Cirrus Apartments — Local services in Ashland

TLDR: DO NOT RENT FROM PROPERTIES OWNED BY Inland Residential Real-estate Services serving as managing agent for Boston MSA Multifamily LeaseCo. LLC.

On top of your usual lack of response, personal accountability or general human decency as has unfortunately become the norm among landlords. (Tenets are the customers you know...) You'd better pay your rent on "time".

Cirrus uses RentCafe as their portal platform. RentCafe allows scheduling of auto payments between the SECOND (2nd) and the FIFTH (5th) of the month. So if you set up an autopay for the first option available which is the SECOND (2nd) of the month your rent will NOT reflect as paid until the THIRD because of processing time. With me so far?

If you have ANY balance remaining by the morning of the 4th? Expect a 30 day notice to quit shoved in your door at the last possible minute of the day. No courtesy call. No check in. No general human decency or regard to previous payment history. Nope just a very scary legal document shoved in your door.

The property management team wouldn't want to cause undue stress and emotional trauma to their tenants right? Because it's not scary to get a formal looking legal document with NO instructions on 'curing' the non-payment. It in fact says that NO payments made will be accepted as waiver of the notice. (If it is even a nonpayment, because again it takes a full day for a payment to post. But since they don't CALL or make any communication attempt first how would they know if you paid in full on the same day? Better just to waste the paper and cause stress to your customers right?)

"Oh but it does tell you your rights unreasonable angry customer" they cry, "right there it says cure rights outlined in MGL Chapter 186" Mhmm. There are 31 sections. Now luckily if you aren't terrified out of your mind and scrambling over this notice three pages later it does tell you which sections specifically, 11 & 12, this is also the first place where it says you are actually NOT being evicted and this notice is the start of legal proceedings of which you have the right to. There is no date to cure by provided in the Thirty day notice shoved under the door.

So surely the lease must have some clear guidelines? Nope. Okaaaaaay. So say this happens and you DID pay your rent in full the same day you received the notice. You can call the office and clear this up right? Six calls with no answer and a few hours later you send an email trying to get SOMEONE to answer. Finally you get a single sentence response saying they tried to call (you have no missed calls or voicemail….) you call back and ask for the person who emailed you. Not available, but at least the person your finally talking to can look and says yes you paid your rent in full “You can ignore the notice.”

What? This very scary, very legal looking document that says in bold all over it to not ignore it and you are going to be evicted, that notice? “Yup.” she goes, “Just ignore it.” You, are uncomfortable with that resolution, surely there should be SOMETHING in writing. Or at least an apology for the scare and the stress? No of course not.

Now, you try to avoid this for the next month but because RentCafe is a perfectly functional platform it doesn’t take into account if you make a partial payment with an auto-payment scheduled so it overdrafts your account. You get another scary notice. HOWEVER this time you can’t pay online. Strange. You go right over to the office. You pay, they can’t print a receipt.

You ask if the ability to pay online will be restored. “Hopefully” and a shrug. This feels very much like changing the locks to keep you out, or a way to force you into nonpayment again.

This is a horrific way to run a business, shame on whoever decided to use these notices as an intimidation tool. Give a damn courtesy call. You can’t even charge a late fee until 30 days after rent was due maybe give a little grace to your customers. I don’t pay for the service of being scared over the prospect of becoming homeless.

I had to cut a lot out, but I hope I...

The good:

Apartments are spacious and renovated. One of the few places to find a 2 bedroom plus a den that could be used as a 3 bedroom. They are dog (and cat!) friendly. Close to the T (once they finally finish working on it). Dog parks are nice and so are many of the people and dogs that go there. We moved in sight unseen from across the country and were pleasantly surprised. At first.

That’s really all that’s good.

The bad:

Oh boy.

When we first moved in we were impressed with the cleanliness, the units, and how quiet it was. We had to talk to management about the accessible parking situation, but the people in the office at the time did handle it.

Since then I think we’ve had at least 3 property managers and high staff turnover. It’s just gotten progressively worse since then.

The property is disgusting. Cigarette butts, dog poop, food wrappers, food (whole slices of pizza!) beer bottles and soda cans, rotting groceries, and a lovely pile of vomit on the sidewalk that has slowly been disintegrating in front of building 5.

The trash situation is also awful. Think exploded poopy kitty litter and food trash all over the ground by the trash compactor and a mountain of trash bags on the ground every time the compactor breaks. You have to carry your trash to the compactor yourselves, so those with mobility needs may struggle here. Ironically they also have no doggie pick up stations in the front only in the back. I always pick up after our dogs regardless, but that may explain the amount of unpicked up dog poop everywhere.

