From Yelp! 4/3/2007; Laura M
What a cool realtor. We didn’t end up renting any of the places that they listed, but probably would have if someone else hadn’t beaten us to the one we really liked. I dealt with Mike, who is the self-described “owner, President, CEO, Big Guy, HeadCheese” of the company and is really, really nice.
After seeing some listings on Craigslist for apartments, I emailed the address included in the ad… and didn’t get a reply. So I called to ask about them, and found that much more useful. In general I learned that it is better to call than email a realtor, since they run around so much they’re rarely at a desk. Still, for a business dealing so heavily with Craigslist, I think a better email response would be beneficial. Not everyone likes or is willing to deal with phones, especially if they’re apartment hunting on the sly at work, like me.
After making an appointment for a Saturday afternoon, we met Mike at the office in Newton Center (right next to the T!) and he described the places we’d be seeing. He also gave us a really useful map of Newton, which is a huge town, and that helped us narrow down the “villages” we were looking for. I noticed that he was only showing us cheaper places, perhaps because the original ad I called about was for a pretty cheap apartment. I told him our price range went higher than that and he was flexible enough to add another, more expensive place to the list of units we’d be viewing that day.
All three apartments we saw were really nice. We liked them all, but one had no laundry (a deal-breaker) and one was really cute but smaller than we wanted. The third one was a big 2 BR with a glorious kitchen and huge living area… I’m still a little sad that someone else rented it before we could (we didn’t make up our minds fast enough, and by the next weekend it was gone). Mike knew all about each apartment he showed us and actually lived in one of the houses we looked at, so he was able to give lots of information and answer all our questions.
I’d definitely recommend NCA to anybody looking for a place in Newton or the surrounding towns. They don’t seem to always have a ton of listings, but based on the places we saw I’d say that they look for quality rental units, and the customer service can’t be beat. Compared to some of the other crappy realtors we had to deal with during this process, speaking to someone so friendly and helpful was a breath of fresh air.
