Allston Christmas: Tips and Warnings for Boston Move-In Day

This article is a guide to help you understand how the old phrase "another man's trash is another man's treasure" firmly applies to what is called Allston Christmas.

You might also be interested in our Boston Sept. 1 Move-In Guide

A Guide For Success During Boston's "Allston Christmas" 

Allston is the section just outside of Boston that is a haven for lots of college students, post-grad upstarts and twenty-somethings, and other longtime residents that are outside of the 20-34 year-old demographic that comprises almost half of Boston's workforce.

Most of Allston is made up of renters who move yearly from apartment-to-apartment at the end of August once their lease ends. During the moving process, plenty of people will be tossing out old furniture and unwanted decor from their homes out onto their buildings and rental house curbs and sidewalks for all other migrants to rummage through.

For landlords and Boston Property Management companies, this guide will help you have a successful Allston Christmas and how to use multiple communication methods with tenants to address what is allowed in the property owner's units during Boston's most hectic time of year.

Moving In Sept. 1: A Boston Cluster-Land

September 1st is the date when the entire city becomes a zoo for professional movers, newly transplanted residents, and students who cram the city's streets, and mainly cause traffic on the city's longest strip, Commonwealth Avenue.

This main congested street runs from the Back Bay area near the Boston Public Garden through Allston, Brighton, to Newton.

Property management crews usually can help diffuse this chaos and help with the flow of traffic if you are living in a building that has multiple units. But not everyone is moving into an apartment complex or condo association.

This could cause many of you to double-park outside of the new apartment building to unload moving trucks and cars, but this only adds to the chaotic traffic.

Luckily, the Mayor's office is being a little more lackadaisical for parking permits this September 1st. But it's still best for you to believe that meter maids and police will be on the prowl to fill their month-end quotas for cutting parking tickets and moving violations on movers.

Allston Christmas Is Not Just for College Students

College students who live off-campus usually don't have much money to spend on new furniture. That is why you see them scavenge through piles of chairs, picking up old couches, coffee tables, and other home decoration items. But that does not mean they are the only people by age who are looking for new items to put into their homes.

Longtime residents are also looking for other items to place in their homes. Also, they may be looking to get rid of stuff for free.

So if you are a property manager or a landlord that has older residents living in some of your units, communicate with them to see if they are looking for items to place in their living quarters so you don't end up with piles of junk laid out in front of your building for the following weeks after moving day. Also, piles of trash can lead to rats, bugs, and other debris that can either cause you a city violation fine, or just a bad look for your property entrance.

Know What Types of Allston Christmas "Gifts" You Bring Into Your Home

Sometimes all the glitter of a displaced item is not gold. There are items that you should not be bringing into your home, that may appear safe when viewed on the street.

• Displaced mattresses - You never know who had been sleeping on that mattress, or used that mattress for other things beyond slumber. These may contain dangerous bed bugs, or may have broken springs inside the mattress.

• Chipped coffee tables - This is to expand on my previous point regarding bugs. If a coffee table looks old or chiseled in certain spots, it may not just be due to damage from the previous owners. It possibly could be due to termites that weaken the coffee table, if it's a wooden one. This adds potential for the bugs to relocate into your home!

• Old refrigerators - Don't bring these into your place just because it has a plug. It may only work temporarily until it permanently loses it's cooling ability. Also, older refrigerators can work so extremely that they can freeze your food to the point where it is no longer edible.

Make sure that you communicate with your landlord or property manager first to get their approval on what new items are allowed into your rental unit. If it's a new couch or something large in size that requires more than two people to move, notify the landlord or property manager before you move the items because it could potentially damage the walls. And that could hurt your security deposit return at the end of your lease.

Talk With Item Owners To See If They Are Trashing the Items Or Not

Looks can be deceiving during Allston Christmas because everyone is putting their items outside in stockpiles. This may not always mean that the owners of the items are throwing them away.

You don't want to look like a thief running off with items that are considered stolen by the owners. This is why it is important to simply ask questions about the items with the owners. Or if you don't know who the owner is and don't have time to wait for their return outside, leave a note on the item with your email address to ask and see if they are willing to hand over or resell you the items.

Final Thoughts on Allston Christmas in Boston, MA

This is a crazy time period, but it can be navigated well if you simply stay patient, do your research, and communicate with the landlords or property managers for advice. The weather is generally hot since it's still the summer, technically. But you can certainly become successful if you prepare well the night before Allston Christmas.

