Fineberg Management

I can’t tell you how many problems we have had in the past 2years we lived in one of Fineberg’s apartments. But I can tell you this: We have caught about 10 Mice so far while the Fineberg maintenance has not once properly inspected our unit. We have also had mold reaking on the bathroom walls (yes, the ones that get you sick and you can sue you landlord for!) and again, no immediate response! The management and the maintainance are also equally rude when you call or ask for help so We have decided that we are ending our lease soon. YES, that bad!

I’m another one who wishes to give negative stars. All the negative comments that have been left I’d just like to back them up in this review. THEY ARE ALL TRUE!!! There are too many complaints to write in one review but the worst part about this company is that they truly refuse to make repairs and they refuse to do anything about the mice except leave sticky traps. No matter how often I tell them to fill in the holes the mice love to get in through they won’t do it. My building has also smelled putrid for the last week and nothing has been done. I honestly believe this place has negative effects on one’s health as well. I’ve been getting chronic headaches since moving in and my bf swears this apt makes him feel drowsy. It could be any number of things making us feel horrible; the dust, the mice, the mold, the putrid smell of shit wafting throughout the building. Just don’t move here.

If it were possible to give negative stars, I would definitely do it. The maintenance is HORRIB. I’m in a building in Mount Hood Rd, Brighton and Fineberg owns this whole building. The maintenance is HORRIBLE. I’m not even talking about the condition when I moved in. I got it that this is an area full of students and people kinda expect that it’s not gonna be that clean when you first moved in. But at least I’m looking forward to fixing problems after I moved in.
The ladies who answer the maintenance call (day and night) are the rudest ever. They get pissed off once I said we called about this issue before. One of them went crazy and was laughing sarcastically at the other end of the phone for no reasons. The conversations with the maintenance is NEVER pleasant. Sometimes they even hang up.
We’ve dealt with the mice problem over the winter. The mice come almost every single night. Fineberg responded by sending some mice traps and that’s it. We asked them to check the holes and get them blocked and this hasn’t been done for months. Our dishwasher never worked since day 1 and it never get solved. Our apartment is on the top floor and the roof leaks when it rains hard. Many other minor issues. Some of them get fixed after several phone calls and some never get fixed and we just give up.
If you do get a place managed by Fineberg, be prepared.
Check this out for the mice problem by CityofBoston:

If it were possible to give this management company negative stars, I would do it. By far the rudest and non-​responsive management company I’ve dealt with. I moved to the apartment building on Boylston in September of 2014 and have faced countless problems that are constantly left unresolved. When I moved in, NOTHING was cleaned. All the windows, screens, and doors were broken. The hallways constantly smell like burning cigarettes and gas. The washers and dryers are NEVER working. There are bugs everywhere. Even if you do call their supposed «²⁴⁄₇ management service,» they will not respond to you and if they do, nobody shows up to you unit and they just expect you to know after 10 minutes that «your problems aren’t an emergency.»
DO NOT. I REPEAT. DO NOT RENT FROM THEM.
Also, they raised the rent for the upcoming September lease… NOPE. Why raise the rent if you can’t even take care of your building to look pretty decent inside AND out?

Great place to be! It’s the easiest building for any beloved rodent to access! There are even secret passageways behind the stove and counters for the rats to make quiet, considerate entries as not to wake you up. :) Remember to have a fruit bowl on your counter, because those cute little critters will surely enjoy the treat! Aw!
The building is totally freezing in Boston’s snowy winter due to lack of insulation and faulty windows that don’t close all the way, so if you’ve been looking for a reason to splurge on a lush winter coat, thank Fineberg!
Give them a call or try to catch them via email anytime, and they WILL NOT respond GUARANTEED! Probably because they’re busy being so top-​notch amazing. :)
Tonight, I tried to close my window, and it FELL OFF onto my fingers! YAY! Thanks, Fineberg! Not only does this mean I get to take time off from practicing until they heal, but I don’t even have to feel the pain since it’s so cold in my room! (I swear, they think of everything!) :)
Hate privacy? Want to hear your neighbors getting frisky all day from down the hall? Good thing Fineberg’s buildings are sound-​proof proof!
The amenities are also overly protective; it’s so cute! The oven shuts off mid-​bake to make sure you didn’t forget it was on, and the smoke alarm makes sure to scream for every five minutes you cook or are in the shower!
Every single package I’ve ever received at this building has magically disappeared, so guess who doesn’t have to thank grandma for any birthday gifts? This gal! Thanks to Fineberg’s crusade against fixing the front door to the building or installing security cameras, I have no way to know who took them, so I don’t even have to worry!
Fineberg makes sure that the laundry facility always consists of at least two broken amenities, to insure that their tenants always have an excuse to never do laundry!
So in short, if you love wildly expensive, cold, cramped apartments that probably haven’t been renovated since the 50’s, Fineberg is your winner!
*Note: Your experience response may vary.

