Trading in Price and Convenience for Service
Pros
Not bad rent for 1 bedroom apartment - close to the 7 - friendly neighborhood - community feel - garbage well managed - relatively safe at night - good restaurants nearby - most part, nice neighbors
Cons
Dirty staircases - package theft - no doorman - property owner hard to communicate with - no elevators (up to 5th floor walk-up) - some neighbors are rude and inconsiderate, playing loud music all night and morning long - parking hard to find (not impossible), but may take 45 mins to 1 hr - shady realtors and owners
Advice to the owners
be more responsive and available to your tenants
Cheap for a reason
Pros
Spacious rooms for pretty affordable prices and most of the building is or is actively being renovated.
Cons
Insane amount of cockroaches and terrible mgmt company. Only saving grace is the grumpy yet helpful super who lives in the building. Tipping him a few bucks when you need his help goes a LONG way. Management company is super shady: only accepts cash for security deposit, the phone number they give you to contact the mgmt company is a cell phone that no one EVER answers and voicemail is usually full; they force you to work with a real estate broker who works for them directly (that’s the same dude that occasionally returns calls from the cell phone) so you’re paying their employee a broker fee, oh and he is useless. I called the mgmt company directly and they told me I had to use this broker and pay him…like what?!
Advice to the owners
Fire the useless broker and install basic security cameras instead of the fake ones that are there.