Have you ever moved during this timeframe? Or are you scheduled to move this year at the end of August? Tell us your best and worst experiences about moving during this time, and we can help you with answers beyond this guide.

Why Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Property Management Matters

During the past decade, there is much to be said regarding sustainability for home energy usage.

So what steps have you made to be more environmentally efficient?

The United Nations officially declared 2012 to be "The Year of Sustainable Energy For All," primarily third-world countries, across the globe.

How Energy Efficiency Can Benefit Your Community

This article is an examination on the legislative and residential aspects so that you know about the best property management company to hire that can provide these types of environmentally conservative services, plus help you save money and energy in your building.

On the home front in the U.S. There has been more hot summers and rough winters that have come forth from drastic climate changes. Plus, California residents are currently facing a water crisis due to a lengthy drought that has caused more home fires than we can recount in our recent memories.

The demand for natural energy resources has increased, and the U.S. government and Environmental Protection Agency have collectively moved forward to reduce emissions of carbon for the sake of public health. 

It's essential homeowners, property managers, and HOAs to have the knowledge of these energy alternatives for their property to adhere to the upcoming changes in the state regulations regarding energy usage to combat climate change and increase sustainability. 

Eco-Friendly Property Management Solutions

There are many ways to minimize your expenditures versus your residual income from your tenants paying their rental costs and/or condo fees to keep your financial balance sheet in the black with great energy solutions to keep in mind during the rest of the summer. But for all times of the year, these following landscape construction techniques can help you reduce energy usage for your community and save you money:

• Recycled Mulch - When you put this on your property's soil around hedges or other plants, the use of recycled mulch can help improve irrigation and water evaporation. If you have use city-supplied water, this could help reduce monthly water bill costs. Also, make sure that you are following the fire-safety regulations for mulch to reduce the chance of burning down your house and land.

• Don't Send Scrap Items To The Landfill Right Away - Some stuff could be put in storage instead of dumping it in the trash. Waste management costs are very high nowadays, so you can minimize the amount of your tenants trash heaps by telling them to save items like cardboard, old china plates, or paper. If you have a common room in your building, or a multi-family house with children, set up an "Arts & Crafts" event to recycle these items for them to create something new for their home. Also, this can help your tenants get to know some of their neighbors.

• Solar Panels - There are two sets of phrases "tax credit" or "tax exemption" that will make you really like this idea. The costs of solar-powered energy from the installation of panels on roofs and on the property to give greater photosynthetic effects to the grass or other horticulture on your property can come back to you basically as an account receivable. This can save you lots of money for your real estate investment. In Massachusetts, owners of residential businesses are eligible for these tax write-offs annually.

  

• Use Natural and Organic Pesticides for Landscape Maintenance - "Organic" is still the craze in 2015 as Americans look to become healthier in what they consume or live around. Items such as fertilizers and pesticides can certainly make a difference for you and for tenant's pets.

• Use Rain Barrels To Irrigate Your Plants - Instead of buying or using city-supplied water by the boatload that can run up your water bill, you should try using rain barrels to store some natural water for later usage on your plants. In Boston, we have more than enough rain that comes throughout the year, so use that to your advantage by use of water collection as it comes. You might also want to think about getting flood insurance for the rainy weather.

• Use Electric Lawn Mowers - Lawnmowers are a necessity for any type of lawn care if you do not have an eco-friendly landscape construction company. Yet it's the type of lawnmower that can help you save money and on gas to power them if you use an electric battery-powered lawnmower instead. Also, it's non-polluting and efficient just much as gas-powered lawnmowers. This will keep your property "greener" than ever in terms of its look, the energy sustainability involved, and in terms of your wallet in the long run.

Breakdown of the U.S. Government's "Eco-nomic" Plans for 2030

The U.S. government looks towards the long-term needs for its citizen's health, and budget their economic plans accordingly. This is considerable for your long-term home value plan because a major part of your expenses will be from the various levels of energy usage of your tenants in your rental units.

One example of this is how they went into experimental measures in 2005 by increasing the start date for Standard Time in the fall season to increase solar light usage and lower heating and electricity usage in home nationwide. Another example came recently this month when the Obama administration announced their Clean Power Plan, a two-year plan to combat climate change and boosting the U.S. economy. The crux of the plan is to lower of renewable energy costs, creating a plethora of jobs, with a benchmark of 30 percent more renewable energy by the year 2030. 

