Realtor is usually someone who sells houses or condos. If you mean the same as a real estate agent, then yeah, they're typically the same thing. Technically there can be differences, but you almost never need to worry about those (usually who owns the agency, and if everyone is licensed on their own, etc).

For the follow up, sure, you can try. I've found apartments without them before. It's just a pain in the ass filtering out every single agent/broker listing.

And for the final part it's worth noting you don't always have the choice if an agent is involved. Tenants can and usually are required to pay the broker fee, even if it's the landlord's personal broker. No one likes that as a tenant, but unless you want to start a ballot innovative or something then you'll either suck it up and pay the fee if the apartment is worth it, or keep looking for that ideal apartment without a fee.

How much is rent in London?

For Boston, it'll vary wildly. Studios can technically be found for as cheap as $1500/month if you don't mind living on the far flung exurbs of the metro area and you're particularly lucky. It's usually $2000/month and up for living on your own. Can be $2500-$3000/month easily.

Haha, I thought the same thing last time I saw the list of names. Turns out it's just an old white guy with a corporate office job according to Google.

The more interesting names I remember seeing were I think the guy who owns a couple of Dunkins in the Cambridge/Belmont area and I want to say a few other local business owners beyond the standard coo coo for cocoa puffs lady that runs a certain gluten free bakery on Mass Ave. The dunks guy was the funniest, since that Dunks on Mass Ave literally has a private parking lot clearly visible from the street and I highly doubt anyone ever actually had to street park to get their dunkies.

EDIT: ah yes, from this article you can find the list of folks who joined in the lawsuit. Of note were:

• A guy who ran for City Council on combating climate change of all things (obv it's those people on bikes causing massive amounts of pollution!! not the massive 18 wheelers delivering to fucking dunks or the sea of tail lights driven by suburbanites who didn't want to deal with the red line and shitty bus connections...)
• Country superstar Toby Keith's evil twin who's a corporate office worker in Cambridge
• some random names I don't recognize, though maybe one's an attorney in Quincy
• The guy who owns City Paint on Mass Ave.

Maybe the other lawsuit had the guy who owns some Dunkins in the area; though I def remember seeing a quote from them somewhere and laughing when I looked them up.

EDIT2: oh yeah I forgot there was this second lawsuit with a longer list of names, though it was this article that noted in one of the lawsuits there was an affidavit by the owner of the Dunkins in North Cambridge. The quote from him is hilarious:

> “where he attests to a devastating loss of business … with the notation that he doesn’t think he can survive in business if that bike lane isn’t adjusted to permit on street parking,” Zaleznik said. “I don’t know the last time I heard of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Massachusetts going out of business or threatening to go out of business … if they can’t make it, I would suggest that almost no business can.”

Clearly he forgot he owns a small parking lot that can easily handle the traffic from a handful of people running in for 5 mins to buy a cup of coffee and a dozen donuts for their office breakfast.

> Ok, that makes sense. I thought it was strange to have to pay the brokers fee before signing the lease...

It's uncommon, but allowed. I would:

• verify the agent is who they say they are
• verify they actually work for the given agency
• verify they want the check written out to the agency and not themselves
• decide if you're willing to risk $80/person, or if you want to push back on those fees. you can negotiate, but if you do so, you may lose out on the apartment. flexibility is unfortunately required in this market. discuss with your roommate(s) on what you folks feel comfortable with.

> As for the listings and application fees, I feel like it's normal for housing available to students to ask for application fees... Maybe this isn't the case for apartments that do not allow students, but all my friends who have already moved off campus have paid application fees of ~$50.

Within MA you should be aware that application fees charged by a landlord are illegal.

Brokers can however charge them. I'd still say it's fairly uncommon in my experience to see them actually charge you for that. Typically they just lump it into the broker fee, since it's already $2000+ anyway and additional charges for $50/person or whatever just adds more paperwork for the broker to deal with.

It may be more common for students working with a real estate agent to pay these fees though. You guys have less credit, less or no income, and are typically higher risk due to being young and all. It may make sense for brokers to charge these fees in order to cover their asses or because landlords in college areas have higher standards and want to know the person renting from them has jumped through enough hoops to make it less "risky" for them.

