Heath Properties

This review is specifically about Paul Roiff’s 17 Bow Street, Somerville (who also owns Heath Properties & Mistral the Restaurant along with *numerous* other properties).
Since Paul Roiff bought 17 Bow Street in 2012, the exterior landscape/​outside of the property of the property has gone from incredibly beautiful historic old church/​apt bldg/​property to borderline crack house.
Examples you ask? Nobody has cut the grass (you need a hay baler to get the grass around this place now) around the property since he’s owned it n 2012 — there is garbage and broken glass, dirty old bras/​underwear/​socks & general trash all around the exterior of the property. They *never* *ever* shovel their walks in the winter– so it is like sliding around a luge around the property in the wintertime. So, it’s both a mess and dangerous with all the glass and ice all around this property in the winter. Perhaps someone will have to slip/​fall on the ice and cut themselves on the glass in order for them to clean up their act?
It’s a sad day when Somerville repeatedly fines Paul Roiff yet he continues to choose to not keep up the exterior of the property. It’s cheaper to pay the fine than to clean up the mess, apparently.
Based on this review, I would never/​ever do business with Paul Roiff.

EDIT: From reading a lot of these reviews, I am guessing that Heath discriminates against students, regardless of the level of schooling — graduate level or undergraduate level.
If I could give this company 0 stars… I would.
Short story: Utterly disgusted.
Long story: I moved to Boston on September 1, 2014 to begin law school. We had a real estate agent so all the initial interactions were through a middle man. From the day we moved in however, it was hell. First of all, we were told that we could not move in until 1pm on September 1^st which put a major time restrain on us as it was, however my biggest issue was the fact that Heath had sent painters to paint the apartment the SAME day at the SAME time we were moving. My room was being painted as my movers were bringing my belongings into the apartment. Since the paint was still wet and they were rushing, the carpet had paint, and some of my wooden furniture had paint on it as well.
Heath Maintenance is terrible. The workers themselves were very pleasant, but the person in charge of maintenance there is very unprofessional and hardly answers to any e-​mails or phone calls. NONE of them in the office do. They’re supposed to be open from 10 – 4 or something, but for some reason they’re almost always away from the desk. We had mold growing in our bathroom (though the director told me it’s only mildew but it was treated as if it were mold anyway.) ALSO this past winter (2014 – 2015) was very bad for all those who lived in Massachusetts. As a result, roofs were collapsing and flooding because of all the snow accumulation. The three-​decker I lived in was flooding and soaked the entire hallway carpet — as in you couldn’t step on it with socks or they would be soaked — and the walls were leaking. I am almost certain that mold was growing. Luckily, we were on the second floor so we did not experience any leaking in our apartment, however our neighbors upstairs had significant leaking coming into their bedrooms and nothing was done about it for MONTHS. I would like to add that tenants from each floor contacted maintenance, and it took A VERY LONG TIME to get someone out to apartment to shovel the snow off of the roof.
The staff at Heath are very rude, from the head honcho, to the secretary who could care less about who is there and for what. It is a very unprofessional office and I would tell anyone who has to deal with a management company instead of directly with the owner/​landlord to run far away from this company.

I’ve just come back from a lease signing with Heath Properties. As a real estate agent, the signing could not have gone smoother. We met with Keith to go over the paperwork. His knowledge and experience made both my tenant and myself feel very comfortable with the process. They’re an excellent property management firm, and I highly recommend doing business with them. Thanks Keith, it was a pleasure.

I have had an excellent experience with this management company. They are extremely responsive whenever there is ever an issue with my unit. All I need to do is send an email from my phone and they notify me quickly to let me know how they can fix the issue and when they can send someone out. I was most impressed how proactive they are when they sent out mice exterminators to each unit in the fall without request. They are also very respectful and send out a memo to all the units if something will be taking place quite timely beforehand. All the staff is very nice and cooperative as well. This management company is awesome! I would whole heartedly recommend them to anyone in the Boston area.

Heath Properties took ownership of my complex last year, I have lived there for almost 10 years and this past year has been the best! Reading some of the negative reviews come shocking to me because they took over 20+ units that have been essentially neglected for decades and have been addressing everyone’s needs.
I’ve had two separate heating issues this winter, they were both addressed immediately. I had no heat at all and they had the HVAC Company there in less than an hour from the call. I’ve had small issues as well (that existed before they took over) and they were handled as efficiently as the heating situation. My carpet had a tear in it so instead of just patching the 40 year old rug they put in all new wall to wall! Every one of their staff members that I have spoken to is friendly and professional. I highly, highly recommend them to everyone looking for a place to live.
I don’t usually Unilocal people, only if it’s really bad or really good and these five stars are well deserved!

