Not worth the pain
Pros
It’s a nice building in a nice neighborhood.
Cons
I’m sure Gee and Maria are fine people in other areas of their lives, but it's been very frustrating to have them as landlords. It would almost be easier to deal with them if they were doing it intentionally, but they aren’t—they’re just so disorganized and inefficient that getting necessary repairs done in the apartment felt like a second job. I’d never consider renting a property from them again. It wouldn’t be worth it. * It was hard to communicate with Gee because he wouldn’t listen long enough for us to get a complete idea across. He’d start off by talking over us and it would be five minutes before we could get a word in edgewise, if he hadn’t already walked off or hung up. (Once we were able to explain what needed to be fixed he would usually agree to do it. We weren’t asking for anything out of the ordinary.) * We generally got along fine with him, but when he was angry he didn’t seem to be able to control himself or what he was saying. It only happened once, but he called us late in the evening, making accusations and commanding us to do things. He was acting like he thought shouting us down would get us to do what he wanted. (It turned out it was all over a misunderstanding. He didn’t apologize afterward.) * Maria was easier to talk to, but it was still only 50/50 whether we would hear back when she told us she would follow up. Her apologies also felt empty—the same problems kept happening again and again. * They generally agreed to fix things that were broken, but actually getting the work done often required weeks, months, or years of reminders. For urgent repairs (heat, hot water, leaks) we had to start calling every day or nothing would happen. * Their handymen don't come when scheduled and come unprepared, so what should have been a 20 minute job would turn into weeks or months of rescheduling and no-shows. As examples, here are some of the worst issues we had while we lived here: * During a rainstorm a bad leak developed. Over three days it continued to seep through until it spread to two more floors of the building, leaving a trail of water damage behind it. We sent videos each day as it got worse, but Gee and Maria didn’t send anyone out to look at it while we were there. We were (fortunately) moving out, but they didn’t even warn the new tenants. I can’t imagine how they expected them to move furniture in with the constant drip-drip-drip of water from the ceiling. If we’d still had furniture there it would have been ruined. * The heat was off for 10 days in the middle of winter. They said they were traveling and stopped answering our calls and texts. We had to use sleeping bags at night—the temperature inside dropped down to the 40s. * There was an intermittent problem with the hot water for over a month. We had to shower at the gym several times a week. Every time we called, Maria gave us another story about how hard they were trying to fix it—but if it was that hard, why not hire a professional? After we told them we were going to file a complaint with 311, they finally agreed to send someone to reset the water heater every day until it was fixed. * The mirror fell off the bathroom wall and broke because it had been installed improperly and worked itself loose. If anyone had been in the bathroom at the time, they could have been seriously hurt. * They lost our rent checks one month, asked us to send new checks, and then found and cashed the original rent checks without communicating with us. We had to stop payment on the second set of checks. * The renewal lease they gave us was a patchwork cobbled together from multiple documents. It had obvious copy-paste errors and references to sections that didn’t exist. Some of the clauses were unreasonable and unenforceable (e.g., if the building was sold, the lease would be void and we would have to vacate within 30 days). We pushed back and they agreed to use the original lease. It would take pages to cover everything that happened while we lived there. Hopefully this gets the idea across. I also don’t want to be too harsh. Gee and Maria have good intentions and I’m sure there are worse landlords out there. But we let a lot of minor stuff slide and still ended up wasting hours and hours of time just to maintain a habitable living space. I wouldn’t wish our experience on anyone else.
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