Give and Take in A Great Area
Pros
Rent Stabilized. Beautiful Apartment. Utilities included. Picturesque landmark street. Waterfront access on street. Never one rodent or insect issue. Extremely helpful leasing office! Everyone on the team. buildings have video intercoms to address visitors in lieu of doorman. Responsive maintenance team Repairs may not get done immediately, but typically within two business days. (this, depending on the scale of urgency and labor needed to solve your particular issue.) Building public areas and sidewalks are cleaned just about every business day. Pet friendly.
Cons
Chile… Literally, no warnings to façade construction. Not one printed piece of paper anywhere. Waking up to someone on your fire escape Hammering* not scraping paint off of metal or casually standing in your window will occasionally happen. Work from home? Someone with post-traumatic stress disorder? Doing your laundry on weekends can be risky after 5pm. As card machine and W/D can malfunction so no one will be there to reimburse your loss. machines only accept 10 and $20 bills to refill card. Shared walls are thin and so are the floors and ceiling. (Typical Pre-war) You will be able to guess what your neighbor is watching if they’re the above average volume type. I can tell that my neighbors below are Marvel fans. Pick your apartment placement and shared walls wisely. There is no immediate due process or consequence in place if a neighbor harasses you short of physical attack be it verbally, violent intimidation or through ill conduct. Building cleaning staff consistently leaves entry doorways open for whatever reason. Contributing to packages stolen, entire mailboxes being broken into or stumbling across a random person camped out in a dark corner of the stairwell or right in front of your apt door be it a homeless person seeking shelter or the drunk and disorderly guest of a neighbor will be a given considering there are no cameras. Rent receipts are left on the door knobs of tenants. This is for everyone to see. Including marked envelopes of tenants who are late on their rent… one such cleaning attendant once handed me mine with a lit joint on his hand. After having carried all of the tenant documents to the roof to smoke, said joint. This person was given that responsibility. No need to mention the management office as these are all issues that are handled poorly by the management office. Who, depending on your reason for communicating, can often be a little too familiar or just flat out dismissive and smarmy.
Pre-war building, all inclusive rent, not the most secure
Pros
Maintenance staff was always amazing, nice, responsive and helpful. Team in on-site office very helpful - these two things alone rate pretty high. Rarely heard my neighbors, some interesting apartment configurations. Utilities included.
Cons
Mail system - there is a mailroom but poor management. They send packages back on you pretty quickly; carriers also leave mail in hallways leaving it to get stolen or misdelivered frequently. Don’t expect help from USPS. There have been sketchy neighbors and it’s so quiet on the street it hasn’t always felt safe. Avoid apartments facing the alley - no natural light. No modernization / no dishwashers, microwaves, etc. I called the (off site) management company once about my rent and had my head bit off, they wouldn’t even entertain a conversation- and I wasn’t calling to argue rent.
Advice to the owners
Would have felt better with more of a security presence in the area - felt vulnerable at times. Work on office staff (at management company, not the on-site office which has a great team)
/-73.949637,40.770453,14/640x640@2x?access_token=pk.eyJ1Ijoib3BlbmlnbG9vIiwiYSI6ImNsYjNmMjVwdzBjeHgzd21wYmJmZDB0eGYifQ.XZvZCOh51yXuDBE-I3Bg0A)