Currents on the Charles

My wife and I have lived here for about 11 months now and we have had a bad experience and wouldnt recommend living here. We got pretty unlucky with our upstairs neighbors (ie, they wake us up at 1,2,3, or 4 am on a consistent basis due to music playing, yelling, and stomping). Management hasnt been helpful in rectifying the issue. They have issued 2 lease violations and conducted an apartment inspection, but nothing has changed. They also only did this after my wife pursued the issue practically every day asking for updates. We spoke to the property manager Kelly, and she was overall extremely unpleasant and not understanding about the issue. We left the conversation feeling like Kelly cared more about the precedence a lease violation due to excessive noise would set, rather than our daily experience. It also felt like Kelly minimized our experience to fit the narrative she had already decided on before our conversation. My wife is pregnant so on top of the normal pregnancy exhaustion, she literally cant sleep a lot of nights due to the noise. The day to day manager is nice and we like him but Kelly is so unpleasant. Overall this place is just trying to be something its not, it is so far from a luxury apartment. Packages are stolen, trash build up is insane especially on the weekends, and the fire alarm has gone off multiple times in the middle of the night. We ignored the negative reviews when we moved in and have regretted it so much.
Mar 6th, 2024

UPDATE 2024: Issue still exists and many residents have reported the issue to management. Nothing seems to have been fixed and no communication from management regarding this issue. +++ Before moving in, beware that the advertised EV charging stations do not work every winter (whenever temps drop below 50F). Issue has been reported to management several time, and multiple service tickets have been filed over the years, but no action was taken to solve the issue, and no action plan is communicated to the residents. If you have an EV, do not count of this residence charging stations during the winter, which is when you need to charge the most. Also the parking garage is nasty, with dead rats and birds everywhere. Again management was informed but no action was taken that was communicated with the residents. So try to avoid the dead animals and dreadful smell on the way to your car. That's of course after you pay the parking garage fee with no other outdoor parking solution available other than limited street parking.
Feb 18th, 2024

I would not recommend living here to anyone. It seems like they try to market these apartments as luxury but they are far from it. The fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, for no apparent reason. On the weekends, the trash build up in the lobby and trash rooms is truly disgusting. Packages are constantly stolen, we have had 4 go missing and every other resident weve talked to has had the same issue. Management has tried to put up signs redirecting deliveries to the main door, as well as installing a new mail delivery locker system but things have not gotten better. In my personal experience, my upstairs neighbors have woken me up a total of 35 nights out of our lease so far. They consistently yell, play music, and practically do jumping jacks upstairs anywhere from 12-4 am. Management was made aware of this issue when it started happening and did the bare minimum to rectify it (and would only do so when I hounded them about the issue). This included issuing a lease violation (nothing changed), conducting an apartment inspection to ensure there is sufficient carpeting within the unit (there was and nothing changed), and now issuing another lease violation from their legal department (well see if this makes a difference, although I doubt it, and why did this take 3 months of sleep deprivation to do?). While we have no problems with the day to day manager, the district manager, Kelly, lacks the basic empathy and understanding you would hope someone in her role possesses. Kelly cares more about what should be done than actual tenant experience. When we sat down with her to discuss terminating our lease only 3 weeks early, our experience was belittled to someone being heavy footed and we were told we didnt provide sufficient videos to deem the noise excessive (even though we have sent countless emails at 2am which included time stamped videos of the noise). While we understand tenant noise is outside of managements control, you would hope that when you pay ~$3000/month in rent, youd be able sleep though the night in your own apartment, and if there are interruptions, youd hope management would be able to do something about it, and if they truly couldnt, you would hope they could provide you with a shred of empathy or understanding.
Feb 15th, 2024

Oh my lord. This place is AWFUL. UDR is a disaster to work with, and a terrible place to live. The employees are liars, they do not respect their tenants (or former tenants). The building is a disaster. The grills never worked, the fire alarms went off constantly (I cant wait for the team to quickly respond here saying they are fixed yet Im still waiting for my third email response from two weeks ago), packages are frequently stolen, the lever to get into the garage is often broken leaving you stranded to park and yet you still get charged your parking fee! Not to mention the pool to concrete ratio is a joke and the only rules they ever care to implement are when you leave enjoy the smell of smoke in every entrance! Stay away from this place. They will lie and steal your money and even after MANY attempts to rectify the relationship due to the concrete evidence that UDR is wrong, they will still try and send you to collections. Go to Riverbend down the street in Watertown. Its a much better community. :) Im looking forward to chatting with you, UDR.
Jan 21st, 2024

I've been living here for about 7 years now, and I've noticed a decline in the quality of how things are being handled. First off, there are some annoying little issues all around the building that management seems to be ignoring unless someone makes a big fuss about it. It's frustrating because this place is supposed to be a luxury residence, but there are things that have been broken for months or even years. Even the entrance system took forever to get fixed, and the residents had to take a detour just to get inside for months. Then there are more serious issues, like the fire alarm system that keeps acting up. They say they fixed it, but it still happens occasionally, and we're not even informed unless there's an actual alarm. The management should inform the residents whether it's an actual fire alarm or a malfunction. This is just not right and puts the residents' safety at risk. And the management started nickel-and-diming the residents and kept bringing in third-party companies. The business center printer used to be free to use. Now, to use the printer, residents need to use a separate system that charges money. They've replaced the package system a few times, and now they want to charge $3 per day if the package isn't picked up within three days. Sure, there should be a rule to prevent the package room from overflowing, but this just seems far too extreme, especially when they've already started charging the residents with a package service fee that never existed before. I don't see myself renewing the lease next year.
Dec 18th, 2023