Absolutely terrible building at 1334 Comm Ave. High rent, terrible neighbors, and terrible apartment… To the people who always partied on the stoop no matter the time of day and year, get a job you slobs.

1000% fucking HORRIBLE. i dont think ive ever used the washing machines without them eating $ 2 – 4, and 80% of the machines are always broken. week after week. you can’t even turn on the microwave without having to go to the basement to reset your fuse box. mice and roaches run rampant. don’t even bother calling the office, just a bunch of cheap douche bags who won’t help you fix THEIR problems. Also, makes a ton of sense that rent goes up 7% after one year, more than doubling the rate of inflation… yet there are no improvements to the thousands of problems in the buildings, all money that goes straight in the Fineberg’s pockets. Cheap, disgusting, and quite literally horrible people run these buildings. DO NOT RENT FROM, STAY AWAY.

Completely awful. I tell people that I pay luxury prices for section 8 housing. A million problems from day one. Unwilling to fix household problems, an elevator that is constantly broken, common areas that are perpetually dirty, overpriced laundry services, ROACHES. SO MANY ROACHES… and I am not a dirty girl. Don’t turn on your microwave and have the kitchen light on… kills the power.
I regret the day that I moved in. I’m counting down the days until I move out. Steer clear of this slum lords.

Fineberg management has a huge portfolio of rental properties in Allston, Brighton, Brookline, and Fenway. The apartments are affordable and include heat and hot water. Unlike most landlords, they usually pay the realtors the fees, and only charge first and last month’s rent with no security deposit — meaning it is much more affordable for he renter!
Their buildings could certainly use some updating to the kitchens and bathrooms, but they are always delivered cleans and freshly painted. They also seem to be far larger in size than comparable apartments in the Boston area. One thing I have to say is that they are honest and fair in all their dealings.

This place is a joke. How do I give negative stars on Unilocal?Not just customer service, but general health and safety regulations are violated daily — it is an unsafe place to live, in every possible human way. I’ve seen dogs get sick from entering this place because they can smell the dead rodents in the walls and the diseased floors.
Oh and — they know exactly how Unilocal works, if you search Fineberg, you’ll find several Unilocal pages which have been deleted over time because they don’t want people to see how badly they’ve been reviewed so instead of fixing the issue, they remove the review pages every time they get overwhelmingly bad… says something about these people.
Don’t do it.

Read the 1 star reviews. Fineberg is that bad, and there’s probably a good reason for each 1 star review.
I wish I could give out less than one star though. Worst management group I have ever dealt with. Windows in my apartment were old and broken, so that they would not even close all the way. Rusty, worn down appliances. My fiancé and I also called the Board of Health SEVERAL TIMES due to the absence of any trash maintenance or behind-​building upkeep.
Cockroaches everywhere. Rats got INTO the heating system last winter and only after several calls to maintenance AND the MA Board of Health did anyone from Fineberg so much as lift a finger. Rats were also rampant around dumpsters and recycling.
The «main event» occurred last December. My fiancé and I woke at 4am to loud banging noises from the floor above. Soon, water started leaking through a 5-​foot crack that appeared in our ceiling. When we called Fineberg’s «stellar 24-​hour» maintenance, the lady was rude and cranky. After describing the problem, she replied that she «didn’t want to wake anyone up right now.»
5 months later (May 2013), maintenance finally came and PAINTED the crack. Since then, it has turned yellow from water damage as they never fixed the actual problem. I would strongly urge everyone to live elsewhere.

I wish I could give half stars. This place was the worst. Cockroaches everywhere, old, rusted, worn-​down appliances not to mention fuse blew anytime you had more than two things running at the same time. Dealing with the people at fineberg was just as miserable. Reception woman was always rude and rarely did requests get filled correctly (had to call 4 times to get something fixed a few times) If you can help it, rent somewhere else.