Ultimately it's up to you whether you pay the fee or not. You can negotiate or find another broker who isn't charging these fees. You could also negotiate that the upfront payment only be required if your application is accepted first. Really depends on what you're comfortable with. As long as you've verified they're a legit broker, it's unlikely they run off with your money. It may be tied up for a bit though, so you should be fairly serious about this apartment and leave plenty of time to find other options if this one falls through.

Good luck! 🤞

Yes, landlords cannot. The AG's page here is pretty clear on this.

The OP is dealing with a real estate agent though, who must follow the State regulations on broker fees found here. The rules for brokers are extremely lax thanks to decades of lobbying to protect their prized broker fees.

> most of the ones ive seen online/in person have an application fee though. is it legal in MA to have an application fee but it just has to be refundable? > >

Illegal for landlords to charge this. See:

• Payments at the start of tenancy - from The Attorney General's Guide to Landlord and Tenant Right
• How Much Can a Landlord Charge - from MassLegalHelp

Not illegal for brokers - see the State regulations on this: 254 CMR 7.00: Apartment Rentals

> i'm also a current undergrad student- could that factor into them wanting such a high amount upfront since there are probably 20 other students fighting for the same place?

Yes. They want to weed out any student who might trash the place. That is likely why they want both an app fee and a "cosigner fee". I'm also assuming you're renting a large unit for $3,455/month in a desirable neighborhood near a major college. Broker fees are typically 1 month's rent, but they can vary since the legal regulations on them are light thanks to real estate lobbying. I'm assuming you're renting at least a 2 bedroom unit, perhaps 3 or 4 even with at least a few other people. In which case it's pretty typical for the landlord to want as much money upfront as possible plus to use a broker to deal with the logistics of showing the place and vetting applicants.

Note that under MA Law the landlord themself can further ask for these upfront payments:

• The first month’s rent
• A security deposit (which can not be more than one month's rent) to cover the cost of any damage to the apartment beyond normal wear and tear
• The last month's rent (the month that will turn out to be the tenant’s last one in the apartment, not necessarily the last month on the lease)
• The cost of a new lock and key for the apartment

You should be prepared to fork over upwards of 4 months rent upfront to the landlord/broker combined. Usually 1 month to the agent/broker and upwards of 3 months to the landlord to cover security deposit, first month's rent and last month's rent. Yes, this will be a shit ton of money. Make sure you have checks and the money ready to go if you're serious about this apartment. Get your roommates on the same page too, or have 1 person pay and everyone else Venmo/PayPal/whatever that person. YMMV based on the given agent and landlord and how many different checks they're willing to deal with. If you want to secure the place, you should be fairly flexible. That or keep looking until you find a landlord willing to do whatever you want.

> A non-refundable application fee (the $50/person here) is also illegal in MA.

This is true only for landlords renting directly to tenants. The OP however mentioned a brokers fee and an agent/broker. Under 254 CMR 7.00: Apartment Rentals the broker is allowed to charge pretty much any fee they want to, so long as proper notice is given. Since the OP mentioned this was provided via email, we can assume they were notified. They don't have to agree to this, but that doesn't make it illegal.

As for this bit:

> It's normal to pay that much AFTER your application is approved, even after approval but before signing the lease. But it's not normal to be asked to pay that much before your application has even been approved.

Pre-pandemic, sure. It was certainly not the norm to be asked to pay a lot of upfront fees like this.

Nowadays it's not uncommon. This is not the first thread I've seen on this, nor will it be the last. A quick Reddit search of this sub plus /r/bostonhousing will turn up results. Hard to say just how common it is, but it's not unheard of.

The only real red flag I see is a "fee for cosigners", which I haven't heard of before. But since I'm not a college student, nor do I have low credit, it's possible I've just never seen a broker ask that since I would never need a cosigner. It may be more common for new grads or college students. The OP could clarify with the broker what exactly the two fees cover, and if it would be possible to make them totally refundable since the application isn't yet approved. Whether that's worth it or not depends on how much the OP values $80 for themselves, and whether their roommates are willing to risk $80 each.

