James J Bremis Realty

We requested an evening showing the day after an open house (unfortunately we discovered the place few hours after the open house ended). Steve was unwelcoming and uninformed about the property, the only question he was able to answer he had to call someone else from the realty group. We left we a clear feeling he was hiding something from us and we had to set up a second showing. Very unprofessional.

Stay away, the care only to take their % and Stephen is a cheap B******…Thanks God there are other realtors around !!

I actually created a Unilocal account to write this review.
Bremis has been the single worst company to work with as a renter. My building is for sale, which means navigating the experience of having people come tour the home at various points.
We requested the realtor give us 24 hour notice before coming in our apartment, in accordance with our lease, and because we have two indoor cats and a young dog. They found being reliable about this difficult. When we were home during one of their group showings, we realized they were leaving our front door open during the tours. After calling several times to remind the realtors of our pets we finally had to request they did not show our apartment without one of the roommates home as they clearly couldn’t respect our home.
This evening we found them showing the apartment when we specifically asked them to not show ours, as no one would be available to be home. They have no respect for tenants, their homes, or their pets and belongings.

If I could give negative stars I would. This is a SLUMLORD!
I lives in one of his apartments and both him and his daughter irene are completely by far the cruelest people ever.
Everytime my family would tell them we needed a fixing or not lead walls they shrugged us off and when something really bad happened they just told us it was our fault when they could have helped us.
My pipes burst and now my family has to leave and they don’t seem to care at all.
What kind of people are these two?
Ignorant.
We lives there for 10 years, and now they threatened to call animal control on us claiming we can’t have pets when the landlord (James Bremis) knew we had pets for 7 years, never said anything to us because we didn’t know, we figured it was alright since he never spoke a word.
IRENE THREATENING TO CALL ANIMAL CONTROL, when we tried to take good care of everything
What a heartless pig.
NO ONE SHOULD EVER GO TO JAMES BREMIS.
Scumlord

I couldn’t be more displeased with my experience with Irene today. I went to an open house that she was hosting, but couldn’t even get in the front door when I arrived. It was locked, and I suppose we were meant to figure out that she intended us to use the back entrance, even though she had a sign with an arrow on it out front, pointing right at the front door. Bizarre, but not a show stopper.
When I entered the house and began to look for the realtor, a woman stepped between me and the next room and barked «You have to sign in first.» She did this all without ever looking up from her cell phone. Now, I’m used to signing in at open houses, but not only did she give no indication where the sign in sheet was, she acted like I had done something wrong.
Once I was finally allowed to see the house, she told (not asked, told) everyone that they needed to wait in the front room together to see the next floor. I waited around for about fifteen minutes waiting for others to finish on the first floor. New folks were arriving and apparently just got the finger, because Irene locked up the first floor, shuffled everyone outside, and then took us upstairs to view the next apartment. This apartment was occupied, and we had the strangest experience tip toeing around the house, peeking behind doors to find folks in bed, staring back at us.
Beyond rude. I was one amongst a large group of people that were leaving in disgust without even getting to see the entire house. Irene just didn’t want to deal with anyone or give her potential clients the time of day. I don’t think I ever got to see her eyes — they were glued to her cell phone the entire time.
Stay away.

Our company has worked with Bremis Real Estate many times over the last 10 years. Whether it be looking for a property for a client of ours or asking for advice with small questions, Bremis Real Estate has always gotten back to us extremely quick.
You would be hard pressed to find another real estate agent with the knowledge of the Someville and surrounding areas market as Bremis. I would consider Bremis Real Estate one of the best real estate agents to deal with in the greater Boston area and would not hesitate for a second to recommend them to any of my friends, family or colleagues.

I can only speak with regard to my experience buying a home via Bremis Real Estate.
My boyfriend and I had been browsing the market at the beginning of the year and in April 2013 we got serious and decided to work with an agency. We noticed a lot of the condos we were drawn to were listed with Bremis, so we figured that’d be a good place to start.
We worked with Chris Manley and my initial impression (prior to actually meeting him) was that he was very responsive via email — I never waited too long to hear from him about scheduling a showing or questions about a particular listing.
Chris showed us maybe 4 – 5 different places and was extremely helpful in guiding us first time homebuyers through the process without overwhelming us. He directed us to the place we ended up buying and though it’s only been a few weeks — we’re very grateful that he advocated for the place that we now call home.
I would most definitely recommend Chris at Bremis Real Estate to anyone who’s buying in the Somerville (& beyond) area. He’s professional, responsive, honest, and just a really cool guy.

