Marc Roos Realty

Almost every review here is about a person, not an office — Gabriella, Sadie, Eric, Olivia, Arezou, Catherine. Marc Roos Realty works out of Kenmore Square at 484 Commonwealth Ave, handling apartment rentals, home sales and property management, with listings clustered in Back Bay, Fenway, Brighton and the surrounding Boston neighborhoods. The company says it was founded nearly 30 years ago, and its About Us letter is signed by Marc Roos. BBB lists him as owner of a seven-person business incorporated in Massachusetts in 2002, with a start date of 1996; BBB itself carries no rating for the company and says it lacks enough information to issue one. Google tells a fuller story: 4.7 stars across 269 ratings, with reviews going back several years. What recent renters describe again and again is speed and reachability — a tour scheduled quickly, the application in hand the same day, someone answering while the unit is still available. One renter this March found a listing on Zillow, toured soon after, and got the Back Bay unit against multiple applicants. Another in April was moving to Boston for work with neither partner living in the city and late into the rental season. On the management side, a July reviewer described two years in one of their properties and is heading into a third. The complaints deserve reading. In June, a renter touring an apartment said the agent told him the Massachusetts rule putting the broker fee on the hiring party "didn't exist," then that he would have to hire the agent himself and split the fee with the landlord who hired him — a specific account of fee terms being misstated at the tour. Across the older history, other one-star reviews question the office's listing practices, and one describes going unanswered after making an offer below asking. The most recent stretch is 16 reviews with a single negative, so this is not the current pattern — but the broker fee is the thing to nail down before you tour. If you're renting in Boston, especially from out of town or on a compressed timeline, this is a busy office whose recent renters keep saying the process moved fast. Ask which agent you'll be working with, since both the praise and the complaints attach to individuals, and get the broker fee — who owes it, how much, what it covers — in writing before you sign anything.