Do yourself a favor and live anywhere else
Pros
Came furnished (used to be an Airbnb). Location is convenient, close by to many restaurants, cafes, and train stops.
Cons
Landlord claimed that they hired cleaners prior to move-in, but the place was dirty upon handover (mold in showers, sticky cabinet interiors + exteriors, dusty). There was a mice and rat infestation while I was a tenant here, mostly arising from the fact that the landlord did not provide trash bins and garbage “management” was just throwing your trash bags on the curb of the street. As you can imagine, this attracted all sorts of pest. When asked about getting a trash bin, the landlord responded it was not possible because there was no place to store it in the building and the salon owner on the first floor of the building would not allow us to share trash bins with them. Came to discover that the landlord and salon owner had underlying tension because the landlord tried to evict the salon owner in the past when trying to gentrify the area. The community rallied around the small business owner, and the two parties eventually settled out of court, but the damage was done. The pest/vermin issue remained unresolved for over two weeks. Laundry machine in-unit broke while I was running a load and the landlord did not fix it for over a month. I ended up having to find a handyman on my own in order to retrieve my wet clothes…. Told us to do laundry at the laundromat in the nearby apartment building in the interim, but that laundromat was only available to residents of the other apartment. Heating was electric and incredibly inefficient; it was very expensive to stay warm during the Boston winters. The landlord is greedy and does not care about the community, as evidenced by the ill will that the neighborhood establishments hold against them. However, the landlord does not care because they have never lived in the area and are more interested in getting an easy paycheck.
Advice to the owners
Resolve tenant concerns in the timely manner, and solution around a garbage management process that won’t continuously attract pest/vermin.