Sabett Management

This company may be the worst management company in Boston. College students who live about my girlfriend at 409 Marlborough Street are CONSTANTLY loud, blasting music at all hours. She has called Sabett Management about this a dozen times and they continue to do absolutely nothing. Not just that, but they’re rude about doing absolutely nothing.
Stay away at all costs.

Unfortunately In order to write a review, I must at least check one star, but this management company is so shitty that it doesn’t even deserve half of a star. Sabet Management totally sucks. They’re happy to collect rent from you and raise it unreasonably, and that’s mostly it. «Professionally» managed is a vast understatement. Multiple examples of terrible management include, but are not limited to;
Years and years of students begging for an elevator. (I live on the 4^th floor and am a very petite woman) so I am physically incapable of carrying my 50−70lb suitcase up and down the stairs when I go on vacation)
Years of stolen packages with building management doing absolutely nothing about it.
Not turning the heating on until the students are practically freezing. (The building temperature can go down to anywhere between 65 – 70 degrees when this happens)
Maintenance people barging into apartments with little to no notification, and also carelessly handling your personal items and/​or furniture and almost breaking it in the process when they have to do an invasive repair.
The main guy running the maintenance is the only one who speaks English fluently. All the other workers barely understand half of what you’re saying, which makes it nearly impossible to communicate your problem or get it fixed.
Every once in a while when they clean the building, the air in the hallways is literally polluted with harmful chemicals that are toxic for us to be breathing.
If I had known all these things and read all these reviews before moving into a building that’s run by this company, I wouldn’t have moved here. It greatly angers me that they’re even getting a dime of my money. This company deserves to be fired and replaced with people who actually know how to do their job well and who actually care about the well being of their tenants. As long as this management/​maintenance company is in business, it may as well be run by monkeys because that’s exactly what it’s felt like ever since I moved in 2 years ago.

Every year that I lived in the apartment managed by Sabet, I saw new people moving in, commenting: «Look, it’s such a nice place», but I know for a fact that a few days later they will realize their dream shattered into fragments of a nightmare.
Folks, if you see this review, please believe that if every single review of a company is a one-​star, you really need to avoid it.
Here’s a summary of things that I’ve encountered over the years living in a Sabet building:
The manager appears very nice and is the only one who speaks English that you can get in touch with for fixes. He will appear to try to get things done but the reality is he won’t. He probably knows the buildings are beyond repair and just wants to get by.
Supers: these guys don’t speak English. None of them does. You need things fixed? You’re lucky if they don’t break a few things of yours in the process of trying to do the repairs.
Jennifer: The rudest and second most incompetent person I’ve seen in my life. No matter what you ask of her, expect her to get it wrong, and expect her to blame it on you.
Victus: Wondering who is the most incompetent now? This guy. He doesn’t know anything when you ask him, and will pretend raising $ 300 per month of rent is Sabet showing you mercy.
Their only hope is to deceive newcomers to Boston into renting an apartment they manage, but if you could see this review, please do your best to avoid this company, and please tell your friends to avoid them. You’d be doing yourselves and Boston a huge favor.

The worst most pathetic property managers around. Do not respond to maintenance requests, do a poor shoddy job and then take away our security deposit for cleaning services and mattress removals when there was nothing in the apartment when we moved out. Also, we made sure it was clean before we left. Do NOT rent with these criminals.
Apparently they don’t have a number for the New York office, and that’s where you have to call if yo have questions about your security deposit. It’s not worth it, seriously.

I’ve spent three years under Sabet Management across two different properties (like any good slumlords, it seems like there’s practically a district under their slimy grasp). Really, really horrible.
First apartment, on Hemenway Street, had a hole in the floor through which I was regularly visited by mice; the stove’s pilot light was spotty and spewed noxious fumes through the closet-​sized «one-​bedroom split» (that’s a laugh, but for $ 2200 a student can’t handle it alone) until I called in an engineer, no recycling of any kind, chipped paint everywhere, a busted refrigerator, the list goes on.
I send an email to them with this list of complaints, and receive zero reply for two months. I send another email, no reply for another month. My roommate and I decide to exercise our state-​given tenant rights and withhold half of our rent until our issues are addressed — eviction notice. I confront management with threat of legal repercussions for violating our tenant rights, suddenly the email gets a reply and the crook of an owner personally shows up at my door begging us to pay! Alrighty then. They cranked the rent up by $ 500, so I moved.
Second apartment — I know, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment — the radiator lacks any kind of valve to regulate heat, so heat spews endlessly and makes my room a sauna. Phone calls, emails, no reply for a month. The heat starts to result in health issues for occupants, so I place a message bringing this to their attention and that they’re at fault… suddenly the phone call gets a reply! Later events included management employees and handymen strolling right in and walking around the apartment at all hours of the day to their heart’s content, a painter meant to paint the bathroom ceiling (chipped from leaks, of course) who painted everything but the ceiling, got paint all over the floors and kitchen appliances, and then left the door unlocked as he went (through which his friend came in later yelling for him, that was fun).
To top it all off, that «last month’s rent» only seems to go so far — we’re supposed to be out midday on the 31^st. Because nothing makes moving day in Boston easier than the last month I paid for suddenly becoming a month minus half a day!
I know there’s so much hyperbole about management companies and real estate offices, but PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE never give these creeps a dime.

