Point Plus

Very helpful when you’re in the renting process. Have a simple problem with a building or unit, expect a response in a day or two. A more complicated problem: Expect to do the legwork yourself.
When it’s time to get money back from them, expect them to lie and delay.
Unfortunately, they are part of the plague that is real estate in Cambridge.
Chance favors the prepared mind.

Point plus made it so easy,
Very helpful,
Very flexible,
Highly recommended,
First apartment I viewed I ended up signing the lease!!!

Searching for an apartment in the city can be a real challenge, but working with Tom Devine from Point Plus was a pleasure! After viewing a bunch of dud apartments, I stumbled upon one of Tom’s ads. He was extremely responsive and able to show me the unit within just a few hours. While the unit was not a fit for me, Tom stuck it out and asked me what I was looking for, and also what I was looking to avoid. Later that afternoon, Tom sent me several additional listings that fit my search parameters. That might not sound like a huge deal, but it’s all too common for agents to bait and switch and then try and get you to look at stuff that you’re not interested in, and not to mention out of your price range. None of that with Tom, and that afternoon I checked out two awesome apartments and fell in love with them both. Within hours of meeting Tom, I’d seen great units that fit just what I was looking for, and was submitting my rental application. Tom was definitely low-​pressure but worked with me to find exactly what I was looking for and seemed genuinely interested in helping me every step of the way. What an all-​star!

I’m guessing that the customer experience here depends a lot on which agent (s) you work with. I first called Leyla about a craigslist ad for an apartment rental. She was very responsive, and we set up a showing, but she didn’t actually know much about the apartment. She had to ask the current tenant for answers to all my questions.
We then set up a showing for a second apartment, and she was there with another agent (Mark), who seemed to have a lot more information about the apartment. Unfortunately, a lot of the information he told me was wrong. My roommates and I filled out an application and sent in a deposit, only to find out later that the move-​in date had to be pushed back a month (the unit had already been rented out for that month) and the rent had to be increased (we were told that rent would include heating, but apparently the landlord had never agreed to that). The experience of trying to communicate and negotiate about the lease terms with the landlord through both Leyla and Mark as intermediaries was very frustrating.
After the lease was signed, we wanted to send in the remainder of the deposit by check, but we were told that if we did not wire the money, they would continue to show the apartment to people who had offered to pay higher rent. Considering we had already wired them two months of rent with the application, this felt like a really unreasonable and rude way of doing business.

Back in March/​April 2014, I worked closely with Moises Martinez from Point Plus to find my wife, our two small dogs and I a rental home in the Cambridge/​Somerville area. We were relocating from the Charleston, SC area and needed to find a place by May 1^st. Moises was the only agent in the area that seemed to want to work with us. We previously tried working with three or four other rental agencies, but they either didn’t return our calls or only showed us their listings, which didn’t satisfy our needs. Moises was honest, communicative, respectful and worked meticulously to find us a place that met our needs; he always put our desires ahead of his. Moises bent over backwards to find us a place that would take two dogs — no easy feat considering 90+% of rentals do not allow pets, period. Moreover, the pool of available homes was low since most become available September 1^st. Moises found us a place in West Somerville, near Tufts University, but after negotiations fell through on the move-​in date he continued to work exhaustively to find us a home by May 1^st (my wife started her new job on May 5^th.) Time was growing short, but with less than a week to go before May Moises found us a lovely house in Union Square, Somerville that not only met but exceeded our expectations! Since we were remote Moises gave us a house tour using Facetime and helped finalize the contract with the listing agent. I cannot speak more highly of Moises for everything he did to help my wife and I. We love our new place in Union Square and hope to call it home for years to come. Thank you again, Moises!

I had the opportunity to work with Point Plus in three different capacities and I had a great experience with them every time.
They came in to replace the existing building management of my Cambridge condo. They took a totally frustrating and dysfunctional building management situation and made it much more manageable. I worked with Ahad on numerous occasions in order to address problems with the building and he always handled things promptly and professionally even when I was a rather unruly customer.
After I moved away, I hired Point Plus to manage the rental of my condo. They did a great job of addressing the needs of my tenant and made the experience as trouble free as possible.
Finally, when I decided to sell my condo, I listed it with Billy (William) Senne. Within a couple of days, my property was shown. In just a few days, Billy negotiated a great deal with buyers. He made the process of selling easier than any other property sale I’ve been involved with.
Point Plus has a great team and I would highly recommend them for your property management and property listing needs.