They’re actually trying to sell my apartment on behalf of our landlord. I don’t have any problem with them trying to do this, it is what it is when you’re renting.
However, seeing how this is playing out, I would NOT trust them to sell a house I owned. Bremis’ assortment of «assistants» (secretaries? family? interns?) seem to be having a lot of difficulty with communicating with us via email on scheduling. We have had several instances of showings being scheduled with under 24 hours notice, then being changed at the last minute. their response? «Sorry, but life is inconvenient sometimes.»
Some are nice, some are extremely pushy, most don’t seem to understand the concept of «reply all» and all have an AOL or Comcast email account. Seriously. would you work with someone who conducts business with an AOL, Yahoo or Comcast address?
Perhaps worst of all, my roommate caught a broker red-​handed in the act of trying to show our place with no notice. We’ve also noticed while they do the open houses they have left our doors wide open for the AC to leave and the insects to enter.
Even more confusingly, they are scheduling open houses during Pats games. What red-​blooded yuppie male is skipping the Pats game to go house hunting?
I’m not that worried though, they seem to be under the illusion that our «flip-​my-​house builder’s grade» quality condo is going to sell for nearly $ 150k more than a brand new one across the street.
In short. the lack of professionalism shown by this organization is staggering.

I have been meaning to write this for a while:
When I was looking at apartments in the area a couple months ago (for me and my boyfriend), I looked at one with Bremis. It was an ad I saw on craigslist they posted and linked to their website. The ad said «$ 1200 for 1 person, $ 1400 for two people. NEGOTIABLE.» To me, this means it is negotiable about the price, since it really doesn’t cost them anything more to have 1 or 2 people and the apartment is plenty big for two people (large 2 bedroom) so why are they so concerned? I looked at the place — thought it was average for the area, but worth considering, but I was not going to pay $ 1400 when the landlord clearly would accept $ 1200 as the profit per month on the place. I offered $ 1250, I think, and the agent got very frustrated with me and raised his voice saying «Do you think you can actually find a place in this neighborhood for 1200? There are no places around here for that price!» blah blah blah. Well, I just made an offer, so take it or leave it, please. UGH. Don’t post a lower price and then get mad at me when I want the lower price! Duh!
PS — We found another place WITHOUT A FEE for $ 1200 even closer to Davis Sq that was freshly renovated. So, yes, I can find a place in our price range instead of taking yours for $ 1400.

I went to look at an apt that Bremis was renting. The realtor was on time, easy-​going, and professional. He showed us the place. Didnt follow us around and ask us annoying questions. He wasnt pushy like most realtors. He was willing to answer any questions and even negotiate with the landlord.
Overall, we had a good experience. Everything was easy and organized. We had all of the paperwork signed and settled within a week.

We had the most frustrating experience with Bremis. We had emailed about a rental posting, and then talked on the phone to a particular agent to explain what we were looking for in an apartment. He said he had a certain unit to show us, and we made an appointment to come out and see it. We then drove 30 minutes out to their office. When we arrived, the agent we had an appointment with was not ready for us, which should have been our first clue. He then looked at us with a completely blank expression, like there was nothing going on at all behind his eyes and like he had no idea who we were or why we were there, which turned out to be true. The unit he was supposed to show us had apparently already been rented, but apparently he had been too busy to call and tell us this before we drove out there, which he expressed to us in a very rude tone, I guess it wasn’t worth his time. I then explained all of the parameters, again, that we wanted in an apartment (rent, # of bedrooms, yard, we have a dog etc) while he stared blankly at us. I then had to take control of appointment and ask if he could even help us at all. We finally started off all together in our car, during which the agent then asked me all of the questions I had just told him, how much we want to spend, what we are looking for, do we have any pets, (I had literally just given him this information about 3 minutes earlier) and he then said, «so you guys have a car, right?» This was while we were IN OUR CAR driving to see an apartment!!! The apartment he then showed us, we thought, was not in very good condition anyway! We asked if he had any others to show us, and he acted very put upon to be doing any work for us. I have never written a review for anything, negative or positive, but this entire experience was so frustrating and such a waste of our time, that I created a Unilocal account just to write this review. The agent was completely unhelpful, unprofessional, and I thought somewhat rude to us.

Yep, I would second Scott M.‘s first statement. I found Bremis Real Estate to be unprofessional and lazy. My husband and I recently returned from a trip to Boston where we are planning to relocate later this year. I tried contacting Bremis about one of their listings and got an email back stating that someone would contact me. A week later, I heard nothing from them. So I emailed them again and received no response. At a time when houses are not flying off the market, I would think they would of wanted my business. So after two weeks of no returned calls or responses, I contacted another real estate agent to assist us.
Fast forward now to our trip to Boston. We show up with our agent to see the property that Bremis is listing and 1) none of their representatives have the time to actually show us the property so they give our agent the lock box code to see the property on our own 2) They are soooo unorganized that they give us the wrong combination to the lock box.
It takes our agent multiple calls to reach someone so that we can get the right code.
At the moment, we have taken all listings from Bremis off our consideration list. With a surplus of options, it isn’t worth working with Bremis.