If I could give less than one star that’s what this would be. I just finished up two years with this management company and wish I had read some of these reviews before signing my lease. The people in this office need to learn how to talk to people with manners and not like they’re two year olds. The apartment I rented was so small and mice infested. There was nowhere to throw your trash before trash day so it either sat in the apartment smelling or you chanced throwing it out and possibly getting fined by the city, which never happens, at least not to me. The common areas were never cleaned by them. They didn’t enforce the lease with the other tenant, there were three of us in my building, and allowed them to have three cats, understandable with the mice running the building, and one of those little Unilocaling dogs that woke me up all hours of the night. The mice should have paid the rent in my apartment that’s how much they ran it. Lastly I can’t stress enough how rude the employees are in that office. Customer services training should be a requirement of management office employees!!!

Health Properties has been nothing but professional and accommodating. They recently sent a cleaning crew to clean our patio after some construction and they did a wonderful job.

DO NOT lease/​rent from these people. They are very unprofessional and do not attempt to make your living experience worth your money

I have been living in apartments leased by Heath Properties for 2 years now. I moved into a one bedroom apartment recently that was inhabited by a renter that babysat dogs… it was a carpeted apartment and the WHOLE apartment smelled like dog.
I forwarded my complaints to Heath Properties and they had the carpets professionally cleaned 4 times, but to no avail. Although it took a month and 4 carpet cleanings, they agreed to have the whole apartment re-​carpeted. And I’m super grateful!
From my experience with Heath Properties, they’ve always been pretty good about maintenance and having their maintenance crew fix or check out whatever household problems I’ve come across. And although it took a month for them to finally change my carpets, they at least tried professionally cleaning it a few times before it boiled down to that last resort.
From talking with my friends who rent apartments from other landlords, they sound pretty terrible in comparison with Heath Properties. I don’t know what these other reviewers had to deal with, but pretty much every maintenance or problem I’ve had with my apartment has been dealt with in a timely manner with excellent results

As Matthew P. said below, be wary of how many bad reviews have been edited out, and how the positive ones sound suspiciously like they are written by people who work at the Heath office.
I sued Heath properties and won after they tried to take my entire security deposit on falsified reasons. They treated me like a child until they realized I actually had a really good real estate lawyer helping me screw them for being slumlords.
Their Allston/​Brighton apartments are not maintained, full of mice and silverfish, and are never helpful. I had one of my drunk idiot neighbors shoot a firework into my building and break my window and when i asked them to evict the neighbors they just said they didn’t want to have a vacant unit and wouldn’t do anything. They only care about money, they don’t care about the quality of human life.
They will try to take your security check for any reason possible. They tried to charge me 400 dollars for scratches on the hardwood that were there when i moved in (which i was smart enough to take dated photos of) and also tried to charge me 10 bucks for a lightbulb being out after I moved!
Avoid them at all costs, and again, listen to how the positive reviews written about heath on here all sound like they’re by the same person… who probably works for heath. I just hate to see young people who don’t have a lot of money get taken advantage of by a scumbag landlord, there are a lot of them in this city.
However, their maintenance guy is really awesome, when the guys in charge actually dispatch him.

Very bad customer service. Useless if you find yourself in a situation where you need management to step in, such as I did when I sublet a room from them and one of the other roommates was causing a lot of problems — Heath did nothing to help us even though he was breaking a lot of the rules on the lease agreement. I wish I had read through the Unilocal reviews sooner, and I would have thought twice before getting into a sublet with them.

My customer experience has been terrible, they are consistently unhelpful and rude.
I wish I had read the reviews before signing my lease.

This company is the biggest group of scum bags i have ever seen in my life. not only did they do everything they could to take advantage of students, Keith, one of their employees extorted us by threatening to get us kicked out of college if we did not do as he said, costing us over 7,000 dollars. they break Boston tenant laws and i highly recommend you do not rent any properties from this company.

I have had mixed experiences with management companies in Boston, and my experience with Heath Properties is by far the best to date. The team there is very responsive if there is ever an issue needing attention. Most notably, Keith personally takes on issues not easily resolved for which we are particularly grateful.
The apartment is nicely updated and well maintained from the day we moved in. All of the appliances and heating system work well consistently.
I would not hesitate to recommend them to someone looking at one of Heath’s apartments.

I have worked with many management companies, and I have to say that my experience with Heath Properties has been stellar. I moved into an older apartment which had some cosmetic issues. Heath Properties went the extra mile to fix them, including ripping up part of the bathroom floor and re-​tiling it. They even made the painters come back because some spots were missed. All the work was done well and speedily, with little to no disruption to me.
In summary, I am grateful to have rented through Heath. I would recommend them to friends/​family.

