Unreasonable and petty live-in landlord will make your life hell here
Pros
Location is near a train. Apartment itself is not bad provided everything is in working condition, problem is the building is getting old and the landlord refuses to repair anything which can and has lead to a lot of issues.
Cons
The landlord lives downstairs and she is very territorial, micro-managing, and takes it extremely personally and will blame you and demand payment if you bring up any routine maintenance issues. I will just paste below her replies to some issues that came up during our tenancy: -Re the heaters not running in the winter: "I have heat. The baseboards will not heat up above 72 degrees."...which of course they can, but they were not running at all. -Re her son smoking every night in the bedroom below us or right outside our window, in violation of the building rules: "Hi smoking inside the apartments is permissible." -Re a minor leak in the sink faucet, she claimed that we had caused it with the way we were using the dishwasher and tried to ban us from using it. She insisted on this story even though multiple contractors explained to her that the dishwasher is on a completely different line and the issue was caused by her illegally installing a copper-line sink. Not sure if she was trying to steal our deposit or just misunderstood the issue, but this one involved a lot of harassment from her and was really bad either way. -Re the apartment doorknob falling off as we opened it: "Can you tell us more about how this happened?" -Re a broken doorbell: "what changed? did you change your wifi?"...She ultimately ignored our requests to fix the doorbell and when we installed our own $20 amazon doorbell she became upset that we had done so 'without permission'. -Re a broken bathroom fan: "I've explained to you several times that your request to have this vent looked at is unacceptable. Please return the apartment to its condition when you rented and leave." -Ignored constant verbal requests from both us and the neighbor to repair the broken front door, which to this day is extremely easy to break in to. -Another issue is that we have the ugliest front yard on the entire block. It is paved flat with just concrete and is constantly filled with garbage thrown in by passers by because she never cleans it up. she once threatened us because we put a plant out there, even though all of our neighbors have plants. Ultimately she is not well versed in landlord-tenancy laws and will often make inappropriate demands and refuse to repair. We had to move out because she illegally refused to renew the lease then began harassing us constantly with various attempts to access, insane accusations like claiming we were renting out the apartment to our cat sitter, scheduling construction, threatening to take away shoes & jackets outside our door that had been there for years without issue. My advice is don't be deceived by the apartment itself, it is not worth the trouble. The lack of security you will feel living here has a profound psychological impact and I cannot recommend it to anyone on that basis alone.
Advice to the owners
Stop interpreting maintenance requests as personal attacks. Repairs are a routine part of being a landlord.