This will be state-regulated on weather natural gas or renewable energy sources, but the plan will affect landlords and tenants inevitably. Under this plan, the biggest takeaways are the following:

• Saving the average American family about $85 per year on their energy bills in 2030
• Save enough money to power 30 million homes
• State and federal government initiatives are to save consumers $155 billion between the years 2020 and 2030

Eco-Friendly Final Thoughts

Do you have any experiences with creating sustainable or "greener pastures" for your property?

Or is there something that you learned that can be valuable towards your knowledge and bank account in this blog? Energy usage is a complex topic, but it can be made simple if you continue to do your research and not be too caught behind before it's too late when your investment is in the red.

What other ideas do you have for creating renewable energy? Tell us your thoughts.

Checklist To Evaluate A Property Manager

Being a landlord has various forms of work that feel like drudgery if you do it all alone.

Whether you're a private landlord or on an HOA board, finding a valuable property manager that can ensure day-to-day operations, reduce costs in your budget, deal with legal compliance, market the property and effectively maintain the property; is not an easy feat.

Check The Techniques Of A Property Manager

Amidst the requirements for overseeing a property, it is just as important to evaluate a property manager's financial reporting skills, salesmanship, property maintenance tactics, and analysis or track record of tenants that they have approved to live within your rental units.

Learn how to accurately determine the right property manager with these tips:

• Don't Cast a Wide Net for Potential Hires
• Expect a Balance of Salesmanship and Marketing Experience
• Understand Local HOA & Legal Compliance
• They Know How to Handle Maintenance Issues
• Quality Tenant Screening Tactics
• They Have Reasonable Service Fees

Don't Cast A Wide Net For Potential Property Managers

You should always do your research and look for recommendations of who have a great track record for handling such demanding responsibilities in an expedient manner.

The National Association for Residential Property Managers can help with this, too. But you do not want to scout numerous property managers like a professional sports leagues's draft with multiple rounds. Keep your goals simple for profitability, and keep your pool of property manager candidates narrowed.

Salesmanship and Marketing Experience

Some people are better than others when it comes to the art of persuasion, or have charismatic personalities. You need a property manager that knows the rental units and the local real estate market in order for them to sell well to tenants in a competitive real estate market. 

Have they shown properties before? Are they knowledgeable of what it take to advertise rental units? What communication methods with tenants regarding condo fees have they used into the past disseminate that important information to the residents? How well do they know the local real estate market in that side of town where your property is located?

These are all important questions to have as part of your criteria for hiring your next property manager. Make sure they have an excellent customer service mentality when dealing with tenant's problems that may arise. This will also be conducive to overall morale and culture amongst occupants within the property, and add market value to your investment in the long term. You can't afford to have the residents feel as if they are victims to a slumlord in any capacity.

Understanding Legal Compliance

There are many intricacies when it comes to dealing with real estate law. Certain states have different by-laws when it comes to property ownership. Also, they must know fire-safety regulations for example how you use mulch on the property grounds. 

If you are on the board of a condo or homeowner association, you should see if they know how your HOA voting process works and how they have carried out new rulings or policies from the HOA board. If they do not have this type of experience, they you could be bound for a legal disaster, and being in court can be costly against your investment plan for the property.

How Well Do They Know How To Handle Maintenance Issues

There is always something that comes up at random when it comes to property repairs. Property managers need to be as expedient as possible for random breakdowns of radiators during the winter, assessing flood risks to keep the resident's items and well being safe, hot water heaters not working for the rental units shower, etc.

Property managers usually have a budget for cash to carry out repairs. It is crucial to pinpoint how the property manager will use this budget and keep the regular maintenance costs under control, or evaluating damage control issues for move-in/move-out day at the end of rental leases,  

Tenant Screening Tactics

As the Boston real estate market gets more expensive and the demand for rental units continues on the uptick, the tenant screening process is becoming more essential than ever.

In order to be profitable, you need to have a property manager who can take the time to have a keen sense of who should be occupying the vacancies, and who will not give you problems when it comes time for monthly rent collections. 

Credit reports are great to use for this evaluation, but also finding out what methods and turnkey resources that the property manager uses for researching the tenant's work and landlord history for good referrals is necessary as well. 

Evaluate The Property Manager Service Fees and Accounting

Most property managers charge between 6% to 12% of the monthly rent for their services. This ties back to the first point of doing your research on property managers: know the range of percentages that property managers in your community will charge.

For example, if you have under 50 units in your HOA or as a private landlord, then you may not be able to attract a top tier property manager because you simply won't have the budget to pay them.

