Review for Residences At The Charles Apartments

The Residences at the Charles is seriously going downhill. We rented a condominium here for over a year and were quite unhappy… so we moved out earlier this month. The ceiling occasionally leaked in our apartment... we were told that it is sink/garbage disposal water from upper floors. The garage walls are also leaking water, so the management decided to embark on a renovation project. As a result of this project and other constant renovations in the building, the noise level is unbearable. There are cracks in our apartment walls and ceiling. It seems that this building is falling apart. The elevator breaks very often, and since there is only 1 elevator that accesses the apartment, we were worried that it may break on our moving day... Furthermore, the janitors take their time holding the elevator as they move up and down the entire 10 floors, so you may end up waiting 10 minutes for the elevator. The management may be the worst we've ever dealt with. They have a snobby attitude and are extremely lazy. If anything breaks in our apartment, we have to deal with the problems directly. Our landlord doesn't have a separate management company that takes care of issues with the apartment. Last winter we ended up spending an entire week without heat when our HVAC unit broke. Another phenomenon is water being shut off in the building for the entire day for renovations, without much advance notice. This has occurred at least 3 times in the past year. We also had a very bad experience while moving out. First of all, nobody is allowed to move during the weekend, which is unusual, given that weekends are the most common time to move. So we had to take time off of our busy work schedule to move out during the week. Second, they request that the residence name be added to the insurance certificate of the moving company, which is quite paranoid... Plus, the management won't handle these tasks, and I have to deal with these issues personally. Third, the building does not have a loading dock, so the moving truck will have to park outside the garage door. Since the garage door will be open during that time, they are going to charge us $15/hour for a minimum of 4 hours (although our move will only take 2 hours) to hire a janitor to watch the garage door. Who would have thought that a "classy" building where condos are supposedly worth millions of dollars will nickel and dime its tenants during a move… Ironically, last month when we arrived home at around 11pm, the garage door was wide open, with nobody around. As we drove through, the door closed behind us. The automated garage door has problems breaking, and nobody seems to care about the fact that the garage door was left open at night, while they will be charging us $60 to hire a person to watch the garage door during our move. We also found out that other tenants were also moving out on the exact day/time of our move and they didn’t notify us in advance about that. So they are planning to charge $15/hr for both parties, even though a single person is needed to watch the garage door. Plus, the other tenant’s truck somehow got priority parking near the garage door, and when our moving company asked the building management whether they will get a parking ticket for parking the truck on the other side of the road as a result, the management replied that the moving company should not worry about it because they will simply charge the tenant if that happens! Renters beware: you will be treated as second class citizens in the building. For example, while owners are allowed to have pets, tenants are strictly forbidden to own pets, without exception. Social life is nonexistent; most people in here are old and perhaps retired. So don't count on making friends here. The balconies are typically so small that they are useless. The design of the building is so ridiculous that our neighbors can see inside our apartment from the adjacent walls and corners of the building. We also recently found out that the carpet in our rental unit dates back to 1985... I won’t be surprised if this violates health regulations. Regardless of this untenable situation, the management is spending all its time trying to pick a new design for the sofas in the lobby... wonder why? Well a lot of people are understandably trying to sell their condos here, so perhaps they figured investing in some fancy new looks for the lobby will increase their condo prices and trick customers into buying. SO BEWARE. As for renters, having said all this, you judge whether a rental price of $3500/mo for a 1 bdrm is ridiculous or not. We recommend you look elsewhere, like one of the newly built luxury apartment buildings with full offering of amenities (such as common spaces, gym, pool, theatre, even continental breakfast and coffee in the morning) conveniently located in or around Cambridge.