The other thing the OP should do is:

• confirm the broker is legit.
• confirm the apartment is actually for rent.
• confirm who the landlord is via GIS
• verify that all the amententies they want are actually available (parking, laundry, etc)

It's not clear how the OP found this place, so it's totally possible they're being scammed. But if they did their homework, then nothing too crazy about this. Just (now) typical housing crisis stuff.

I go skiing by myself all the time. It's tough to line up schedules with family and friends. I just play some music on an earbud and ski whatever I want.

Benefits to going alone too:

• you can stop wherever and whenever you want.
• this is especially nice if you want to hit up the NH liquor stores on the highway off 93 in Hooksett, or grab coffee, or food or whatever 🍻🍷🍾
• you can ski / board whatever you want
• double black diamond? Fuck it, SEND IT! ⛷️🏂
• cruiser day? Go for it. 🥽
• you can also take the singles line, and ride with random people. Lots of cool conversions that way. I even ran into the same dude with his kids at two mountains on two different days, which was extremely funny and completely unplanned.
• the singles line is also wicked fast since you don't wait with a group and you hop on the first chair with space for 1 person 🏎️
• I've done 20+ runs a day with this time savings
• plus most of my friends aren't doing 20+ runs a day anyway and want food/coffee/beer after a few runs

The only downside is you can't force your friends to drive part of the way. But my car is fançy and has lane assist/adaptive cruise control so for most of my trips up 93 I don't feel too bad after driving for 2+ hours each way. There are also ski buses that hit up various mountains, so you could potentially just jump on one of those if you aren't up for a long drive.

TL&DR: SEND IT!! ⛷️🏂⛷️🏂⛷️🥽

You could sell it on Facebook/Craigslist/etc.

I've sold two bikes that way. One was actually broken - was a mountain bike that had one of the rear struts broken by a low root I didn't see on some single track. Some lady still paid me like $200 or so for it since she had a friend who could weld it back together and she figured her son would love it since it was a pretty decent bike (I paid $1500 for it new back in the day, sold it cheaply to get it out of my parents garage and recoup a bit). The other bike was functional and I got like $300 for it. It was an old Dicks Sporting Goods MTB that I had converted into an urban explorer bike during the beginning of the pandemic. I eventually ended up buying like 2 other bikes and didn't need it anymore. Some guy off Facebook wanted it since it had a 3x7 and a rear rack for cargo.

Just list it at whatever you think will sell, or go high and let people low-ball you enough until you get a reasonable price. Put the proceeds towards your next bike. 🚴

Exactly what I mean. The access to bike paths that go everywhere is pretty killer for the Arlington area. And it's only going to expand as we see more bike lanes and paths like the Mass Central open in a few years.

Extremely important note due to their job being in Kendall.

Kendall Sq is immediately next to Lechmere, where the Green Line Extension begins and where the Somerville Community Path extension begins too.

The Somerville Community Path directly connects to the Cambridge Linear Park/Path which connects to the Minute Man. And it connects to the Cambridge Crossing paths. A few painted bike lanes make it possible to get into Kendall fairly comfortably, and Cambridge is likely to add protected bike lanes around there in the future.

They're working in Kendall Sq tho, so it's worth noting the Somerville Community Path connection the Minute Man makes it totally possible that they could do a bike commute to Kendall during the warmer months and even year round if they're hardy enough.

Ebike/escoter could make for a solid alternative to driving to Alewife and parking and chancing the Red Line is a POS today, and probably similar time to driving. Don't usually have to pay to park a bike either.

Alewife also has bike cages, so they can even do a shorter bike + transit commute.

Probably quite a bit. November 2021 is around the peak for Bitcoin prices and it was relatively high for others too. Assuming it was running for a few months before, you'd probably have made a decent chunk with a dozen or so computers mining 24/7 for "free".

$18k of electricity is also just the running costs. The photo in the article shows at least a dozen computers of sorts, each of which likely required a few hundred to a few grand in computer parts to successfully mine crypto. I'd assume they still profited after purchasing/acquiring all of the computers though, since the electricity costs are usually the killer for crypto mining.

