No heat 3 winters in a row
Pros
- The building is rent stabilized, so the rent only went up $30 per year. - The landlord is responsive and friendly (but he doesn’t use email or text, landline phone calls and handwritten letters only). He always sends a guy to fix things, unfortunately this guy never fixes anything correctly, it’s always a cheap short term soluion. - I was 1-2 weeks late on rent a couple times over the 3 years I lived there (mainly because I would forget to send the rent check by mail on time) and he was very chill about it and never gave me a hard time. - Never had an issue with bed bugs, roaches or any other insects - The supers have lived in the building for 30 years and can come off as grumpy and sometimes rude, but the husband is actually very sweet and friendly once you get to know him. They only take care of the garbage now, they don’t really fix stuff around the house anymore, another guy does that. - I only had 2 packages stolen over 3 years, so there is no big issue with package theft. - Landlord allowed me to end my lease 2 months early without any complications or fees.
Cons
- Constant huge water leaks - like to the point where it looked like it was raining indoors. Had to have my ceiling and walls replaced 3 times because of major water damage and mold. - Constant rat & mice infestation. I was cleaning the house like a neat freak, stuffing all holes, and putting out traps, but they just kept coming back. - Heat completely stopped working in the middle of the winter, every winter. 3 years in a row with NO heat for weeks. Each time it took them over a week to fix it (replace the boiler etc). - And in the winters when the heat WAS working it was always still either freezing cold (like 60 degrees) or burning hot (80+ degrees) in my apartment, since there was a constant ”thermostat war” in the building. Thermostat is in the hallway for anyone to access. - The walls are thin and since the building is in such bad shape there is constantly this group of guys there fixing things and working on different apartments. They tend to yell and scream at each other all day, so it’s pretty much nonstop bad vibes. Never any noise issues from the other tenants when I lived there though!
Advice to the owners
I don’t think the property owner is a bad guy in any way, I just think it’s just been many years since he even saw the condition of the house. I never met the guy in the 3 years of living there, but I got the feeling that he is pretty old, lives pretty far away, and just doesn’t care that much about the property anymore. Maybe a bit checked out from the whole thing. But to be honest, this place needs to be gut renovated. It’s in really bad shape. It’s falling apart, literally — some of my walls were crumbling at the slightest touch (from old water damage). I wouldn’t recommend anyone to move in there.
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