Gateway at Malden Center Apartments

We went to this apartment around June 2015 to check for availability. The leasing agent in the office refused to help us find available apartments saying it was too early for Sep 1^st move-​in. Instead she told us to fill in application now and come back in July to check for apartments. We asked her what if there wouldn’t be any one bedroom apartments available by then. She laughed it off and guaranteed that there would definitely be apartments available for Sep 1^st because the apartment complex was huge and people moved in and out all the time, blah blah blah. So we believed her and filled the application.
Now it’s July and we are told that there aren’t any apartments available. Gateway suggested we either take a studio, a two bedroom or wait until mid Sep.
Thank you Gateway for making promises you can’t keep and screwing us over.

Ok, where do I even start with this place? I can’t in a billion years believe this kinda place even exist. Everywhere I go is just messed up, it seems nobody in their office cares about what happens in their building! Leaves and dirts are just everywhere in the lobby, and the pool is just disgusting! I doubt anyone has ever been there nor cleaned it. The rooms are just way beyond what you can stand for at its price. There are rooms that haven’t been checked for years. As soon as you walk into the room you can already smell how many years it has been not cleaned. Don’t even let me start with how bad the carpet, the bathroom, and the kitchen and basically everything about this place, because I don’t want to start using bad words on my comments. It’s just dreadful! And disgusting! If you find yourself alright with all of that and still so eagerly looking for a bad day, why don’t you take sometime to speak with the people in the office? I’m sure you will find it amazingly easy to ruin your day. Just rude and blunt, ignorant and arrogant! Let me say something in my own language:“这个地方就是一坨屎，而且这帮物业狗还种族歧视，一个个都跟大姨妈停不下来似的。如果你是中国人，他们会毫不在乎的乱说你们的名字，念着连stereotype都过时的念法叫你。话语中充满鄙夷，别说国人，我在等的时候也没见他们对别的人有多好，以为自己是什么东西！” Never go to gateway, don’t let it seal your happy life away.

20 summer St. APT#403 is so horrible!!! I already upload many pics on the Unilocal.The office said, they never do sublease, but they can add and remove name from the list. what’s more, this room is rented from 2007. Means resident who lived in this APT never give back this room to landlord!!! In Addition, they do sublease for 8 years… So, they didn’t clean up this room for 8 years. (who lived 403 leave their poor sofa, rubbish, useless book, TV, and smelly socks in the living room) The office told us they have no right to check what’s happening in this APT. And they do clean up until resident give back the room. Irresponsible? YES!!! If u guy interested in The APT of hell, u must visit APT#403 in 20 summer St.

Package got stolen after delivered to the leasing office.

Melissa and Tiffany are both really great and very friendly!
Happy I live here… I really enjoy the pool and gym… You can not beat the location either I can walk to the orange line in 10 seconds. I will be staying for a long time at Gateway.

I’ve lived in Gateway for about a year, and although it’s not the nicest apartment complex I’ve ever seen, I don’t really have many complaints about it.
Pros:
— Great staff, very friendly, never had many issues with dealing with them– and when I did, they quickly resolved any and all issues.
— Dig the location. Malden has its pros and cons all on its own, but being right across from the T and a very short walk from the grocery store was really nice.
— Undergrad and pet friendly! Finding a place like this was surprisingly difficult. It was so nice to walk into Gateway and have them say, ‘Yes, undergrads and pets are both allowed.’
— Barely any noise. Can’t hear the neighbors through the walls. Sometimes, though, maintenance would wake me up with their early morning drilling on the floor above.
— The apartments themselves are spacious and clean. I never felt cramped, nor did I feel like the apartment was gross. The apartments aren’t stunning or anything, but they’re up to date and clean.
— No complaints about the neighbors– everyone here seems to mostly keep to themselves.
— Washer and dryer in the room– they’re very noisy, but I much prefer having them to not.
— Quick elevators, and two of them to boot! This may seem like a weird thing to mention, but my last apartment only had one elevator on my end of the floor and it was so slow you actually had to plan it into your morning commute, so having elevators that move at normal elevator speeds was like a godsend.
Cons:
— The fire alarm goes off every single time the oven is turned on… Sort of annoying, but luckily it’s easy enough to make it stop by fanning it and opening a window.
— Weird parking system. The parking lot is handled by an outside company that charges you per night your car is parked, unless you get special vouchers from the leasing office. I don’t have a car myself, but when people stayed over, it was always a bit of a hassle to deal with the parking situation.
— Trash shoots only, no recycling shoots. Instead, you have to leave your recycling out in the hall on collection days, and bring cardboard things down to the dumpsters. The trash shoot rooms are also kind of gross, they’re very small but there always seems to be something on the floor.
All in all, I enjoyed living at Gateway and if I could, I’d live here another year.

