider myself a very easy-​going, rational person, and I don’t think asking for a rent reduction for the time when my apartment was reduced to a dusty, noisy, dark cave, was unreasonable. However, FCRC disagreed and told me just to «deal with it.»
I am really disappointed in my experience with them. I would never recommend any of my friends to this realty company.

I stayed in their Hampshire/​Prospect apartment over a year ago. I thought the rent was a good deal — $ 1400 for a 2BD with heat included. The apartment was pretty nice too.
Whenever we called, they’d send someone over to fix things.
I’d consider renting from them again…

Management is completely rude and unprofessional. My rent is not cheap, compared to other locations, and I have consistently been a clean, quiet, pay-​rent-​on-​time tenant. Whenever I call for maintenance, Steve and Ralph are rude jerks. I am a professional, not a student, and I’m beyond tired of being treated with disrespect by First Cambridge Realty Company. Can’t wait for my lease to end.

I had a great experience living in a First Cambridge Realty property. Lived at 1694 Beacon Street in Brookline from March 2006 until May 2008 (when I moved to New York). Leaving my apartment was one of the hardest parts about leaving Boston (I might miss it more than my friends). Well maintained building and repairs were always taken care of ASAP. They would even change light bulbs for me (my apartment had very high ceilings).
First Cambridge had a great policy on letting you out of a lease. As long as you found someone to start a new one, you could leave before the end. The unit I had had passed off lease several times. When I found the apartment, via a Craigslist add the previous occupants posted, I was given the option of either signing a lease beginning in March and ending at the end of August or signing a year lease. Opted for the latter as I wanted to lock in the great rent. I started a new lease, no sublet situation, and have very reasonable increases. My rent was the same as the previous occupants.
Fast forward to 2008, had just signed a new lease in March and in April got a job offer in New York. Placed an ad on Craigslist and had two people dying for the apartment. It took me two days to find a replacement and she was able to sign a new lease at the same amount I was paying which was WAY under market value for Brookline.
So to summarize, great responsive management company that makes life easy for tenants. Highly recommend.

The building is new and looks good. However, the management really needs improvement.
I moved in for more than 1 months and the construction or repairs are still going on here or there.
Maintenance request is never handled promptly. It is faster to look for a repairing person in the building and ask him to do the work (thanks to the never-​ending construction).
There is *NO* emergency oncall support! Yes, there is a number and someone will answer it. However, no one will come to help you after hours!
One day I came home after mid-​night, the frontend door lock is broken. Emergency oncall said someone will call me back to come to help me. Thanks! I stood in rain and waited the whole homeless night!!! No one called me back at all!