Perhaps in this case, you may want to hire a property manager that is not as expensive for their services. Or if you do have that many units and are looking for a property manager that caters to the lifestyle that you want to present for your HOA, then you must learn which can account for the condo fees and liability insurance requirements to help protect you from potential lawsuits. Plus, see what they know about budgeting for advertising costs for the vacancies.

As a property owner, it is mandated that you report your taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

Therefore, ask if they have experience assisting in these filings of the required forms with property owners and landlords. The goal is reaching a profit, so you must have a person that is, if not, more financially literate than to make this happen smoothly as possible

Evaluating a Property Manager - Final Thoughts

Have you had any experience hiring the wrong property manager? What do you think your mistakes where in dealing with the wrong hiring? If you have great experience hiring a property manager, what did you use for an ample criteria to make the right decision?

How Boston's Housing Boom Impacts Property Management Services

In this article, we will examine the causes of the Boston housing boom from our latest research and answer the essential questions asked recently about the state of tenants and landlords in the Boston area who are running for shelter (no pun intended).

According to Redfin, the median price of a Boston-area home rose to approximately $360,000, which is a 6.1 percent increase since April this year and considered the biggest month-over-month price hike since April 2012.

What Will The Rise in Boston Real Estate Mean For Property Management?

If you've watched or read the local Boston news, or even walked around to see the city overall lately, the city's real estate market is experiencing an all-time high for residential and commercial developments.

For many of the Hub's longtime residents, this has been painstaking as the prices of living in the Boston area are going from relatively high to insurmountably bank-breaking to their wallets.

It's hard to find affordable housing anymore and landlords are feeling the crunch financially. The increase of property taxes will continue to rise with profits or break-even points on their property investments more difficult to clear.

How Much Can The Greater Boston Area Afford For Affordable Housing?

So what does this mean for the local property management industry? Will landlords of privately-owned properties who once had affordable housing have to leverage the rising costs of property taxes by cutting back on property management services?

Mayor Marty Walsh and his administration have quite a tall order to overcome finding places for people who are being pushed out of the city limits. Many of the city's longtime residents who have lived in Boston proper areas like Allston, Brighton, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury, Somerville, South Boston, Watertown and surrounding cities of Cambridge and Quincy area seeing new condo developments.

With the shortage of apartments for those who can't afford to buy homes, there has been a series of housing initiatives that the local government is trying to make sense of for these people. The costs for homes is rising faster than the cost of renting.

Fees for Commercial Real Estate Developers?

The alternatives of micro-apartments in Boston for the young adult population has ending costs that do not necessarily meet the means of living out of necessity. Plus Mayor Walsh is looking to have a fee attached to developers who want to buy and create more commercial estate properties to support his plan to raise $20 million in funding to allocate those monies towards 53,000 affordable homes by the year 2030.

Also, the rising influx of the tech and pharmaceutical industry workers coming from Silicon Valley and other cities to Boston and Cambridge, where the latter is swiftly becoming an Eastern U.S. mecca for both industries, has made property values in that already expensively priced area continue to skyrocket at an exponential rate.

Chief Economist Nela Richardson of the real estate company Redfin explained the migration of wealthy workers. "Boston is an interesting story because it's attracting outsiders from tech and pharma." He continued: "There's a lot of wealthy workers coming to town. Match that with demand with a shortage of supply- that's a recipe for speed." 

Home listings on the market in May 2015 sold at a record-breaking rate. Factor that in with a shortage of supply. If you know the Law of Supply and Demand enough, you will see that this is a runaway freight train that won't be stopped anytime soon.

There is much competition to buy a home. In May 2015, there was an estimated 72 percent of offers for homebuying faced competition. That same month, Boston-area sellers put almost 12,900 homes on the market. That is a 25 percent year-over-year increase since May 2014. And the numbers keep rising.

According to Redfin, the median price of a Boston-area home rose to approximately $360,000, which is a 6.1 percent increase since April this year and considered the biggest month-over-month price hike since April 2012.

Do Landlords and Tenants Need to Wait For A Housing Bubble To Burst?

Sign of the times in Real Estate 2002-2012

From looking at these numbers, you may be thinking that the Boston area is becoming a city for the uber-elite. So does this mean that you have to study coding or have the mind of an MIT-schooled engineer in order to sustain a stable living here?