Sabett is truly the most incompetent, inconsiderate group of humans in all of Boston. Such a disappointment renting from them with 5 friends in college at 103 Hemenway St. for over 2 years. After all the terribly things that happened with them we all paid our rent on time and were as understanding as possible with their terrible service.
NOW, 6 YEARS LATER SABETT MANAGEMENT IS STILL PULLING DOWN MY CREDIT SCORE?!? I cannot understand how or why they decided to take legal action against music students consistently paying their rent, meticulously taking care of their apartment, but they did. I have two derogatory marks from them that are pulling down my credit score and that I cannot get removed.
DO NOT RENT FROM SABETT. They will sue you for NO reason and you will not be able to get rid of the black mark on your credit score. I have never missed a payment on a credit card and I have never been late with rent. Sabet Management is the worst and honestly, they probably accidentally sued the wrong tenant, realized it but didn’t care enough about me to fix their mistake because they are the LAZIEST.
This is the only review on Unilocal I have ever taken the time to write. I could write a book on Sabett’s incompetence.
Fin.

Let me preface this by saying, I’m the type of person who goes on Unilocal all the time (especially before renting apartments) and reads all the reviews of a company. Since most realty/​management places tend to have terrible reviews anyways, I took them with a grain of salt and thought maybe it wouldn’t actually be as bad as everyone says. My mistake. PLEASE listen to everyone’s reviews about this terrible terrible company.
I was a college student looking for an apartment close to campus. These people FEED off of college students.
NEVER RENT FROM THESE SLUMLORDS.
Even if you are the perfect tenant, pay everything on time, keep your place clean, never make loud noise, etc. I’m positive you will have more than one issue with this place during the year that you are there.
To sum it up, I had issues with the stove, the heat, mice, the refrigerator, getting someone to paint the apartment (which they ended up charging me for), and plenty of other things; all of which they profited off of me from. They never answer their phones, respond to email, or are even in the office when you physically go there.
The guy who owns this business is literally sitting in his 5 homes laughing at all the money he’s raking in off of poor college students. He employs foreign «handyman» workers who have no idea what they’re doing and is too cheap to hire professional companies to fix important things. I don’t know how the city allows this.

This company was terrible to work with. They are the definition of slumlords. Please do not support this company. The list of grievances I have with this company is a mile long.
DO NOT RENT FROM THEM.

These people are awful. They took more than ²⁄₃ of my security deposit even though the apartment was spotless, and they took it under the guise of they needed it to touch up an already renovated spotless apartment. Also any maintenance work they do they will just show up, not tell you and have keys to YOUR apartment. Conveniently had my bike and $ 1K in cash from my other roommate stolen the same week the painters showed up 3 times without notice and Sabet denies any knowledge and our door was confirmed locked that day so clearly someone from maintenance took it. $ 2600, no thermostat and no dish washer? The location just isn’t worth it for these dicks, trust me.

If I could give negative stars I would. I lived in a Sabet building for two years and they were complete nightmares throughout the entire process. They have nice apartment listings BUT DO NOT BE FOOLED. It is not worth it to work with these unprofessional slime bags.
*they tried to raise our rent $ 500 after one year
*the super’s number got disconnected 2 weeks after we moved in, there was never another one
*Leor and Matt are impossible to get in touch with unless they need something from you. Had to hold rent a couple time just to get them on the phone.
Even now after having moved out we are dealing with a law suit to get our security deposit back.
STEER CLEAR

The other reviewers are absolutely right. These apartments might be appealing to you because of their relatively okay price range for Boston but trust me, it’s NOT worth dealing with the annoying degenerates who live in these buildings and the people who run them. Pay a little bit more and find a decent place that isn’t full of slacker college students from mediocre institutions (you won’t find any Harvard Med or BU students here) who could not care less about school and only care about partying, getting drunk and high ²⁴⁄₇. You will also get a slew of irritating Berkelee Music kids who think they have talent but really don’t. You’ll have to suffer their horrible music round the clock as well. You can try calling the management about this but all they do is post a little note every once in a while in the building without ever enforcing anything. You’ll be calling the cops at least once a week here with the loud parties constantly going on.
Truly, the worst part of living here is the other tenants. If you care anything about doing well in school, AVOID THESE BUILDINGS. You will never get any studying done with the drunk idiots and terrible wannabe musicians who live there.
Also the elevator never works so good luck moving your furniture to the third floor and whenever there’s rain coming, you will get mice even if you keep your apartment clean.
The only relatively decent thing is that the repair guy does get things fixed if you request easy stuff like clogged drains and stuff but that’s about it. Also the leasing people, Boston Union Realty, are also complete crap. They lost our rent checks once and then threatened us with eviction even though it was their own fault. They’re just rude and miserable people, and it’s ridiculous that they make you bring your check to their office every month.
If you’re looking to be in the Fenway area, check out the apartments on Boylston by the park instead. They have much better management and the prices are not much higher. They also have much young professionals and fewer drunk college kids.

