Decent unit, WORST management
Pros
The building is located right down the block from the 127th street entrance into the 125th street A/B/C/D train stop, so you could get literally anywhere in the city in under 20 minutes. A lot of the people on the block have been here for generations and, if you take the time to get to know them, they can be very friendly and love to tell stories about the neighborhood from "back in the day." The apartments themselves are railroad style, two units per floor, with southern and northern exposure, so plenty of room to fit your needs and plenty of natural light throughout (assuming you're on one of the higher floors). The unit is perfect for roommates as the mixture of bedrooms and common spaces creates a layout that gives everyone plenty of space so you don't feel like you're on top of each other, which can be gold in a city like NYC.
Cons
This management team was easily the worst I've dealt with in 20 years of renting. The unit was advertised as rent stabilized and I even asked multiple times during the showing just to confirm and was told the whole building was a stabilized building, but when it came time to sign the lease, I was told there was a "mistake" and that the building was not actually stabilized. I knew this was incorrect because a friend of mine has lived in this same building for almost a decade and has shown me her rent stabilized lease, but any attempt to better understand what happened was met with an argumentative stance that we were "already receiving a deal" and that the apartment could be rented for much higher if they wanted. Unfortunately, I had already broken my previous lease to move into this building and didn't feel like I was in a position to argue, so moved forward with the lease signing. I did order a rent history after moving in and it looks like it was indeed deregulated several years prior, but there was no way to tell if it was legally done or not and that doesn't change the fact we were roped into the unit under false pretenses. Communication with management remained strained from that point on. Any time we emailed with issues, they were slow to respond and, when they did, they were often argumentative, condescending, and dismissive to the point where we started taking care of issues on our own the best we could to avoid having to speak with them. One issue that comes to mind is we had a rat (not a mouse) living in our walls and it took them 3 months to finally send someone to take care of it, which consisted of pouring poison into the walls and letting it die in there. For months after, we could smell the rotting corpse of the rat every time we walked into the apartment and, when we called about it, they told us the smell would go away after the corpse "mummified" from the hot and dry conditions of the inside of the walls. The real killer, however, were the bedbugs. To make a long and painful story short, we dealt with the issue on and off for 2 1/2 years as management never treated the whole building at one time - just unit per unit as complaints came in, so the bugs would just migrate throughout the building. It was bad enough that we would even see them in the stairwell during the day. When the bugs finally made their way back to our unit after our initial spray treatment (2 1/2 years prior), they finally agreed to heat treat our unit as well as our next door neighbors at the same time, but our faith in their ability to address the issue in a manner that wouldn't result in its return was lost and we ultimately broke our lease and moved out after treatment was completed.
I can’t recommend
Pros
There is a dish washer in some units, laundry machine in some units. There is a screen on some units.
Cons
There are so many that I’m just going to bullet them. Keep in mind I live in a “renovated” apt at ~$2500 per month..: - the door bell is cheap - no elevator - walls, and floors are not flat/straight - cracks in the ceiling - walls are cheap for mounting. (Shake when closing doors) - they use light fixtures use light bulbs you can’t easily fix/replace - cheap appliances - washer and dryer combo is nice but has no lint filter (is that even safe?) - the heater stinks bad - they use sensors to decide when heat should be turned on, but it seems broken. When it is really cold, it’s off and when it’s hot, it turns on the heat. - cheap light fixtures - the super (not Angel) doesn’t even know how to use a snake or do simple things like caulking. Aka super unqualified. Pun intended. - management seems to not care about residents, and don’t put effort into making our living better. - water randomly gets cold and hot while using. - management and supers take too long to come fix things. They send the unqualified super first which takes a long time then just for him to say he needs to call the super that IS qualified which takes long, because he is spread too thin. - supers and contractors leave a mess after doing work. - paint is chipping on walls. - no inspections being done. - they took an apartment that is already small, put a couple of walls and called it a second bedroom and are charging 2 bedroom prices. - stairs that lead to where we put garbage out, is broken, so I am too scared to go down them as I almost fell when one of the wooden planks broke off and I almost hurt myself. There are many elderly people in this apartment too and this is not ok and very dangerous. Many people, myself and the elderly included, just throw our garbage at the doorway before the stairs (which we don’t want to but we do). This has been this way for over a year. - the sinks being installed are not suitable for the bathroom and so causes issues with using them. - Pest problems - we can’t rely on the management to fix things (we often tell them to fix something, and it doesn’t ever happen) so we stopped asking/caring and are now looking to move out. - when complaining about noise, nothing is done.
Advice to the owners
Get yourself and your business together. Please.
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