Do you have to wait another fifteen years per Mayor Walsh's plan for affordable housing in Boston, and not have to worry about making a stable life month to month? Well, not exactly. But it may take a renter much longer than expected to save and buy a home, or think about becoming a landlord in areas such as the Metro West areas of Waltham, Framingham, Malden, Medford, or other areas that area Commuter Rail-accessible for people to come into the city to work.

We are already seeing the signs of a housing bubble waiting to burst in the coming years. Just like in the U.S. real estate market crash in 2006, banks lending to buyers that take out mortgage products which exceed the actual home values, on top of money that dries up in various industries causing labor layoffs and a hostile job market that still exists today can lead to foreclosures and high turnover of tenants and residents.

This will help property management in a two-fold manner: with all of the landlords that buy housing before the prices get too high because they need to ensure their value and attraction from those who can afford to stay in the city.

Also, for the coming years, the affordable housing that the Walsh administration is vying for will help HOAs and others want to live in a place that has great services and will help landlords with smaller mortgages since people still want a quality of life while living in the city.

Overall, living in the Boston proper area and its surrounding neighborhoods is a lifestyle decision. Otherwise, these landlords and tenants would opt to move south like birds to escape the harsh winters, and rising costs. The prices will rise, but they will bottom out eventually. With the economies of scale, this bubble can only float for so long before the blowback occurs for the better for lesser-income residents and landlords to afford a decent mortgage and high quality yet low-priced Boston property management for their investment to stay profitable in the coming year.

Boston Housing Boom - Final Thoughts

Are you feeling the financial crunch of how hard it is to find or afford housing in Boston?

Are landlords becoming too strict on their criteria for screening tenants with decent credit? 

Are you as a landlord experiencing high turnover in your units due to your rise in prices per higher property taxes you must pay? 

You may wonder where is the middle ground to balance out the supply and demand of housing.Tell us your thoughts in the comments below and how long you feel it will take to get to this cost balance for housing. 

Bed Bugs: How To Remove and Prevent Them for Your Tenants

Boston is one of the United States top-rated rental housing markets. 

This is due to the transient dwellers skipping from lease to lease in various apartment and the condo building craze in the Boston area.

Those same living quarters that tenants move into is a fertile ground for bed bugs to cultivate their communities and lay longer in your mattress than you want.

Whether you are a landlord, tenant, or property manager in Boston you can use this article as a guide to learn the following about bed bugs:

• What Is A Bed Bug?
• How To Spot A Bed Bug
• How To Prevent Bed Bugs In Your Home

Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite In Your Home

Especially if you live or hang around areas like Allston and Brighton with a ton of college-aged tenants. These young tenant have year-long leases and every semester may leave behind more than just dust balls upon moving out. This is a real situation people deal with every year and is not always your fault, they are attracted to the warm spots in your house, most likely a mattress or couch.

What Is A Bed Bug?

This is gross, but pay attention so you know what to do if your property is infested with these insects. Attracted to the warmth your bed is their favorite spot to live and reproduce.

A bed bug is a tiny parasite that feeds on mammals and birds. They are a part of the insect family Cimicidae, and the most common human infestations are Cimex lectularius and Cimex hemipterus. 

Adult bed bugs have a reddish brown, flat, oval-shaped, and are about 4 to 5 millimeters in size. 

Younger bugs (nymphs) are usually a tan or light color, which develops them into a reddish color after feeding. They are attracted to warmth, and tend to develop over a period of 5 to 10 days, though they can survive without feeding for several months.

They generally feed at night, or just before dawn.

How To Spot A Bed Bug

The Show You Don't Want To Host

Hand bitten by bed bugs

It's not fun to know that these insects can bite and continue feeding off of a human without their knowledge over time. Bed bugs can painlessly pierce the skin and inject saliva containing anesthetics and anticoagulants into the host.

They feed on the host for several minutes, and then retreat to their warmth haven. This will cause these insects to stay in the closest quarters by hiding in their host's mattress.

Hosts can also be pets like cats and dogs, who can carry them into their home.

The transmission of human diseases is theoretically possible, but has not been established for what particular diseases. Rarely does a severe systemic allergic reaction come from bed bug bites. But cases of insomnia or anxiety can be developed by bed bug infestations.

Bed bug bites are easily treatable by your primary physician or dermatologist.

Where Do Bed Bugs Come From?

There is a current resurgence of bed bug infestations in the U.S.