Package situation is a disaster. Packages go one of 3-4 places IF they are delivered to you in the first place, you may or may not know where, and there are a lot of packages being broken into and items being removed as well as lost packages. Then there’s the food subscription boxes that sit and rot for MONTHS. There is a Factor box in the entry if building 4 that has been there for about 3 weeks and it reeks.

Then there’s maintenance. Again. Brace yourselves. Our building had a gas leak. We reported the smell. We thought they had come like they said they would (the smell was in the stairwell/hall not our unit). But no. They did not. The fire department showed up at our door 24 hours later about the gas leak. That could have blown up the whole building. No big deal.

Work orders are either never answered or they take weeks or months. We have a leaking sink that occasionally leaks all over the floor. Still hasn’t been fixed.

We have family members with accessibility needs and requested to transfer to a lower level unit and that has never come to fruition despite there being units available online. So with the gas leak plus fire alarms going off on 1-2 occasions since we’ve moved in and having to have those with mobility needs in our household crawl down from the top floor it’s not been a fun time (and also, in a real fire, we’d probably be dead).

Oh then there was the wild brawl in building 5 (probably the source of the vomit) where there were multiple cop cars and several arrests followed by people wandering around until 2am. Plus the unattended wild kids that scream and bang on walls until midnight.

The rent is ridiculously high (and has it gotten higher?) and so is utilities. I think the solar panels are just for show. We are considering what options we may have moving forwards, but our lease isn’t up for a while and we would need at least 3 bedrooms in our price range.

No one actually responds to phone calls or emails. If they do, it’s an automated response thinking you’re a new prospective tenant. Half the time the offices are closed so you can’t tell to someone in person either. Sometimes I think the property is just running itself. Slowly....

Another Update* The review below mine about our property Regina is completely false and she clearly told said person to write that.. Since Regina’s management there has been a surplus of overloaded trash on the property, have you SEEN the trash compactors and the pile ups of trash always? I have multiple photos. The hallways in the buildings are not clean, there is dog waste, pee and stains all over. The packages being secured??? Now that’s a joke. I’ve had hundreds of packages of mine stolen, with proof of delivery photos. I reached out to Regina about the situation and she didn’t care and gave me the cold shoulder. In fact, the stolen packages and property has gotten so out of hand that I needed to file a police report with the Ashland PD. She was not “warm and welcoming”. Myself and many other residents were consistently victims of her nasty attitude. She does not belong in this line of work. I’ve been here for 5+ years. I’ve seen wonderful management from Wynn, and ever since Inland took over it has been a nightmare. Did she handle more than others? Yes to some degree. But to post outright lies about her being wonderful in the review below is comical!! I speak for myself and MANY other residents here, we are glad Regina is gone.

Update** I have reached out to the office over seven times regarding a maintenance issue that was started in my apartment in the beginning of May and well it is now August and I have reached out several times, and they still have not come back to fix the problem nor have I even gotten a response. None of the amenities are working or up-to-date. Grills have been non-functioning since Covid and they have yet to fix them along with machines in the gym area and they haven’t cleaned the pool in years as there is a rust line in the pool. Weeds are growing like crazy on the green area in the pool so children can’t play and adults cannot lay out or relax and half of the pool area. These are amenities your residents pay for consistently, yet we are not being fulfilled with the promised amenities we were given in our leases. This is a breach of many residents’ if not all residents’ leases and people are going to stop paying rent since what Cirrus is doing is literally illegal. The concrete parking lot has a rust issue and if it doesn’t get fixed the entire ground is going to split and break open. I have a list of many other problems throughout the property. GET YOUR CRAP TOGETHER CIRRUS!

I will start by saying Megan Marison is by far the worst property manager I have ever come across and I am so glad she is no longer here. No clue how she even got the job in the first place. Myself and hundreds of other residents feel this way. I have been living at Cirrus for 4 years now, moved in when it was owned by Wynn. There was a night and day difference between the Wynn ownership/staff and when Inland took over and brought Megan in. The property used to be sprawling with flowers, incredible landscaping and decorations. Once Megan came along all of that was gone. The grounds and amenities have never looked worse. There is no sense of community since she arrived. When there is destruction to property, cigarette littering, dog waste littering etc she simply did not care. Packages were going missing which has never ever been an issue my entire 4 years at Cirrus. She was unresponsive, insensitive and simply incapable of doing her job. I truly hope now that she is gone they bring someone in to revive the place and bring the charm back to Cirrus which was once a great place to live. I will say the maintenance crew has always been great however, it seems to be our apartment unit is deteriorating the longer we stay which I hope...