IDK what computers/devices they were using though. NiceHash says some of the top ASIC miners today could be making $29 USD per day. The top one is like a $7k device though. But assuming this guy dropped his life savings in this scam, maybe he managed to generate a few grand a month. Since $29 * 12 * 30 is like $10k, so maybe a few months of secret mining got him his investment back and he pocketed a chunk of change. And that's with the current crypto pricing slump - Bitcoin has dropped by like 3x since November 2021. So maybe this guy made upwards of $30k/month if he had the right mining hardware and the price of crypto in his favor.

Sure, with any safety feature some people are bound to ignore it. Heck maybe someone crafty enough just cuts a cord or unplugs a sensor.

But I'd bet you could greatly reduce the number of uncleared cars for a pretty small amount of money overall.

Just make it like the seatbelt reminder - a quiet reminder at first, then a really annoying beeping.

I legit buckle up even to shuffle cars around so I don't hear that the beep beep BEEP BEEP ^(BEEP) BEEP BEEP BEEP.

I imagine people with 15+ minute commutes or drives would quickly just clear the snow vs suffer through endless beeping.

Of course, this would cost auto makers $2 a car, so the car lobby will fight it and no politician will support it without risking big political donations. 🫠

Sorry, just saw this.

Under $1000/month in a 3 bed is pretty good deal (almost too good to be true depending on the exact amount), so I would probably be cautious. Really depends on the number of roommates (if 1 bedroom is a couple, totally possible), location (some locations have a lot more $3k/month 3 beds), bathrooms (just 1 bathroom? yeah, no one wants a 3 bed with 3+ roommates in that situation lol), etc.

I would probably try to meet them in person if possible. It's harder to fake a room + ID in person vs over Zoom/Facetime. Plus it should let you meet the roommates and see if you're really interested. Ask for the landlord's contact info too and confirm they're legit. Faking all of that should be decently hard, and give you some comfort.

The median price in East Cambridge (closest filter option on Hotpads) is around $3750. I used this search which removes subleases and rooms for rent, and requires photos/price so it should somewhat legit, but keep in mind real estate agents and potential landlords fuck with listings all the time to inflate the cost here or there. This is also the median price for all housing types - homes, apartment buildings, double/triple deckers, town houses, etc plus all bedroom/bath combos. If you're after a particular style, you can get a better answer by filtering. For example, studio apartments are more like $3000/month typically. 3 Beds are more like $4750/month. Etc.

YMMV if you have roommates, an SO, etc. Subleases can be cheaper in the short term too, and may give you some flexibility to hunt around more.

As for whether a post is legit or not, you'll need to:

• see if it's by a landlord or a real estate agent
• if it's the landlord, you can go to the Cambridge MA Property Database and look them up, or look up the address you're interested in. If they don't show up, you'll need to verify they're actually authorized by the landlord to lease the place to you. Double check if it's a relative, property manager, etc. You can also compare to the Middlesex County Registry of Deeds: https://www.masslandrecords.com/MiddlesexSouth/default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1 which is sometimes more up to date, especially if the property sold recently.
• if it's a real estate agent, Google their firm and see if they're legit or not. Do they have dozens or hundreds of positive Google/Yelp/whatever reviews? Or are they a fly by night or newer firm? You'll want to be extra cautious if you can't find much info on them.
• in either case, verify the address on Google Maps is legit. Drive, walk or bike by it if you can to confirm it still exists today and didn't burn down yesterday. Double check Airbnb listings to see if any photos look similar - a common scam is someone rents an Airbnb, then posts a video walk through of it and claims to be the landlord/agent/property manager/etc.
• if everything checks out, physically see the property in person for one final "yes, it's real, and yes, this person can show me the place". It wouldn't hurt to still confirm the person you're talking to is who they say they are via IDs/business cards/name on the door/etc.

It's hard to fake all of the above; very easy to fake a listing or video though. If you aren't able to physically see a property too, consider using a licensed broker - one with a lot of reviews and recommendations might help you look from afar with less chance of getting scammed if you look on your own. Double check their fee(s) and confirm ahead of time how it works. Gl.

I think GLX is still there - at least North of Lechmere. It does a weird turn towards Cambridge Crossing, which I think is useless since Lechmere is already basically serving that area well enough. I believe they took over the Lowell Line ROW for that, totally unnecessarily because you'd probably still want at least a single track Lowell Line to serve points north of Woburn on this map.

