Condo Media - November 2011 - 42

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

Greater Boston Properties
Full-Service Residential Management for Greater Boston — and Beyond
by Pamela Schweppe uppose you were a trustee of a condominium association in Lowell or Quincy, and you were in the market for a new property management team. Would you consider an outfit that calls itself Greater Boston Properties? Don’t let the name fool you. Greater Boston Properties could very well be the perfect fit for you. Located in a charming brownstone in Boston’s tony South End neighborhood, the company primarily served properties within the city limits when it was founded 34 years ago. But much has changed since 1977, according to the firm’s second owner and current president, Scott D. Wolf, CMCA, AMS, PCAM. Among the changes is the fact that Greater Boston Properties has expanded to the point that larger suburban properties actually outnumber urban Boston ones among the more than 100 associations in the company’s management portfolio. “We want people to know that we’re not a small, inner-city association management company any more,” says Wolf. “We have a huge presence in communities like Methuen and Lowell, Randolph and Quincy. We can go anywhere. If someone from Natick is interested in us and it’s the right fit, we’ll take it.”

general management, financial reporting and budgeting, routine and 24-hour emergency maintenance, and more. Beyond that, the management firm takes a proactive look at ways to help associations save money, by both reexamining current expenses and also engaging in preventive maintenance. “We believe in looking at day-to-day

A Full Menu of Services
Greater Boston Properties provides a full range of management services for its condominium clients, including

operations,” Wolf says, citing as an example an association his firm began managing last year. Greater Boston Properties discovered that, even though the association was taxexempt, it had been paying taxes on utilities. Wolf’s team contacted the utilities and was able to realize a refund of $15,000. Online services also are a must in 2011, and Greater Boston Properties’ IT services allow clients to look up balances online, create work orders, review condo documents and insurance information and much more — something that’s much appreciated by Carol Sullivan, chair of the board of trustees at Canal Place 3 in Lowell,

Mass. “I like the website — it was one of the selling points,” she says, referring to the board’s decision to retain Greater Boston Properties’ services two years ago. More than that, she appreciates having a property management company she can rely on. “Our previous management company never returned calls, and they spent our reserves down to zero,” she says. “The other issue is that they were hiring vendors who were their buddies, so they were overcharging.” She cites as an example the association’s previous cleaning company, which was charging $2,100 per month, “and it wasn’t even clean,” she says. When Greater Boston Properties came in, however, they rebid all the contracts — including finding a cleaner at “less than half the money,” Sullivan reports. “They saved us thousands of dollars.” Parking was another issue at Canal Place 3, where a parking pass is included as part of the monthly condo fee. “Passes weren’t getting turned in when people moved or rented their units,” Sullivan says. “But Greater Boston took that issue on and saved us even more money. Not only that, but unit owners have told me that Greater Boston gives much better and prompter service. They’ve done an outstanding job.”

Communication Says It All
As the Canal Place 3 experience shows, Greater Boston Properties is committed to premium customer service, a philosophy Wolf has embraced since the start of

Condo Media - November 2011

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