Tenant placement and leasing

The asking rent comes first, because it decides everything after it. We look at what genuinely comparable units in the same submarket have actually leased for — not what they were listed at, which is a different and much less useful number — and adjust for the things that move a rent: floor, light, parking, laundry, outdoor space, and how far the front door really is from the station.

Then we show you the trade-off rather than a single figure. A rent set too high does not fail loudly; it just sits, and four weeks of vacancy costs more than the difference between the two numbers you were choosing from. You get the range, what each end of it likely means for time-to-lease, and a recommendation.

Written criteria, applied the same way to every applicant, in the same order. That is not only the fair-housing-safe way to do it, it is the only way to compare applicants honestly. We verify income and employment, check credit and rental history, and speak to prior landlords — with attention to the previous landlord rather than the current one, who has an incentive to give a glowing reference to someone they would like to see leave.

You see the file and make the decision. We will tell you plainly which applicant we would choose and why, but it is your property.

A Massachusetts residential lease has required disclosures and constraints on what may be collected at signing, and the security deposit statute in particular carries real statutory penalties for handling money incorrectly — including the possibility of treble damages. This is the least glamorous part of leasing and the part that actually costs owners money when it is done casually.

We execute the lease, deliver the required disclosures, document the condition of the unit with dated photographs, and place the deposit correctly. You get the complete file.