Being in a major city where there are more bugs and rodents than actual people, you can bet they will be in places that have a high traffic of people to feed off hosts. That means they would likely come from apartment complexes, condo buildings, hostels, hotels where people are coming and going. During the day, they like to dwell in floors, and show up in people's luggage, furniture, clothing. or boxes.

What Does A Bed Bug Bite Look Like?

Symptoms of bed bug bites can be either visible of invisible on the skin's surface.

They can be dark red or just a shade lighter than one's actual skin color. They can be in the form of a flat lesion or a bump. They usually show up on exposed parts of the face, neck, torso, or feet to the bevy of bed bugs lay in various sections of your mattress. Lesions can be found in a line or a cluster pattern in one or several areas in your skin. They can appear within a matter of minutes or days after being bitten. Lesions are capable of fading from the skin within one to two weeks. Also, they can causes severe itching and irritation of the skin.

How To Prevent and Remove Bed Bugs In Your Home

As a landlord, it's important to implement an effective form of communication with your tenants so that any problems with bed bugs in your rental unit is immediately eradicated.

Bed bugs can happen to anyone, no matter how careful you are with your tenants. But there are some tactics to prevent and combat these pests from coming back to share bed space with you.

• Hire A Property Manager with Emergency Support Procedures- This will only help increase your property's value by having a reliable crew who can stay on top of the fumigation or extermination duties in all of the rental units. Also, tenants can work with the property manager who knows exactly how to handle bed bugs to stop from coming back to their bed(s). Use social media, text, email, and phone to be prompt in getting a quick response from the landlord to put in a work order.

• Keep Windows Closed Near Your Bed - These insects are looking for a space to crawl into. So minimize access to your bed via your window that may be near their entrance point.

• Remove Boxes Upon Move-In Date Of Your Lease - Many times the new tenants are the culprits that are hosting these parasitic creatures- not just landlord negligence nor previous tenants in those living quarters. It's important to either put moving boxes away from the bedroom or living room areas where bed bugs arise. Make sure that upon the Boston move-in date, you put the boxes in your basement once you remove your belongings. This is because in many cases the boxes are coming from outside after resting in the place the tenants is moving from, then to their moving vans that other people have used, the dirty street grounds before being put inside their new home.

• Replace Infested Furniture - After spotting bed bugs in your furniture, it is best to throw those sheets right away. Even if you wash those sheets, it doesn't mean that they have gone away from good. After all, you cant spell the word "persistent" without the letters "p-e-s-t," coming back for more. If you spot bed bugs forming their own community on your bed, I'm sure you wouldn't want to sleep on that same bed set anyway. Or if so, it's at your own risk letting them get too close for comfort on your skin.

Bed Bugs: Our Final Thoughts

Have you had any experience with bed bugs that have made you want to move out of your apartment? Or have you dealt with angry tenants that have made you wonder why these problems with bed bugs keeps occuring within your property or rental units?

Having an accessible property management company is key to preventing this from happening. Its essential to know what it take to prevent this to become a good landlord, or as a tenant so that you don't have a history of carrying bed bugs wherever you move to.

Tell us how you prevent bed bugs in the comment section below.

How To Manage Loud Parties In Boston

This article will help define how property managers can help turn a negative situation into a positive opportunity to communicate with student residents. 

How To Deal With House Parties At Your Property

The spring season in Boston is a special time of year for many reasons:

1. The weather temperatures finally begin to warming up after a harsh cold winter
2. The Boston faithful get to see their beloved Red Sox take the field again at Fenway Park. 
3. The clock's change to Daylight Savings Time positively affects your mood from seeing sunlight and less grey skies. 
4. College kids are begin to leave the city towards their permanent out-of-town residents for the summer. 

As you would expect, students in your Boston property management will be celebrating the last of their final exams for the academic year with a party to remember just how sweet it is to live away from their parent's house.

In this article we will explain how to effectively communicate with your college-aged tenants. As students prepare for the end of their lease, get ready to talk with your young tenants about the consequences of having a party with their friends on your property. 

Building A Positive Relationship With Young Tenants

Open communication is important for everyone involved. 

Chances are that you were once a kid looking for fun and enjoying life by not having to answer to your parents as well. Be approachable and understanding of their situation and remember that when you tell a kid to not do something, they are likely going push the risk to the limit and see how far they can go.

It's best to meet your college-aged tenants half way by letting them have their fun to an extent. Here are a few suggested communication methods to effectively notify your tenants about the parameters of living in your property:

• Detail The Guest Policy In The Lease- Make sure that upon the beginning of their lease that each tenants knows how many people are allowed at once within their rented unit. When you keep it in writing, and quantify the amount of people that are allowed at once, they can never say they never knew beforehand about how many people they should have as guests. 