I am so happy that I finally moved out!!!
To make it straight. If you combine all the reviews below (and probably above), you will be able to imagine what Sabet Management (409 Marlborough) is all about.
I hated them so much that I found a better, cheaper, bigger, and more luxurious apartment a block down the street and moved in the middle of March when my lease was to expire in September. I found a «poor» guy (who I obviously didn’t inform about Sabet) on Craigslist and he took over my lease for the rest of the year.
Don’t get me wrong. This is an amazing location, close to everything and the apartments could be beautiful if they weren’t abandoned. But those tramps who run the company, Moses the «manager» (uugh), and some annoying Alexandra whose job is to write down your phone number, apt unit, and issue (I must have given them more than 30 times in 6 months) are so ridiculous that you have no idea.
For the record, I once saw this guy, Moses, stealing packages that USPS people were leaving in front of the elevator. When I asked him where are the packages that were here a while ago he responded «I didn’t see any packages, people might have came and picked them up.»
AVOID AT ANY COST.

I had a very good experience with Sabet Management, but that might be on account of i speak enough spanish and portuguese to communicate with the maintenance. I lived in 133 Peterborough and had 2 maintenance men living in the basement of my building. They were kind enough to always ask me if it was ok for them to paint my apartment and I politely said No. They also had no problem with me asking for help. All and All I had a good experience with these guys!

Sabet Management has been so far the absolute worse management I ever had to deal with.
3 months to get a clogged sink fixed!
An extremely dirty appartment when we moved in!
Elevator always broken and never fixed!
Very dirty common areas! Not to say gross!
They did not do anything even after we called them several time to complain about the noise from other tenants (@ 3am every single night of the year) so we had to call the police.
We did not have heat for a month at the end of the winter (40−50°F outside) and had to call the Boston Mayor office social services to force them to put the heat back on.
In a word, absolutely scandalous!
Not to mention that we had to wait for a month and a half to get our security deposit back and they billed us for cleaning/​painting! 310 for cleaning a place that we return in a better state than what we found! Quite amazing isn’t it!
Finally, it is very hard to get an hold on them: calling or emailing seem to be worthless! We never get answers or if we get finally someone to talk to, it was never the same person, always someone new who did not know about us or even where the building was.
So, if you rent a place make sure to check who is your REAL management company (sometimes it is not super clear!!) and good luck!

MOST DEFINITELY COCKROACH! And SABET still has not done anything about it!

2 months into a year long lease and I wish I would have looked at Unilocal first, don’t know why I didn’t…
The day I moved in the toilet wasn’t working, no one had cleaned the apartment from the previous tenant (who was a cat owner and I made it clear I am allergic to cats), and the fire alarm STILL goes off every time I turn on the oven or stove.
My courtyard facing apartment echoes with noise starting as early as 7AM from their foreign workers (what are they working on?! not my fire alarm), and their building of «young professionals» is nothing but a glorified dorm.
Don’t rent from them!

If you are reading this now I implore you to listen:
DO. NOT. RENT. SABET.
PERIOD.
I’ve been living here since September in a three bedroom apartment with a closet-​like kitchen and essentially no common space. I pay 800 p/​month, I guess since I’m a glutton for punishment.
I love the location, but lately it seems that the negatives outweigh the positives. For instance, our heat works… sometimes. My roommate’s radiator freqently spits this boiling, brackish water all over the place. When we call Sabet they send a small, impatient man who puts towels around the inflicted area and then leaves. Brilliant, right?
During the winter our hot water has been out almost every day, no exaggeration. We just couldn’t get even lukewarm water before noon. Usually when I politely called about this issue Sabet would say «hot water be hot soon, just one seconds, okays?!»
As frustrating these things are, they’re trivial in comparison with the non-​existent safety standards in Sabet buildings.
There have been three separate occasions when I’ve come home and not been able to enter the building due to some dangerous issue with the wiring, fire, or flood. At one point this October they were working on the roof and OOPS! They forgot to close the gaping hole in the middle of it! Thus the top floor rooms suffered damage as did all of the wiring in the building. We were promptly evacuated, but Sabet offered no alternative housing solution (or even a half-​hearted apology) to cover for their dangerous mistake. I had a really lovely night running around with my cats in the freezing, pouring rain, hoping to find someone to take them for the night.
A few months later I came home around 1 AM, only to be greeted by a strong smell of burnt carpet and the sight of fire trucks. An apartment on my floor got ripped apart by a fire caused by antiquated and unsafe wiring, destroying much of their things/​their rooms, and setting off the sprinklers. Again, instead of trying to house some people who were stranded in one of their other buildings, the stragglers were relegated to an idling MBTA bus for the entirety of the evening and early morning.
When I called the landlords the following morning to ask if I may come home, the woman on the phone angrily hissed «I don’t know!» and hung up one me.
I know it’s my fault that I signed a lease for $ 800 a month for a cramped, ancient apartment. But how could I expect this level of incompetence? These guys are seriously criminals, and my roommates and I are looking for report them to whatever government agency handles safe housing.

