Love living here
Pros
Friendly landlady, friendly neighbors, temperature is always comfortable,
Cons
creaky stairs and sometimes the doors dont lock
Lying about apt conditions
Pros
The apartment was spacious with lots of natural sunlight coming in, the first floor apartment was quiet, and there was enough closet and storage space. It was a safe first floor unit that was location-wise convenient to Broadway, 31st ave, and 30th Ave businesses and subway stops. The rent was reasonable for the neighborhood.
Cons
Overall the amount of control the landlord and family members wanted to exert plus the clear failure of ongoing maintenance led to lies about the real conditions of the apartment: -The tiles in the shower started falling off two months in! They were not caulked correctly; the niece of the landlord went to fix it by adding more caulk three months in but it's not like you can waterproof shower tiles onto a wall that way. By the time we left a year later there were multiple holes in the shower wall due to tiles coming off the wall and random roly-polys or silverfish that would come into the shower. We were afraid to use the shower after 11 months for fear the tiles would just fall off entirely. We asked them multiple times, including after finding out our lease wasn't renewed, to being told we should always keep the bathroom window open for ventilation. That's no excuse for the tiles coming off. -dishwasher didn't work, and we were told we had to "rinse really good" before putting it in; that's not the point of a dishwasher! (For good measure we tried using liquid, powder, and tablet detergents but none worked.) To their credit they did replace the arm of the dishwasher when we asked, but the dishwasher still didn't work, just tossing water around. -The windows were very hard to lock. Many windows didn't lock altogether to the point where we had to buy PVC piping custom cut to the window to ensure they would close. -Initially our door lock was only held on by one screw. Also many times the outside doors wouldn't auto-close and lock (hinges on the door wouldn't close em) so sometimes we'd walk into our building, have to push the door in to lock it, which other neighbors didn't do but shouldn't have had to do. There was one time 3 months in that a door guy came to fix the outside doors, and we were lucky enough to be around that day to ask him to fix our door so it would be secured. -Many handwritten things in the lease agreement were added, including about needing to let them know about overnight guests; the reasoning behind that was so they wouldn't waste all the water. If we had overnight guests there was a financial penalty written into the lease. It made us feel micromanaged and like we had to walk on eggshells in our home. We were afraid they would attempt to keep part of our security deposit: a tenant that was moving out the day we moved in told us they took off $500 from their security deposit because there was something wrong with the oven or something, so that tenant looked at ours and saw it was in the same exact condition. Also we had to clean our oven thoroughly after moving in because it had bits baked into it causing a pizza smell. We hired a professional cleaner for $200 to make sure the apartment was clean so we wouldn't get anything docked from the security deposit. March 31st we were supposed to meet with them to inspect the place but they left and demanded we fix the window with a balance bar off which we did the next day with a window company for $120. THEN we got our full security deposit mailed back to us. In no time ever have I worried so much about getting the deposit back like this. -The landlord did not renew our lease after a year. I fear based on the Streeteasy history that this is a common occurrence that's happened to other tenants, but I could be wrong. After we got the certified mail that our lease was not renewed they no longer answered our phone calls. The only times we could get in touch with them were when they happened to be in the building and we asked them about things, including the shower tiles. -Day 1: "Have you ever had roaches in this building?" "No, never." "Because there's a roach right there by the radiator." -Multiple times surprise repairmen came without warning or notice from the landlord. On one occasion the landlord was walking around with the repairmen, my roommate had to leave for an appointment, the landlord said they would make sure the door was locked, but when we returned the door wasn't locked, a ladder was left there, and the stove was in the middle of our kitchen, not put back. When we told the niece of the landlord this she started getting mad at US about it, saying it was a hectic busy day. We had to put the ladder out into the hallway and push the stove back in ourselves.
Advice to the owners
Please don't lie about the conditions of the apartment to us or other people. Take out certain lease agreements. Please fix the dishwasher, doors and bathroom tiles. Please don't be so disrespectful on the phone with your tenants when they're bringing up real issues.
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