• Ramifications for Damage To The Property- The security deposit is a coveted check amount that both landlords and tenants use for coverring any future mishaps within their rental unit. If there is any damage to the rental property, the security deposit is subject to being decreased upon the return to the tenant at the end of the lease. Or if the cost of the damage exceeds the amount of the security deposit when they come in, let the tenants know that they will not get it back at the end of their lease. Also, let the tenant(s) know they are responsible for their guest's damage to the property or injuries from being inebriated in the party make them liable as well.

• Set A Benchmark For Neighbor Complaints, Or Else- Living in off-campus housing means that there will be neighbors next door, or in the apartment unit below the tenant holding the party. The best way to let those neighbors know that a party will take place on a certain date is to give them a couple days notice. Also make sure that you and the tenants give the neighbors your phone numbers to call or text you if it gets too loud. If the tenant doesn't adhere to multiple complaints, make sure that you get the Boston Police Department to come and tell everyone to leave. The purpose of this BPD Party Line is to give residents direct contact for reporting the occurrence of loud parties, and to have them come to calm down the noise.   

• Social Media - Be the "cool" landlord that is privy to social media to connect with your tenants. Some landlords are deemed as either "slumlords" for their lack of maintenance on call for any problems their tenants experience. And there are some other who are considered "helicopter" landlords that never go away, hovering over their property as much as they can. Or some seem out of touch with their tenants for a lack of communication skills. Certainly you want to ensure your return on investment, but being the "cool" landlord can help you keep your tenancy rate high, with great referrals from your current tenants to potential new ones via social media. That way there is a trail that can be tracked online about your property and landlord reputation.  When the landlord and tenant are in good standing with one another, this could lead to positive reviews in the future when the tenants decide to move to another rental apartment or condo, and require a positive review from the previous landlord. 

Final Thoughts: Have you dealt with a tenant who partied too much?

Have you dealt with any tenants that refuse to comply with the terms of your lease regarding guests or parties? Or if you are a tenant, how did you handle your relationship with your landlord to make sure that you can stay on an even keel with your landlord, roommates, and neighbors in your rental unit? Tell us your thoughts. 

10 Things You Need to Know About Living In Boston

What It's Like to Live In Boston

Living through all four seasons within the Greater Boston area is similar in order to be consider that you have a true cultural understanding of the city has to offer. The city natives are quite geocentric, proud to be from The Hub while scoffing at the thought of living in any other city in the world.

So what makes Boston so special to the native and transplants here? 

The purpose of this article and quasi-checklist is to breakdown how you know you're like a Boston resident and native. Maybe you have dealt with a rude bus driver, train conductor, or fellow commuter on the road that yells obscenities to other on the road like they are terms of endearment to excuse themselves as they illegally pass you on the right.

Either way, we have plenty of characteristics that detail what it's like to live in Beantown. 

Some of the Traits of Living In Boston

1. Acting Too Bold For The Cold - The Boston area only gets warm weather about 4 out of 12 months of the year, normally during the spring and summer seasons. Even during that short third of the year may have cool temperatures that do not define those seasons outright around Beantown. So to continue with our routines, Boston residents look to upstage Mother Nature by withstanding harsh cold winds, and act like it's warm when they see sunshine amidst mounds of snow in the sidewalks and streets. Gymtime during a State of Emergency? No problem to Boston residents. Patriots Championship parade during the beginning of the worst winter on record? Check! Going to nightclubs without coats to look more macho or more feminine with just spaghetti-string shirts and high-heels with no leggings to protect yourself from the searing winds within the narrow streets of the Financial and Theatre Districts? Yes, indeed. Whatever it takes to look more "cool," even if cool matches the sub-freezing temperature weather.

2. Bostonians Know Too Much About Sports - Renowned cultural critic and author Noam Chomsky once stated about the way the American voting system is set up, it leaves little room for change anyway by its citizens. But instead, they resort more to having their expertise in sports as an alternative upon their apathy of politics and world affairs. No other city is this notion more apparent than Boston. Whether it's communicating in-depth with our Beantown dwellers about the bullpen of the current Red Sox roster, acting like we just left a funeral of a loved one when the Patriots lose in the Superbowl, whining about the Celtics bench and their front office decisions, or Bruins fans flooding MBTA trains and doning their jerseys on the way to the TD Garden arena at North Station, Boston has always been a sport junkie's heaven. And it will always keep that trait in play.

