Pros:
I didn’t have to pay for heat/hot water
Cons:
Dirty - inside and out. Landlord would take ~$30 off a tenants rent in exchange for them dealing with the trash. No recycling bin for paper anywhere. Stuff in my apartment breaking constantly. NO FRONT DOOR BUZZER SYSTEM! So any time mail comes that you need to sign for - forget it. Huge issues with USPS as well that the landlord refused to assist on. No secure entry. No laundry in building even though there are hookups downstairs. Landlord always would say, “This is a walk up in bushwick, what do you expect” rather than elevate the experience here to even a minimum standard of living. Mice in the walls. I’ve had MOSQUITOS in my apartment during warm months for 5 consecutive years, and the landlord has done nothing to inspect standing water, aside from ask me if I overflowed my shower. Frequent plumbing issues - leaks both dripping in my bathroom (through light fixtures nonetheless) as well as the one below me, so plumbers have showed up constantly and at random. Landlord has a way of blaming tenants for building-wide issues. He makes some tenants pay in cash, and myself 2 separate checks per month. Overcharges rent 100%. I am working through that with DHCR. Really just the bare minimum landlord who doesn’t care about living standards. My windows to my fire escape have been broken for 6 weeks (for the second time) and he will only send the building super when he’s available, who is an older man who doesn’t know what he’s doing and has made many mistakes in my apartment before. I had to report him to 311 before he finally sent the super to fix. The building plumbers are also unprofessional - left a bunch of rocks in my bathroom after checking for a leak, and I had to clean everything up. Horrible experience. Avoid this building and landlord / management at all costs.
Advice to owner:
Have some respect for your tenants. We pay your salary!