It does an interesting branch at North Station too, which there's some historic precedence for - the Orange Line used to do that same thing back in the early 1900s. I believe it was elevated though; not sure if this map assumes that or tunnels.

GLX has some disappointing slow zones though at times. It seems like it bottle necks around Lechmere with the Union Sq Branch. And the end of the Line at Tuffs was slow asf the first time I went; hopefully they've figured out how to get trains in and out quicker.

It's lovely overall though and I wish we had extensions like it planned every 5 years to actually get some good transit going. And a big investment in ongoing maintenance to ensure we don't end up shutting down lines for a month like we did last year.

Hmm, possibly. MA 128 is 57 miles long according to Wikipedia. The longest subway route in NYC is 32 miles long according to Google. I don't think the OP did the entire length of 128, since it cuts over to Salem instead of going to Rockport. So it might be a stretch to make the Yellow Line truly subway like (5-10 minute headways) but there's a number of Commuter Rail Lines that are that long (Fitchburg Line is 54 miles long apparently) that have hour or so headways. I imagine you could get 20 minute headways without totally breaking the bank, which might be useful enough for some folks.

I agree it's not a great investment, but in the Grand scheme of things we spend billions on highway maintenance each year (last I saw, something like $1.5B through MassDOT) so if we wanted to divert some of those resources, or increase taxes to fund more transit, at some point a Yellow Line would make some sense. But not until we've gotten the inner line running, and all the various extensions to 128 in the first place. Even then I don't know if running rails would make a ton of sense. Rapid Bus service might make more sense and be a lot cheaper. Just take 1 lane on 128, make it a bus lane, add some cameras/cops for enforcement, and run buses every 15 minutes. That would probably be totally affordable, especially since bus stations are dirt cheap and buses aren't terribly expensive.

> The yellow line seems a bit much, with that much line extension and intersection already, it’s probably better as a few local buses. > >

I think in a world where we actually do all the inner transit projects they've listed (Red, Orange, Green and Blue Line extensions outward via rail / trail ROWs, light rail conversion of the Silver Line, Commuter Rail turned into a proper Purple Line via Electrification and Signal modernization, etc) the yellow line becomes extremely valuable. Someone who lives in Waltham but works in Burlington no longer needs a car at all. They've got access to downtown PLUS the suburbs. And someone in Salem could get to Burlington without a car too. While still having access to downtown, and potentially cutting through via a Blue/Red transfer if they wanted to go to the South Shore.

128 appears to be the routing of the Yellow Line, and it's constantly congested. Being able to take, idk, 20k cars minimum off that roadway and put them onto heavy rail of sorts would be killer. The lost of 2 lanes of motor vehicle traffic would be more than made up for by the reduction in traffic.

> If they just extended the mattapan line and E line to Forest Hills, the city would be much better connected. Orange line out to Readville/West Roxbury would make sense and would be at least a little bit realistic, since there’s already right of way and track down those routes.

A lot of rail ROWs exist for these proposed extensions, so really this isn't too unrealistic. The unrealistic part is funding it all and convincing millions of car owners that transit is actually a good thing for traffic and providing alternatives to driving. It's slowly catching on, but there's enough resistance to make this an uphill battle and not many Governors/State officials will bother with that.

Separate terminals, separate lines -> not much point to joining them. They're walking distance anyway, and if we improved bus/bike connections plus gave both the B and C lines dedicated ROWs you wouldn't really care which one you got on.

They have that included as the inner Silver Line, which appears to be based on the T's own Urban Ring proposal from the mid 2000's. You can spot the similarities with the T's proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MBTA_Urban_Ring_map.svg

They did an inner ring - it's based on the classic MBTA Urban Ring proposal from the looks of it. It's the Silver Line basically that runs from the Airport to Wellington to Union to Central then to BU / Longwood / Ruggles / etc.

You can see the similarities in the MBTA's proposal here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MBTA_Urban_Ring_map.svg

I want to say they basically copied it. Maybe there's some slight differences I'm not noticing - like the lack of a proper Airport station on their map, vs the T's proposal would actually have one in that little loop de loop.

Yeah that's a pretty key infill station. Lots of potential for transit oriented development around that area with lots of under utilized land.