3. Academic Intellectuals - Perhaps you can cite Boston nearing the top of the annual polls of all the major U.S. cities as the "smartest" cities on the map. The Hub is the East Coast center for intelligensia, with the constant influx of  millions from across the globe to enroll in the hundreds of colleges and universities to socially mobilize themselves for their careers and socioeconomic status. It's also a hotbed for tech startup companies businesses started by graduates of these same academic institutations within the city limits, and even tech and Internet juggernauts Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have recently launched divisional offices in Cambridge's Kendall Square area, Also, if you are not a scholar that rubs shoulders with Harvard or MIT professors, other renowned authors and intellectuals who live or frequently visit the city. 

4. Loud College Parties/Students - In continuum of the previous bullet point, young adults have the most buying power in the city of Boston because most of them are college kids, and 60% of them are coming from out-of-state to attend college or work. The city caters to events and these kids, which gives them the sense of entitlement once they are out of their parent's house to live in close quarters with their peers on or off-campus. When you get kids together, music, and alcohol and other party elements, this garners loudness and obnoxiousness at times that older residents just have to deal without choice.

5. Living in the Allston/Brighton Area At Least Once - Being the backyards for some of the city's biggest colleges and universities B.U., B.C., Northeastern, Harvard, M.I.T., and Bentley to name a few, the Allston/Brighton area is a haven for young adults to live off campus or live and work in their nascent careers in their respective fields. The rent is high, but those areas are abundant for multi-family houses, or apartments with multiple floors that can fit multiple upstarts at once. Thus, moving into and out of this particular area is a rite of passage for any young Boston resident.

6. Lack of Parking Options- If you are a commuter, especially during this past winter 2015, you are well aware of the parking plight throughout the city. We have all witnessed meter maids on the prowl for would-be parking violators, or double checking your choice of parking to beware ourselves getting an orange envelope on your windshield by the time you return to your car. And these meter maids are faster than phantoms to get their quotas fulfilled and making you subjected to reluctantly add your own funds to the city revenue.

7. Rudeness of "Massholes"- If you don't know the colloquial form of Boston speak called "sarcasm," then you may have trouble being happy in this town. Or you will learn that being happy in Boston means acting not too happy for too long, or one-upping a peer or counterpart feel lesser than on their knowledge or experience in a certain topic of discussion. You may have a friend from Boston that you can't tell is either being spunky, or downright condescending in how they speak to you. Or if you are a new resident driving within the Boston city limits, you better get used to hearing a honked horn from the cars behind you a split second after a traffic light turns green if you front the line of cars in that lane. Counterintuitively, rudeness can be considered part of the modus operandi of the city resident's communication lines to stay open.

8. Vowel-driven Accents - The local "slanguage" of Boston is unlike any other city on the map. Boston native say words as if they are speaking with their mouths wide open in a dentist's chair. "Pahk" means park, "Ott," means art, "khed" is a term of endearment (even by middle-aged adults to others within their age group), and "Cawpley Squayah" means Copley Square to give a few examples of the nasal tones in the local form of speech by the Boston faithful. Also, Boston residents love to sing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me," or AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" at a local townie bar.

9. Commercial/Residential Real Estate Developments- If you look around in areas of Boston's downtown area, the Seaport, Allston area, or college campus, there are almost just as many contracts for commercial and residential condo development as corporations that fund new buildings and establishments in Las Vegas. And it will continue as Boston will keeps changing its skyline to match other expensive cities to live within like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington D.C. as more industries develop, thrive, and make boatloads of profits.

10. Neo-liberalists Embracing Diversity But Afraid To Address Diversity- Since the 19th century, Boston was always perceived as a progressive-minded city. Yet the city has had a long history of racial undertones that have geographically segregated the city populations ethnicities since that same time period. But all that is changing with the upswing in diversity in the city's population that are now causing a balance between the city's white versus people of color. Today, it's easy to become a neo-liberal in attempt to exonerate oneself from unconscious prejudices against people who may not physically look like you. Those who deny their recognition of a person of color's skin, it makes you wonder if they really are blind, or just choose not to educate themselves about the benefits of diversity by acknowledging the similarities as well as the differences from their own cultural customs. 

Final Thoughts on Living In Boston

What else make your feel like a true Boston resident? How long have you been living in Boston, and what did we miss on this list of Bostonian living traits? Tell us your thoughts.