CMS Partners

CMS Partners LLC is a Cambridge outfit with two sides to it: an active Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration (HIC 170328) backing a record of 27 permitted renovation projects — kitchens, bathrooms, additions — across Cambridge, Malden, and Brookline, run alongside its own portfolio of rental apartment buildings under owner Christopher Shachoy. The Better Business Bureau lists it as around 30 years in business. The contracting side has an older but strongly positive written record. A run of Angi reviews from 2004 through 2007 describe a general contractor (named as Scott Renner) who held regular progress meetings, built and stuck to a construction schedule, and kept clients in the loop through full and partial home renovations. The rental side reads more mixed and more recent: some tenants writing in 2022 and 2023 credit the maintenance and tenant-liaison staff with quick repair turnaround, while others describe aging units, an unresolved heating complaint, and one case where a tenant was told to pay three months' rent to break a lease early despite offering a replacement. Before calling, it's worth knowing the company carries a C+ from the BBB over an unanswered complaint and isn't BBB accredited. A 2026 Reddit thread on the rental side echoes the same split — real frustration with ownership, paired with praise for the maintenance crew — so ask current renters or clients how the company is running things now rather than relying on the decades-old renovation reviews alone. For a kitchen, bathroom, or addition project, the active state registration and the permitted project history are the reassuring signals; just confirm a recent reference given how dated the contracting-specific reviews are. Anyone considering renting from CMS should weigh the maintenance responsiveness against the pattern of unit-condition and lease-term complaints before signing.