Bed bugs, cockroaches, rats, ants, leaking walls, broken windows, peeling paint, unknown tar-​like substance oozing from the kitchen walls. This building is utterly atrocious and should be condemned.
I live on the fourth floor of 1334 Commonwealth Avenue, #24. I’ve lived here for eleven months and will be moving soon.
There were bed bugs living in the baseboards of my apartment when I moved in. I then suffered having bed bugs for a month.
I’ve continuously seen cockroaches, living and dead, throughout my apartment.
Rats run along the baseboards regularly, traveling throughout the building via the giant holes in the floor that the furnace pipes go through. I regularly find rat droppings all over the surface of my oven range and around the kitchen trash can.
Paint regularly falls off of the walls and ceiling, in large pieces.
Apparently the plumbing for the entire building is linked, so that when residents below and above me flush the toilet or use hot water, it negatively affects the water temperature while I’m showering. Showering is a continuous struggle of readjusting the two temperature knobs in order to maintain a decent shower.
The single washer in the basement, for serving all forty-​odd apartments in the building, rarely works without spewing dirty water out the front door and leaving my clothes in a mess of cold dirty fluid.
My bicycle lock was cut after a night of leaving it locked to the small iron fence in front of the building and my bicycle left in the gutter with a note taped to the seat that read «bicycles may not be stored in common areas.»
There is a sticky brown tar-​like substance leaking down my kitchen walls, coming from an unknown source behind the wall cabinets. I think it is roach poison from ages ago, but thats just a guess.
About a month into living here, I heard a crashing sound coming from the other room and found that the window frame had broken, the support system for the upper panel had cracked and now the window would not close. I called maintenance, who showed up while I was gone and left a note that said they hadn’t found any evidence of a «broken window.» Had to call again and have them return. The same problem has occurred three more times, on different windows.
There is an area toward the ceiling of my bedroom, on the outer wall, that drips a continuous stream of water when it rains heavily. The ceiling and wall both have major water damage. I woke up in the middle of the night to find that everything being stored under my bed was sitting in a half inch of water. When I called the «emergency maintenance» line, the earliest anything could happen was the next day. When the guy showed up, he said it was a problem with the outside of the building, and that it needed to be «re-​pointed.» Which I assume is some kind of masonry term. He said that he wasn’t able to do that, but he could patch the inside of my walls. He did so, and the same thing happened the next time it rained. I didn’t bother calling again.
My lease also says that gas is included in my rent price of 1495 per month, but i’ve been receiving bills from NGrid all year that read «Occupant.» I haven’t opened them and I hope there isn’t some kind of miscommunication between Fineberg and NGrid, but hopefully that gets cleared up for the next resident.
I would highly stress NOT renting an apartment or residence managed by Fineberg. At LEAST not in this building.

If you want to know how to NOT run your business look no further than Fineberg.
I rented a Fineberg apartment and out my 4 years in Boston it was the worst building that I regrettably lived in.
From the day I moved in they were unprofessional. They didn’t have the apartment cleaned, the walls that were supposed to be painted back to white were still a pale shit green and after checking the apartment I made a list of maintenance that would have Tim the Toolman Taylor excited.
If it’s not plumbing or catastrophic your maintenance request will be ignored such as replacing a window screen or closet hinge.
The only thing I can say nice about them is that there maintenance repair guys were nice but they’re probably not affiliated with the management company.
Tip for apartment searchers: You’ll probably go through an apartment finder/​agency during your search so do yourself a favor and ask them who the property manager is. If they say Fineberg, look elsewhere or sign at your own risk.

I lived in a Fineberg building on Washington St., and it was AWFUL. I couldn’t even use my hair dryer without blowing a fuse in my apartment, and the trek to the fusebox in the basement was a giant pain in the butt.
I also have a similar move-​out story to another Unilocaler. I scheduled my move for two days before my lease was over. The night of the move, I went back to my Fineberg apartment to pick up some things from the medicine cabinet. They were GONE! Two bottles of nice perfume (family gifts).
I hated having to lie to my parents about how nice the perfume was/​how much I wore it, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them that my shitty landlords (excuse the language) threw out both bottles.
Also, the broker representing the next tenants would not stop CALLING ME asking me to let his new tenants move in early. Why on earth would I hurry to leave an apartment so that I could pay for other people to live there for a few days?
Finally, I paid $ 150/​month to park in the back of the building, and I clearly displayed my parking sticker in the correct place on my car. Despite this, I caught a towing company trying to tow my car TWICE for no reason. I had to go outside and tell them to stop.
This was three years ago and I still feel like I deserve financial compensation for the disaster.

If I could give negative stars, trust me. I would.
Today was my last day in that building. We hired movers to move the larger furniture and wardrobe boxes out… We were planning to return to get the rest of the smaller things (mainly things in the bathroom.)
Upon returning, we found that everything had been removed. We go to the dumpster in the back and what’s in there? Both our Clarisonics, both our Sonicare toothbrushes. I’m going to assume that all our skincare products are gone along with all the other bathroom appliances we owned. Oh and on top of that, my TI-​89 calculator is gone. So not only did your cleaners throw away things that were clearly still useful, they went through my school bag (which THANK GOD my text books were still there…) and took my calculator. Why am I so sure that I didn’t pack it or misplace it? I had class on Friday, which is the last night we packed everything.
We had until midnight to vacate. We got there around 8pm. Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

Don’t freak yourself out reading all the 1 star reviews. You’ll just torture yourself, and Fineberg are really not that bad.
They took a chance on us (a couple moving from overseas with no social security and no US credit history) when no other companies were keen. We got a 1 bed in Fenway, and got exactly what we paid for: basic, no frills, but cheap and functional. We had to contact management a couple of times — they were courteous, helpful and always got the job done.

