HighRise Boston Review
A Back Bay real estate brokerage's Airbnb management side line that we could not verify firsthand, because highriseboston.com blocks every automated access attempt with a Cloudflare security wall.
Pros
- Operates as the short-term-rental arm of an established Back Bay brokerage at 30 Newbury St, Boston — a real, findable local business, not an anonymous listing, per consistent address and contact details across Yelp and Birdeye directory listings
- Search-indexed content on its own /airbnb/ page describes a full-service scope — listing and price management, check-in/check-out, key exchange, cleaning, laundry, maintenance, professional photography, and listing optimization — covering the core tasks most owners want handled
- Reportedly uses a performance-based fee framing (“we don’t make a cent unless you’re earning,” per indexed page content) rather than a flat retainer charged regardless of bookings — though we could not confirm this wording directly
- Being a brokerage first means the same company can also help an owner buy into or sell out of a specific downtown Boston building — a combined capability most single-purpose STR managers don’t offer
- Carries a 4.0-star average across 10 reviews on Birdeye for the brokerage generally, including at least one specific, positive, named account of working with the company's agent Don
Cons
- highriseboston.com and highriseboston.com/airbnb/ both block all automated access — confirmed with a direct fetch and separately with a full browser session, with every attempt returning a Cloudflare “Sorry, you have been blocked” page — so nothing about pricing, services, or terms could be verified on a page we opened ourselves
- The only fee information available is a wide, second-hand 15%–35% commission range (or an unspecified flat monthly fee) pulled from search-engine snippets, not a rate card we could read directly — there's no way to know your actual number without calling
- No BBB profile exists for the company; the sole similarly-named BBB listing, “Highrise Consolidated Services, LLC,” is a confirmed-different, one-employee property-management firm at a different Boston address with no Airbnb or brokerage connection — a real mix-up risk for owners searching on their own
- No portfolio size, founding date, or STR-specific team information is published or findable anywhere — our pre-vetted scope for this company lists it as “undisclosed”
- The only independently-readable reviews we found (Birdeye) are about the brokerage's general apartment rental/sales service, not Airbnb management specifically, and include multiple complaints about the phone not being answered; Yelp returned a 403 error on direct request and Trustpilot has no profile at all, so there is no independently verified review content about the STR service itself
HighRise Boston is the Airbnb and short-term-rental management side line of High Rise Realty, a Back Bay real estate brokerage at 30 Newbury St in Boston, MA (listed as “High Rise Boston” on Yelp and Birdeye, and “High Rise Realty” on its own homepage). The brokerage's core business is buying, selling, and renting luxury high-rise condos and apartments in downtown Boston; short-term-rental management is marketed as an add-on service at highriseboston.com/airbnb/. We're flagging this upfront because it shapes everything below: highriseboston.com actively blocks automated access. Every attempt we made to load the site — using two different tools, on both the homepage and the /airbnb/ page — returned a Cloudflare “Sorry, you have been blocked” security page. Most of what follows about the company's own claims is therefore drawn from search-engine-indexed snippets of its pages, not content we read ourselves, and we've flagged each instance accordingly.
How it works for owners
Search-indexed snippets of HighRise Boston's own /airbnb/ page describe a full-service offering: managing the listing and price, check-in and check-out, key exchange, cleaning and laundry between guests, and ongoing maintenance, plus professional photography and listing optimization. The same indexed content describes a performance-based pitch — the page reportedly states the company doesn't “make a cent unless you're earning” — and cites a fee of roughly 15%–35% of reservation revenue, varying by property size and location, as an alternative to a flat monthly fee. We want to be direct about the limits here: we could not open highriseboston.com/airbnb/ ourselves to confirm this wording or fee range firsthand, so treat both as reported, not verified. Contact details that surfaced consistently across third-party listings put the business at 30 Newbury St, Boston, MA 02116, with a phone number of 617-356-7332 and an agent named Don ([email protected]) associated with the brokerage.
What we could verify
We made a genuine effort to get past the block. We requested both highriseboston.com and highriseboston.com/airbnb/ directly, then separately loaded both URLs in a full browser session rather than a simple fetch. All four attempts returned the same result: a Cloudflare interstitial titled “Sorry, you have been blocked,” stating the site's security service had flagged the request. That's a real access barrier, not a one-off glitch, and it's the main reason this review leans on third-party sources instead of the company's own pages.
On Birdeye, which we did load directly, High Rise Boston carries a 4.0-star average across 10 reviews. The reviews we could read are mixed and concern the brokerage's real-estate/apartment-rental side, not Airbnb management specifically: one reviewer wrote “Excellent service! I was very pleased to work with Don of High Rise Realty. My apartment was very easy and quick,” while two others complained about reachability — “No one answered the phone. I wonder why” and “Why no one is picking up my call I called so many times.” We found no review content anywhere specifically about the Airbnb-management service.
We also searched for a Better Business Bureau profile and want to flag a mix-up risk directly: the only BBB listing that surfaces for a similar name is “Highrise Consolidated Services, LLC”, at 11 Elkin's Street in Boston — a different, one-employee property-management LLC with no mention of Airbnb, short-term rentals, or real estate brokerage anywhere on its profile. We opened that BBB page ourselves and confirmed it is not the same business as HighRise Boston. We could not find any BBB profile for the company this review actually covers. Yelp lists a “High Rise Boston” business profile at the correct Newbury Street address, but the page returned a 403 error on every direct request, so we could not read its reviews ourselves. Trustpilot has no profile under highriseboston.com at all.
How it compares to our top pick
HighRise Boston's real pitch is structural: a Back Bay brokerage that already knows specific downtown condo buildings can also run your unit as a short-term rental, and can help you buy into (or sell out of) that building in the first place — a combination most single-purpose STR managers don't offer. But for an owner comparison-shopping on fees and track record, there's almost nothing to compare against: no rate card we could confirm firsthand, no disclosed portfolio size, and a site that blocks the exact kind of due-diligence check this review is trying to run. One Fine BnB publishes its management terms rather than gating them behind a site that blocks outside verification. See how HighRise Boston stacks up against other local and national operators in our full best Airbnb management companies ranking.
Bottom line
HighRise Boston is a real, findable Back Bay brokerage with an Airbnb-management side line, not a fabricated listing — but it's also one of the hardest companies in our roster to verify independently, because its own site blocks every automated access attempt we tried, and no BBB profile exists for the actual entity. If you're considering it, treat the widely-indexed 15%–35% fee range as a starting point for a phone call rather than a confirmed number, and ask directly about current portfolio size, whether your specific condo association allows short-term rentals, and how Boston's owner-occupancy short-term-rental rules apply to your property before signing anything.