I was looking for a clean and proper place to live. When I found Gateway in Malden, despite the pricey rent, I was sure that I found what I was looking for. Until I found mice! 6 mice in a row is a sign of a low maintenance and serious health danger!!! The property manager did not do anything except for putting some sticky traps. All I got from him was unresponsiveness! That place is a serious danger to your health. No sleep and no rest in 1 month because of all those squeaking mice that run around the apartment. Immensely disappointed!!! High rent, no more security and on top of that — a mice family that reside in my kitchen!!!

So now that I’m doing my own apartment searching, I realize that people write reviews for apartments for two reasons: 1) because they are angry and unhappy with the apartments or 2) because they like their apartment complex and need to defend it against the negative reviews.
So I lived at Gateway for 3 years. I’m now moving to Nashua, so I figured I’d write as comprehensive of a review as I can, listing the positives and negatives in fun little bullet points, before I leave for good.
+ You live right by the T. Literally a stones throw (if you step out of the building and throw a stone, assuming you have a strong arm, you’ll hit the station).
— The apartments that get Eastern exposure (which is rough enough since the sun is right in your apartment early in the morning) also get the hear the train rattle by 50 times a day. Avoid those apartments if you can. I thankfully lived on the opposite side of those apartments.
+ The apartments seem pretty soundproof. I never had issues of stomping neighbors from above or loud music from neighbors next to me.
— Now this is sometimes unavoidable by staff, but sometimes the neighbors you get are just insufferable. My floor seemed to get them all over the past 3 years: neighbors who didn’t believe in the trash shoot and would place their trash in the hallway (although management did try to resolve this by placing a notice on our floor about fines for doing that).
— Now I find this to be a HUGE negative, since I’m hippy-​eco-​friendly. They do not tell you about their recycling policy. Here, you can leave your recyclables by your door Tuesday morning and someone collects them. But they don’t tell you about this like they tell you about how to pay rent or do service requests! I had to track someone down to find this out.
+ I love being in Malden Center. It’s close to the Stop & Shop, a few restaurants, downtown Malden, Malden High. I like being in the center of everything, especially since I don’t own a car.
+/​-​Rent-wise…it’s cheaper than living in Boston, bar-​none. And there are other «luxury apartments» in the area that are even more expensive. But it’s still a bit of a drain on the pocket.
+ Indoor pool, hot tub, and a fitness center where the treadmills et al have TVs attached to them. You get spoiled rotten on things like that!
— HOWEVER, the hot tub seems to always be broken, the pool can get pretty murky sometimes, and the jacks where you plug in your headphones on the treadmills et al are broken on at least half of them. They started breaking around the end of my first year there and they’ve yet to fix them.
— Thank God I lived on the third floor, because the elevators seem to have a mind of their own. I’d like to meet the guy who programed the software behind the elevators and give him a piece of my mind.
+ Zipcars live in the garage of the apartment. This is PERFECT for someone like me, without a car but with a Zipcar membership.
+ The maintenance people are super friendly. Every incident I ever had where I needed something fixed or repaired was done quickly and efficiently.
+/​-​Management is a mixed bag. The turnover rate there seems to be fairly high (I’ve seen at least 3 people leave in 3 years) and sometimes you’ll get a very competent and friendly person, and sometimes you’ll get a well-​meaning but not-​that-​competent person, and sometimes you’ll get someone who is just plain uninterested and even rude.
— Now this is the biggest negative, and I’m still unhappy about this: Around the 2 ½ year mark, we missed rent. Complete accident, just slipped out minds to pay by the first of the month. This was something that we had never done before; before that, we had been diligent by getting in our rent in time. And what do we get? On the 15^th of the month we forgot to pay, we get a threat of eviction notice. There was no, «friendly reminder — you haven’t paid rent!» There was no, «you have not paid rent — please do so to avoid A B and C.» No, eviction notice. We bring it down to the management to say that this is a heavy measure, especially for a long-​term resident who had never missed rent before. And they were very flippant about it, saying that’s just what they do. That’s just not a good way to go about business. I was almost hysterical when I first read it because I thought they were legit kicking us out.
So overall, I am happy i lived here. It was a nice place to be, but it definitely wasn’t perfect. But, in the end, no place is. It all depends on what flaws you’re willing to deal with and which ones you’re not.