First of all, my wife and I have used Point Plus to RENT, experienced their PROPERTY MANAGEMENT, and recently to BUY condo of our own. I feel like I can give a solid review of them by now.
RENT:
My wife and I found Point Plus about 3 years ago and we rented a nice condo in Cambridge. Tom Devine was our agent. We’ve used other agents in the past and Tom is a true professional and is an expert in the Cambridge/​Somerville market. My wife trusts him (which is very important to me). Most importantly, he has a very patient way of dealing with clients and doesn’t force you into properties. Other agents in the past were like used car salesmen or many women were overly «fake» saying that crappy places were «beautiful.» I mean, come on, we’re not blind. We ended up renting a place that was a little out of our price range at the time but Tom knew exactly what we wanted after showing us a few other places and closed the agreement by the end of the day with us. Very very happy customers.
PROPERTY MANAGERS:
Generally speaking, they will quickly take care of things if something breaks but it may take more than one email/​phone call. The manager, Ahad, is a very nice guy and does quickly answer your emails/​calls. That type of service is definitely well appreciated. There was also a case of them calling saying that I didn’t send the check, when in fact, they cashed it a week before. This is a simple mistake so I’m not going to hold that against them. So, overall, they are good here too.
BUY:
Our rental experience was so good with Tom Devine that we decided to call him back up 3 years later to recently buy a property. As before, Tom was his same-​old-​self. He showed us the properties that we thought we wanted in our price range, took his mental notes, and then dialed into what we were looking for. He has a more «hands-​off» approach which works really well for my style. I personally like to look for the places in my search range and then call him to get his opinion and help make offers. I guess if you’re the type of person that expects the agent to find all the places for you, Tom may not be your guy but I can’t accurately judge.
It took a few months to get an offer accepted but that wasn’t Tom’s fault. We also had a nice opportunity to work with Billy Seanne, the owner of Point Plus. Billy has a more «direct» style to the way he works but he’s honest and we would highly recommend him too. In fact, if it weren’t for Billy’s creative offer that he put together for us, we would have never gotten the place we did. Billy knows the market through and through and is a true expert. To be honest, if we had listened to him at our first offer, we probably would have closed months ago. Like most buyers, we thought we knew better. The guy really knows his stuff. In fact, I would say that Tom and Billy really feed well off each other. If my wife and I want to buy another place in the future, I’m sure we’ll give them a call. I’d probably request to work with both of them again, Tom to show and Billy’s second opinion to help close. Very good experience in this category too.
Overall:
Solid experience and good guys. I will definitely use them again.

I lived at a property over five years ago that is (now?) managed by Point Plus. About two months ago the front door now rings to my cell phone non-​stop. I contacted Point Plus and was told «they’ll try to figure it out.»

Wish I could say good things about my Cambridge multi-​family sale with Billy Senne. It started off amazingly well and despite never having met him (I live on the west coast), I was impressed with his emails, phone calls, and attitude.
Within a week, he had shown my property to over 50 potential buyers and created an auction-​like atmosphere that led to 9 bids, 2 of which were $ 40k over our asking price. Yup, you’re thinking, what does she have to complain about?
The buyer’s lender insisted that my house was not a «legal 2-​family» and they wanted me to make it fire safe because there was no room on the property to install a fire escape. That was one of those thank goodness moments because they cost around $ 30k.
Here’s where it started getting icky. Billy suggested I hire his architect to set the scope because that would be the best way to keep it under our control. Then he tells me he’ll hire someone to do the work. He takes 2 weeks to talk to some people and then tells me the quotes he has gotten (which he never shows me) are outrageous — $ 10k or more — and I should hire my usual Boston contractor because he can likely do it for less.
My guy tries to get a scope out of his architect for another 2+ weeks. He never commits to anything, so we lose all the people who would have done the job for cheap. 5 weeks or so later, we still don’t have a real scope and now my contractor has to work with people he doesn’t know, hope for the best, and he still doesn’t have an exact scope. So he starts working and –surprise — every time the architect comes to the job site he «tweaks» the scope just a little here and there. Oh, I forgot to mention that at the outset Billy tells me he will ask the buyer to kick in for some of this fire retrofitting business.
We finally finish and close on the house 14 WEEKS after our original offer. The architect gets the city to sign off on his «scope,» the city signs a letter saying the house is a legal 2-​family, and the lender is happy. I ask Billy to ask the buyer for some money to help cover my $ 15k+ out of pocket and he says he doesn’t think it’s appropriate since it’s my house that wasn’t legal in the first place.
All the good will Billy created in that first 2 weeks was gone about the time it started taking him several days to return my calls or emails. I asked him for two things: to try to get the situation/​scope under control and to try to recoup some of the cost.

Jane helped us find a place in Soutie last spring. She is truly the first agent that we’ve worked with that I felt like was on our side. She really listened to what we were looking for and worked hard to find a great spot. We will definitely work with Point Plus again.

Point Plus, and Tom Devine are the best real estate agency and agent I’ve worked with. My housemate and I had a great experience.
We found him through a listing on Craigslist, but he and the Point Plus team really differentiated themselves from other realtors immediately:
— The craigslist listing was responded to was actually available. (It wasn’t used as bait just to lure us in)
— The other apartments Tom showed us all met our search criteria.
— He never tried to upsell us on any apartments even slightly out of our price-​range.
Throughout the search process, Tom was extremely patient and understanding with our complicated roommate situation. He answered calls and emails immediately, and was readily available to show us apartments.
We couldn’t have asked for better, and are happy that we worked with Tom and PointPlus.

I highly recommend Tom Devine of Point Plus Realty to anyone who is looking to rent or sell their property. As a landlord, I have worked with him twice in two years and each time he has brought multiple people through to view the property.
In doing so, he’s been respectful of the tenants living there; has found quality new tenants each time; does thorough background checks and is conscientious about putting together and explaining our lease to incoming tenants so that everyone understands their obligations.
Best of all, he knows how to prices properties and better still, how to get asking price or more! We had a bidding war! Our place went on MLS on Wed and by Sat a lease was signed…
Tom’s a good guy who works honestly and hard and earns his fee. I will list exclusively with him again and recommend to anyone that they do that same.
Thanks Tom!,

I’m a current undergraduate and I went to Point Plus looking for off campus housing. There was a bit of a wrinkle in the process working with one of the realtors, but Billy quickly took over and helped me find a place that I really loved and met all of my criteria. He really expedited the process and was easily reachable for questions.