Eleven Park Realty

My wife and I are moving from Baltimore to Boston in Sept 2014. Now, for those of you who are familiar with the Boston rental market, you now how absurd and frustrating finding a place to live can be. Before living in Baltimore for two years, we were in NYC for seven, and we thought we were seasoned rental searchers. Boston taught us otherwise. Luckily, Jay at Eleven Park Realty saved us. The brief story:
We were looking for a Sept 1 start, but the earliest we could visit to find a place was mid-​July. We were surprised to learn (from many sources) that this was very late for September leases. We flew up on a Wednesday, hoping to have things settled by Friday afternoon.
Before we hooked up with Eleven Park, we probably saw about 25 apartments across 3 brokers, none of which met our needs. Either the quality of the apartment was sub-​par, or it simply didn’t meet the basic requirements we conveyed to the brokers. We needed a 1+ bedroom (I work at home and need a small office space), and our emphasis was on location and not square-​footage. The problem was that the brokers just weren’t listening and kept showing us things either a. above our budget, or b. only one-​bedrooms. By Friday afternoon, we still didn’t have a place. Then we met up with Jay from Eleven Park.
First: we asked if we weren’t seeing quality because our budget was too restrictive. He immediately said that our budget was fine and that there was no reason we shouldn’t find a great place in that range.
Second: he actually listened to us. He didn’t show us anything that didn’t meet our basic criteria.
Third: he wasn’t pushy at all. There were a couple of places we saw that were okay, but didn’t love. At no point did he try to convince us.
Fourth: it was obvious that he was there to actually help us, not just go through the motions and collect a fee. Compared to all the other brokers we saw, he was a breath of fresh air.
In the end, we saw 6 places with Jay, 3 of which were *exactly* what we were looking for and could definitely have lived in. Furthermore, he got us in early — we were the first to see two of those apartments. In the end, he found us the perfect place: more room than we were expecting, a full two bedrooms, WAY under budget and, get this, no broker fee (the landlord paid it, not us). The apt went on the market Friday night and Jay immediately sent us the listing and we booked the first viewing Saturday morning. And that was that.
Thanks again, Jay!