Horrendous. They had to re-​paint our living room when we moved in and they got paint on our brand new dining table. This is just one example of the many things they’ve done wrong. And most of their workers do not speak English so it’s virtually impossible to convey what you need– if you can reach them.
Steer clear of these slumlords.

Sabet Management is a collection of the most massively incompetent and rude individuals I have ever encountered. I made the mistake of living there for two years because it was reasonably close to my law school. I lived at the 105 Peterborough Street address.
1. Moving in: Sabet promised us the apartment would be cleaned. It was completely messy, etc.
2. Painting: One month after moving in, Sabet announced that they must paint the apartment or else they would charge us for painting it after we left. Probably unlawful. While a landlord can probably make reasonably necessary repairs (I don’t know the law), I’m betting they can’t threaten to charge you for doing them later if you refuse. At least where it’s paint — do that inbetween leases.
Told them not to. One day I returned from class to find all our belongings shoved in to the middle of every room, paint splattered on the floor, and a bunch of people who did not speak English painting it. There were also bottles of liquor and empty cups tucked around various places in the building hallway — I wouldn’t care except they splattered paint around.
3. Buzzer: There is no normal buzzer. Instead they program your phone number into the dial-​box at the entrance. Your phone is called whenever someone presses the button for your apartment. It took them 6 months to put my number up. I moved out two and a half years ago. I still get calls.
4. Repairs: Don’t even try. Make a long list of things that were broken, and include all the other issues (half-​inch deep gouges in the floor, college kid residue, etc.).
5. Quality: Sabet only manages its rental rates because of the apartment buildings’ locations. These are some of the most beat up, run down, puked-​in-​by-​worthless-​idiot, cess pools that anyone has ever dared to call an apartment.
6. Heating: My heater did not work for 2 years. The heater in the other bedroom worked — too well. It was either 50 or 90 degrees. Also illegal. In direct violation of the law, they also did not turn on the heat until mid-​november and turned it off very early in the spring, leading to below-​68 degree temperatures.
7. Pests: I forgot to mention ants, roaches, mice. They regularly had exterminators come around the building, but it did not do much. Get a cat and pray.
8. Shower: A bathtub that looked like it was from the 1920s. No water pressure. Floor tiles all uneven, half missing. Wall broken up and peeling along floor, etc.
9. Repair deduction: They screwed us for $ 75 on the security deposit, claiming they had to do repairs. Such a small amount that if you can’t annoy them into giving it back, it isn’t worth your time to sue over. Unless you want to go on Judge Judy and scream a lot.
10. Other tenants: While were a handful of reasonable small medium/​low income families, most tenants are drunken college kids. You will be blessed by round-​the-​clock bad music, weekly vomitings in the hallway, stupid drunk college kids screaming, and a constant stream of cigarette smoke wafting in under your door (there was a ½ to 1 inch gap between 3 sides of the door and the door frame, so that sound/​smell came in and out).
Wonder if any aspiring landlord tenant plaintiff’s lawyers read these posts…

They take months to do repairs, never keep their records straight, and barely speak English. When you call to file maintenance reports, you have to be assertive and dominant just to get them to listen to you. If you’re occupying in May, be prepared to be asked multiple times if you’re vacating in September (and deep inside, you’ll wish you were). As soon as my lease runs up, I’m finding another building with a different company.
Update 1: I should also mention that it is now almost November and they still haven’t turned on the heat in my building.
Update 2: It’s November 5 and the heat is still not on. I have also recently found out that a friend of mine nearly died in my building from mold infestation and is suing Sabet for every penny they’ve got. Hopefully this will change things.
Update 3: I got served an eviction notice for my last month because my rent apparently was not paid for April, even though I paid my last month’s rent up front when I moved in. However, the good folks at Boston Union Realty know how retarded these people are and are going to straighten it out for me.
Bottom line: Don’t live in a Sabet building.