I have been working with Heath Properties over 3 years now. Their apartments are by far the best quality apartments in Boston. The management is amazing! They take care of their tenants from the lease signing to moving out process.
It is very easy to rent their apartments because they are very good quality and priced lower than the market rate.
I would definitely recommend them to anyone who is looking to rent their apartments and it is pleasure to work with Heath Properties as a real estate agent.
Alp (Boston Brokerage Group)

Upon moving in the apartment wasn’t in great condition. We wrote down everything and sent them a copy of the letter with all the problems. Upon moving out we were charged for everything and more. They took basically our entire security deposit and charged us because they replaced the carpeting. However after we moved out we went back to our old apartment and realized that the rugs were the same ones and they never replaced them. They are horrible businessmen and take advantage of people. Be careful, take lots of pictures in case they try to scam you!

Heath Properties is a really great place to work with.
The team of people at Heath are always helpful and solve problems quickly and effectively.
I have been renting from them this year and have been extremely impressed with the level of professionalism they demonstrate.
I am looking forward to staying with Heath for the next coming year.
I highly recommend them to everyone looking for a place to live.

It would be wise for anyone reading these reviews to look at the filtered reviews which you can find at the bottom left of this page. It is a grayed-​out link. Under this review filter are 22 1-​star reviews and 6 positive reviews.
I know Unilocal came under fire for allowing companies with terrible ratings to pay Unilocal to remove negative reviews. I just hope this still isn’t the case. I would recommend you read what actual people have to say about their real experiences with this company. It’s very enlightening.
Again, feel free to message me with any questions.
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I’m not going to bother to explain in detail how terrible and sneaky I believe this management company was to me. I’m just going to give advice to the people who are actually planning to rent from them (which are most likely all easy-​to-​take-​advantage of college students). Hopefully someone can learn from my experiences with them:
1. Take pictures before you move in and after you move out. This will be useful if they try to tell you that you didn’t clean something adequately enough. Even though I had my own professional cleaners come, Heath still claimed that there were stains and dust and that the kitchen and bathroom was not cleaned. Don’t take their word for it that you actually did damage, because when I questioned them on it I was able to receive my money back. Again, the pictures will become your best friends :)
2. Have all of your communication in writing.
3. Heath’s «inspecting/​cleaning» services splattered paint on some of my room furniture when I first moved in. Make sure you know when they are coming, they didn’t tell me.
4. Massachusetts department of housing and health can help you with any questions you have. If you don’t have heat or you have rodent problems, Massachusetts will most likely be more of a friend to you.
Remember tenants, you have TONS of rights. If you think something is unfair or fishy, look it up. There is a plethora of information. Heath tried to take almost my entire security deposit but I got almost all of it back with a little extra work (small claims court is a very easy process and a lot of times the matter is settled before even going to court).
These were wonderful resources that I used extensively to get my security deposit back. Best of luck to all who dare!
Feel free to message me with any questions. I’ll be happy to help out.

I recently finished leasing from Heath Properties for two years in the same apartment. I highly caution anyone against renting from them, unless you want to deal with a great many headaches and a lot of stress. I have had many of the problems already mentioned by other reviewers, but it basically boils down to this: on the surface, the people at Heath seem helpful, caring, and professional. However, as soon as you have to work with them on all the types of issues that come with homes and apartments, they become unresponsive, accusatory, and cold. It seems that the only thing they truly care about is money, and they will do whatever it takes to keep money, even if it means neglect of properties.
Example #1 of neglect:
Our building in Allston had a major rodent problem. We had mice crawling out of our stove burners and leaving their droppings everywhere, including my bed. Getting Heath properties to take real action was like pulling teeth. We had to get a city health inspector to look at the apartment and contact Heath for them to take real action. At that point, one person there understood the seriousness of the issue and scheduled exterminators to come every week. Then, one of her coworkers in the office gave her a hard time about it because it wasn’t standard to have exterminators return that frequently. The problem still wasn’t fixed when we moved out.
Example #2 of neglect:
One week in December, our heat stopped working. Heath was slow and unresponsive in coming to fix it – we could not stay in our own apartment for 5 days. 5 days is a long time to not have heat in Boston in December. When we tried to pro-​rate the rent for those days, we met a great deal of resistance and rudeness.
Other little things happened that were less than impressive, including childish emails from one of the workers at Heath, and a lack of communication that resulted in money being taken out of our security deposit for a problem we could have easily fixed had we known more than 4 days before moving out. But even with all this, one of the things that sticks in my mind the most is the day we went in to the office to talk to our landlord and he walked in without a hello, handshake, or smile.
The positive reviews on here all reflect the point of view that I held at one time. However, as I said before, once you have to deal with this company over more serious issues, I think you will find that they lack the responsiveness and respect for their lessees that they originally seemed to have.