What else can be said about these slum lords that hasn’t already been mentioned below? What prompted me to write this Unilocal review? A mouse sprinting across my living room floor, sneaking into a gap between the floor and wall. No, it’s not the first mouse I’ve seen here and it will certainly not be the last.
I am, too, a twenty-​something-​young-​professional who is seeking an affordable and above decent apartment. You would think Fineberg would like to retain tenants like me – responsible, stable job, not a heavy partier. Instead, I get attitude from Gina, Karen, and other property managers.
What is so gruesome about Mt Hood Rd?
— Kitchen: This hasn’t been updated since 1990, most likely. Our floor is some cheap formerly-​white laminate tiles that is permanently dingy, no matter how much we scrub.
— No dish washer
— Only 1 full-​size kitchen cabinet. How are three adults suppose to store pots, pans, and dishes with 1 full-​size and 3 cubicle cabinets?
— Mice throughout the building. When I called about it, pest control just laid down sticky traps that immediately adhered to our feet and household appliances. I guess they’re too cheap and lazy to actually fill the holes where rodents enter (e.g., cracks in the floor board)
— Constant electricity outages. We were told that our apartment shares a fuse box with another apartment. Of course, black outs happen at least once a week.
— No washer/​dryer, not even a coin-​operated one even though our basement is huge enough to accommodate several machines.
Despite all this, Fineberg has the audacity to raise our rent to $ 2100 for a 3 bedroom! $ 700 a person?! For this crap?
I tried to reasonably negotiate with management about making upgrades to our apartment, at least that would justify the rent increase. Or they could lower our rent to $ 650, more reflective for Allston/​Brighton. This ingrate gave me nothing but attitude. To my demands she responded, if I don’t like the apartment then I should move. And that’s exactly what I will do.
Unfortunately, Fineberg will never have an incentive to make upgrades thanks to the constant market of BC and BU students. Welcome to college town!

I have never been so misled by Unilocal and
.
I live in the Fenway/​Boylston St apartments. We signed for this place BEFORE I saw the reviews (we were getting desperate to find an August 1 move-​in at this point), and I’m so glad that we did.
I have never seen anyone too sketchy near the building. The place doesn’t smell. The hallways are clean. The old elevator is sketchy but appears to be inspected regularly, and I really can’t complain because I live on the fifth floor. The noise level is really not too bad — perhaps we got lucky with who our neighbors are. I’ve been here for 6 months and have seen no rats or insects. Also, it’s winter now and my heat is just fine. Sometimes it’s even on the cooler side, which I prefer.
Management: We’ve had to contact them twice. The first time there was a miscommunication between our realtor and Fineberg, so our locks changed after our realtor gave us the keys, and this led to us being locked out the first time we left the building. Apparently this isn’t uncommon. The locksmith came within an hour, let us in, and changed the locks the next day. The second time we called was because there was an incessantly barking dog in the building, and dogs aren’t allowed. We figured out which unit it was coming from and called management, who called us back the next day to let us know that tenant was moving out soon anyway. Both times we were friendly and they were friendly back.
Pros: close to T, GREAT location, elevator, roomy apartments (I have a huge living room and an eat-​in kitchen), no fee/​security (seems dubious but hey, I don’t want to be the one to repaint my plum bedroom when I move out), laundry in building or in a neighboring building, quiet enough, relatively affordable especially if you have a roommate, good water pressure and temperature in the showers most of the time, area seems pretty safe
Cons: There definitely are undergrads in the building, and I’ve had a package stolen from the mail area once (and so has another tenant), the laundry area is dirty and some of the machines aren’t working from time to time, our unit was either quickly cleaned or not cleaned at all before we moved in but luckily for us the previous tenants were neat so we didn’t really have to clean anyway, on occasion there is no hot water (or the water doesn’t get very hot), depending on where your unit is, it can be noisy outside due to Fenway games or highway traffic
Is this place perfect? Definitely not. Is it as bad as the reviews make it out to be? DEFINITELY not. Unless something terrible happens in the next few months, I’ll be renewing my lease here. My apartment is huge, reasonably priced, and the location is fantastic.

I wanted to update my review as I just noticed I hadn’t included my building address: I lived by Fenway at 1191 Boylston. I’m pretty sure they own the whole block of buildings.
I neglected to mention the fact that there were massive rats that lived in the garden out front and homeless people would often relieve themselves in (yes in and I’m talking #2) about or around the building and Fineburg made no effort at removing either problem.
II honestly expected a little better but Fineburg was completely negligent.