Great location but horrible landlords
Pros
Wonderful neighbors. Either they are elderly and have been in the building since the 70s or they are short term Columbia students who are quite sweet and play violin or piano. You have easy access to Riverside, Morningside and Central Park. Wonderful small business owners and door men up and down the street. Though this building does not have its own doorman. Great community with block parties, absolute bagels, farmers markets, restaurants of every type.
Cons
The landlord has made no updates to our unit and wanted to increase our rent by $1,200. We have been here since before COVID so it wasn't one of those deals. They are also unresponsive from Friday through Monday in case you ever have emergency maintenance as they live in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn. They also never communicate major maintenance such as: water will be cut off, boiler will be shut off (they tend to schedule boiler maintenance during the coldest months of winter), scaffolding going up, laundry out of service, etc. They ripped up all the common space flooring and stairs and shut off all the hall lights for a period of 5 months without warning or any updates to progress. People had to use flashlights just to walk up stairs. No updates have been made to the units in about ten years, except to the ones vacated during COVID. The new supervisor is incompetent with basic maintenance and does not clean the common spaces. He's also very rude when asked for basic maintenance. Beware, the building lists an on-site supervisor but this is not the case. He will try to ring your buzzer after 10pm. Also the building is 7 stories and there is no elevator. They list a community rooftop terrace, but no access after 7pm as the entry doors literally look into the people who live in that apartment. So don't take unit 6B or 6C unless you want to share your roof and doors with the whole building. The building entry door warps during winter and won't lock, so your packages will be stolen unless you run down immediately to collect them. There are security cameras everywhere but the landlord claims they don't actually function. Also, the building is between two restaurants. The exhaust hoods are on top of this building. If you take the 6D unit you will have to randomly allow access to maintenance techs to service the hoods and your apartment will shudder each morning when the hoods turn on. If you take a unit along the West side of building, your apartment will shake from 10am - 10pm from the hood as it runs all the way up the west-facing side of building and is attached to that wall. Being between two restaurants with a vet clinic two doors down and a school a couple more doors down means there is an exceptional amount of garbage piles and rats. There is a skate park down the street so you also get skateboard noise. Also, it's off Broadway so there is the nightly dirt bike/atv parade. Really depends on your tolerance for noise levels. I'm fine with the noise myself, but realize how stressful it could be to others.
Advice to the owners
Communicate to your tenants and actually visit the buildings you own so you know what is going on.
256 W 108
Pros
Landlord responsive in general
Cons
Heat issues in winter
Advice to the owners
Better garbage management by commercial tenants