There are certainly reasons for living here, but the positives are generally about location and not about the building itself. Overall, I would just say that this place is so incredibly overpriced. Why anyone ever want to pay that much money for an apartment, I do not know. We moved here from CT, and had one day to find a place with a realtor. Our biggest concerns were being on the T and being very pet friendly (we were getting a golden retriever puppy, so we could not rent anywhere with size restrictions or that required pet references or training certificates--obviously an 8 week old puppy isn't trained yet!). This place sure seemed perfect and it was very nice...it just cost wayyyy too much money.
Positives about the place:
1) It is very pet friendly (although when we were leaving, they were trying to start enforcing the 40 lb. limit for dogs, which would have excluded probably 60% of dog owners who were living there only because it's close to the only building in Brookline that accepts big dogs).
2) It has on site parking garages (for an extra $200/month/space!!!!!!!)
3) It has nice balconies
4) Can't beat the location--heart of Brookline, right on the T (although the C-line is slower than a snail)
5) Has A/C.......but....they turn the whole building's A/C on and off at the same date, and we had several 90 degree days both in May before they turned on the A/C and in Sept. after they turned it off...try having a renter with severe allergies who can't open the windows and a new puppy who is very heat sensitive melting in a 90 degree apartment while your A/C is not only off, it's actually still set to HEAT (that's right, you can't actually turn the heat all the way off until the A/C comes on, so on those 90 degree days, you have to deal with heat coming out of your vents).
6) I guess the gym/pool are positives, but we never really used them (both are small, pool is hardly ever open)
7) Maintenance was always pretty quick and effective for us...I've read lots of complaints, and maybe we just never had any really big issues, but it wasn't a big deal for us.
Negatives:
1) EXPENSIVE! $2200 for a 1-bed'! And the rent was actually going up before we left!! PLUS you have to pay for parking! It seemed reasonable when we moved in, but then we realized that you can get the exact same service, and as nice a place (often with free parking) through a private landlord for about 2/3 the price. At that savings, you can afford to join a gym that's a lot nicer than the one here anyway!
2) You have to pay for the laundry...seriously, $2200 a month and you still have to pay $3 for every load of laundry' Plus, a bunch of the machines were often not working.
3) The doormen (doorpeople')...originally we thought this would be a bonus, but the truth is that you don't need a doorman in Brookline--it's ridiculously safe. We found most of the door staff to be excessively nosey and often quite annoying, like when they would consistently give us "advice" and criticisms on how to train our dog (especially when we're paying more money to take obedience classes from a trainer who actually knows what they're doing!).
4) Some of the construction is a bit shoddy...the walls are this crumbly plaster, so that we couldn't hang anything on them, and when we tried to install towel racks in the bathroom (since there were none), the wall just crumbled away beneath our screws---what'!
5) The elevators are terrible. There are only two elevators, and one was usually tied up by people moving (with that many residents, you'd think they would have a freight elevator for movers). Then they were tiny...so often, I'd be trying to take my dog out, and I would wait up to 10 minutes for an elevator to come, only to have it be completely stuffed full of people...guess we'll be taking the stairs anyway (which was a problem, because young dogs aren't supposed to take a lot of stairs and golden retrievers quickly get too big to carry).
6) We had a horrible lady bug infestation in both the fall and spring...was told it was normal for the area, but I've never heard of anyone else having that problem and it was truly disgusting...I felt like I was crawling with bugs from seeing 50 lady bugs walking around my windows/ceiling.
Basically, we quickly decided to move after one year here. We miss the area, as we chose to move out to a more suburban area in order to have a yard for our dog, but we could have found a much more reasonably priced apartment on Beacon St. had we wanted to. We now have a bigger apartment with 2 bedrooms, free off street parking, free in-unit laundry, A/C installed/put on whenever we feel like it, a back yard, no doorman, and a landlord who responds just as quickly (if not quicker) to any maintenance needs...and we now pay $1450/month instead of $2400 for a 1 bed/parking. I recommend the Brookline area to people, especially if they don't have pets and can therefore actually look for the best deals, but I always recommend that they look for apartments through smaller or private landlords, rather than a large community like the Barclay House. At a place like this, you are just a person providing a very large check every month...you think are getting a lot of amenities in return, but your apartment and lifestyle really aren't any better or different than they would be in a (much cheaper) non-luxury apartment.
Maybe if a place like this had enough trouble filling their apartments, they would lower their rates to be more appropriate to the market. If my apartment here had cost even $1600 with parking included, I would probably still live here.

User Responses
From: bostoncityliving	Date: 04/23/2009
Thank you for the great review!

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