Beautiful living room from hell
Pros
Location! Prospect Heights is a fantastic area and there are a lot of great places to eat near by. It's also close to several subway stops and Prospect Park which is huge. I generally get a "community" feel when walking around and that feels nice. Neighbors! The neighbors in the other units are friendly and generally quiet. We've never had any issues. Social Media! There's a good amount of space in the apartment. Large bedroom, decently sized office, large living room / kitchen. The huge window looks awesome. If you are a camera you will love this apartment as it looks fantastic. If you're a mammal please continue to the "cons" section because there are some non-aesthetic issues.
Cons
It's not worth the price and they raised the rent $300 for the new tenants. The price says "luxury apartment" which is justifiable on paper as there's a good amount of space but most of it's unlivable (see below) and just looks good in pictures. Additionally, if management was super responsive and proactive it MIGHT be worth the price but that's not the case (see below). - Management does "their best" to respond to issues and, while they are very kind people, don't verify that anything is actually fixed. The overwhelming majority of issues I brought up were never addressed other than "we'll look into it" and never hearing back. I can't tell if they're incompetent, lazy, or just pretending to be so they can save money and not address problems. They "accidentally" put an extra charge on my account and took months of me bugging to remove it. From the beginning the said it was an accident and they would remove it but never did until kept nagging them after months. I often found myself in the position of BEGGING for help because they would say that they would help, but not follow through. - Greenhouse living room. The massive window is beautiful but the living room/kitchen easily gets to 95° F every single day in the summer making the room unusable for most the day and part of the evening. This happens on sunny days in the spring and fall as well. There is a commercial AC in the window but be prepared to pay an extra couple hundred a month to run it. - Freezing living room. Ironically the massive window is not insulated and the living room/kitchen ranges 50-70° F in winter. If you enjoy wearing your winter coat inside all winter this will be the perfect place for you. - It's loud. Vanderbilt Ave is awesome BUT it's also a main street for cars and trucks (delivery trucks and large construction equipment). I wake up to trucks idling outside the bedroom window every weekday. Some days the exhaust goes right into the apartment which also sucks. There's a stop light right outside and traffic often backs up so there's a lot of cars beeping as well. - The usual people who are hired to fix things in the unit are condescending, not competent, and have historically made problems worse. They prefer "Bandaid fixes" which means that the majority of the time it will quickly break again causing further damage and annoyance rather than just doing it right the first time. It's a waste of Management's money and my time. Side note: I'm pretty sure one of the property management people is actually the landlord for the building based on some public record research I did. The financials are suspicious. Don't trust them.
Advice to the owners
Start paying competent people to do a job right the first time rather than paying for them to come back over and over. Stop doing the absolute bare minimum.
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