RI has been NIMBY-world for decades for new housing. Unfortunately, that means that the few options available know that people will crawl to them and jump through hoops — great customer service is thus not a priority.

Hope you find a good one soon!

I've never in my life interacted with anyone so incompetent and useless as the property manager at my loft building (old mill turned into lofts). She never answers the phone or responds to emails or gets anything done. So I started touring several of the other loft buildings in hopes of moving. I learned that they're pretty much all like that. Some of them happily talk to prospective tenants, but they don't care about current tenants, so don't be fooled.

If you want to live in one of these nice loft buildings, it's just something you'll have to put up with. It's infuriating, but I personally put up with it because of the low utilities and modern interior.

Yeah this exactly, just such a crazy demand for housing they don’t necessarily bend over backwards to get you in

Yeah none of the management companies care unless it’s about your rent being late. And even then they might not even notice until much later.

i lived in a loft and can totally agree.

lived next to a problem tenant and when i say problem i mean PROBLEM. she would constantly be throwing shit at the walls and screaming at the top of her lungs with her boyfriend, id hear fights breaking out next door where they were absolutely whaling on each other.

called the cops on them multiple times but when they knocked, alls quiet all of a sudden, kept complaining to the property manager who did...nothing even when these lunatics would go literally all night long with this behavior

it took the better part of a year for anything to move on them and when i looked inside of the apartment when the maintenance guys were there the place looked like a bomb went off, holes, shattered glass all over the place you name it

All of the lofts that I interact with, have waiting lists months long. They don’t really care about communications. Just show up with a pre-filled application, and be ready to put down a deposit if something happens to be available. That’s the only way they really deal with anything.

We worked with Real Property Management to get our apartment and they have been incredibly responsive. Even now if there is any issue I submit a ticket and they respond immediately. This building is a smaller 15 unit building.

lol i lived in an oft-neglected apartment building in college

we were frequently late with our rent, and eventually got to the point where we were so late we straight up skipped a month's rent and they never said anything.

Try Seaflower Property Group in Wayland Square. They manage multiple apartment buildings on the east side and actually manage, maintain and respond. The office is right in Wayland, too. Nice area of the city to live. It’s a little more suburban environment over there than where all the renovated loft buildings are located.

Yep, there has never been an easier time to be a terrible landlord and still increase the rent.

Alternatively, I live in a super chill affordable apartment and have always had this luck with the exception of one place. It's a two way street, so I try to be helpful and it seems like neighbors have the same idea. The only time I've had not great neighbors was in the poorly run apartment, probably because people treated poorly are going to treat the living situation just as poorly.

I would avoid lofts unless you have a few non-negotiables: dogs, modern finishes, air conditioning.

If you can live without the above, you will probably find a better living situation at a lower cost. A lot of the housing stock here is mutlifamily, which means you could share 0 walls vs several paper thin walls in a loft and a loud hallway. Worse yet, the big management companies are likely to calculate a "market rate" rent adjustment on renewal since you're just another rando to the management office.

We use them for condo bookkeeping, and they're also very responsive in that regard.

I’m in the process of looking for a place to live, can you provide more information on this super chill affordable apartment…?

The thing about these types of places is that they never have planned openings-- just randomly people leave after like 5 years and something gets posted one day online. These places are never, ever corporate buildings its always small LL who maybe do it because they're laid back and don't have a high mortgage, just want to checkout with low turnover tenants, or they're just balancing costs with low passive income to play the equity game/live for free in building.

A lot of these things are done through networks of their friends or colleagues before going to market-- I've lived in buildings where I happened to be the only person who didn't know the owner ahead of time. As housing gets more difficult, I feel like this gets more common. I have a friend who has a multifamily that was like 150-200k, so she only charges 1600 for a 3 bedroom to a local family. Could she charge more? Yeah, but she's an awesome person and she isn't fixated on maximizing her investment since she's happy with some side income, helping a good family, and living in the other unit.

So my only advice is to sort by new, spend time like a full time job, and be the first to contact. I actually saw multiple extremely cheap/updated places (like 1500/2bed) and viewed them, but I wasn't always fast enough. Also, if you work locally and have a community here already, chances are you have a whole network to draw from if you need help.

Oh and look before you need to move. It's worth having an overlapping lease. My current place was listed 5 days before the lease started-- If I had to be out of my current place by end of the month, I would have already committed somewhere hastily like musical chairs. Having time gives you options-- don't expect a great place and flawless lease overlap.

Yeah I agree with everything you said. I’m in a place like you described where rent hasn’t gone up in the three years I’ve been here because the owner knows it’s more important to keep good tenants than to squeeze every dollar out. However I’m in Maryland and we want to move to Providence to be closer to family. We have an owner virtually showing us a 2 bed room on Rochambeau Ave tomorrow and he straight up told us that he listed it for $2,600 to weed people out but is happy to negotiate on price “for the right person”….luckily for me and my girlfriend we fit that bill but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when people say the quiet part out loud.

If you hear of anything opening up this spring/summer (honestly April - July, we’re flexible) we’d love the tip! 😉

I mean, yeah that's got sketch vibes, so I'd tread lightly because this is probably going to be the first but not the last red flag. I lived somewhere once where something seemed off when we signed and it was a nightmare of a year including when we tried to get our security deposit back. So I'd cautiously proceed-- all the LLs I mentioned were by the books and protected themselves, but this is way different. Also, this gives me "if I don't like you and your gf I will also do sketchy things to push you out" vibes since they've sort of given you that playbook. I'd go off of whatever vibes you get tomorrow, but when I lived in buildings run where they were outspoken about sketchy stuff like that they were usually pushing boundaries a lot (avoiding their taxes, not providing stuff on the lease, stiffing maintenance workers, not providing/deducting security deposit like legally required).

Also good it would be lower because 2600 that area is....high. I would avoid Rochambeau and Camp intersection possibly too (feel free to dm me as you proceed with this process). Also you should know that in RI they can't ask for last months rent too-- it's weird to me how many people move here from MA and buy and then ask for more than 2 months up front when it's illegal.

I saw one place asking for 3 months (first, sec, and last) and the owner seemed nice, but I later saw they listed and sold only a few months later. If I had fallen for that, I probably would have never seen that money again once it changed hands-- glad I went with my gut and picked a different place.