First Vulcan Inc

no rats or roaches
responsive super and landlord
overall has been a positive experience

can be loud on weekends because close to bars

Good location, the place is fine if you just need a place to sleep.

The landlord is kinda an asshole, rips you off. it's a shitty LES walkup with as many bedrooms as possible. The interior walls are SO thin no sound isolation. Bass from the bar next door is sometimes loud.

The building is pretty quiet and the apartments are nice! Never had an issue with rodents, neighbors, etc..

Standard NYC things like packages being stolen.

Not too pricey, super is quick to respond but definitely a bit over worked

Lower end of the price spectrum so it can attract some college student types, especially on the bottom and top floors which are all multi-bedroom units.

Garbage disposal is efficient
Gas stoves in units

No shared laundry although promised
Responsiveness of landlord can be improved

Install laundry

The only positive really is the location.

The building management is abhorrent. Completely unorganized and mismanaged. I had to be the one to reach out about a renewal because I hadn't heard from anyone. They gave me the runaround, seemingly didn't even know who would be handling that, and then it ended up taking 6 days for me to finally have someone send me the renewal. Mind you, we were 6 days over the 60 day limit.
The actual process of them showing my apartment to potential new tenants was SO unprofessional. The landlord emailed me on a Saturday at 12pm and said "Can I show your apartment? I have a client outside." I had to call him and tell him I was not home and they he could not enter my apartment without me there. He had a client with him as this happened. SO unprofessional and horribly organized. And then when he would text me asking ahead of time if he could show my apartment, I would tell him yes and then he would just never show up. So I'd be waiting at my apartment for him to come show it and he wouldn't follow up.
The building is incredibly rundown also. The back area where the garbage goes is super dirty and cluttered. For a one bedroom to be listed at $2,800-2,900 it is completely not worth it.

Read the cons

Location is great and neighbors are overall young and quiet working professionals

- dirty back area with trash
- pests that landlord doesn’t care to control. Cockroaches here so beware
- doors don’t lock right so packages get stolen ALL the time. Don’t get anything sent here
- takes forever to get something fixed. Everything is old and rundown. Rent will increase drastically with no fixes to anything
- almost died in this building because of carbon monoxide poisoning. The alarms didn’t go off and luckily one tenant had his own and he called the fire department. They said if he didn’t call that night that it would’ve been a tragic situation. Landlord was informed and didn’t send out any notice to what happened or care at all that people could’ve died.
- water heater and heat was out for days in the dead of winter. Didn’t send any notices out or care. People had to figure out their own way to shower

Take care of your building and care more about your tenants. If you’re going to raise rent, make the fixes people are asking for

Mostly quiet building, good location

Very small. Okay for one person

The location is good. I loved living on the cusp of LES/East Village and the apartment was good for my first place out of college with a roommate. There were some pros: a kitchen that felt somewhat separate, bedrooms that weren’t sharing a wall and both had good windows, and a well-lit living room.

The heat stopped working in the apartment at the beginning of winter and never worked again. That was only the beginning of what seemed like a long string of unfortunate events including an oven that apparently had a gas leak and had to be replaced, our gas being completely broken for a while (no kitchen appliances worked for several months), electricity issues, and plumbing issues which were never resolved promptly. Management was responsive but didn’t really solve any problems. They brought us things like an electric stovetop (the kind you bring camping) and portable heaters, which were very much appreciated, but made our living conditions feel very subpar. Granted, they let us break our lease early. I felt bad complaining so often when it really felt like they were working to fix the issues, but living without heat in NYC winter is really unbearable. It’s nice that the street is a cul-de-sac, yet I would still wake up daily to obnoxious street noise – both from people laying on their horns at the corner of Houston and from the auto shop next door. It also took around six months to get our security deposit back.

I saw a previous reviewer comment on the trash situation – it definitely wasn’t ideal to have to walk out of the building, into another building, around the back to throw away our trash. Something that also seems relatively easy to fix would be the front door to the building. It would literally shake my room sometimes with how loud it is – I still hear the sound of that thing banging shut in my nightmares. Some sort of “gentle close” door mechanism would make a world of difference.

Management and super extremely responsive

A little tightly packed so hallway sound travels quite a bit

The management team and superintendent are super responsive (but are not the real decisions makers). The apartment came in with an AC unit (left by previous tenant). Close to Clinton street and Lower East Side attractions.

Way overpriced. The noise levels are unlivable, both from the street (loud workers from Garage in same street, really loud garbage truck at night) and from the building residents. The walls are paper thin and you can hear your neighbors have a conversation, not to mention the annoyance when there is music or a party. There were packages stolen on a regular basis. The appliances are really old and apartment layouts not functional (one bedrooms are the size of studios). The bathrooms and kitchen absolutely need to be renovated and properly cleaned between tenants (so much dirt, grease and dust behind appliances, in ventilation system). The electricity and gas bill from ConEd is really high (over $150 a month in the winter) for small apartments. There is a huge backyard which only serves are a garbage dump and scaffolding has been on the street facade for YEARS without any progress or renovation done.

Make thicker wall between flats. Soundproof main doors and windows. I don’t wait to hear my neighbors fight or make love. Renovate the staircase. Fix the door security issue, time for a virtual doorman. Remove the scaffolding from the facade. Update the appliances in the bathroom and kitchen, stop using the cheapest available options. Transform the the backyard into a garden and get rid of all the trash. Make rooftop accessible. Then you could justify the insane rent prices, but for now, it’s not worth it.

Trash courtyard in the back which was great because the sidewalk was really over junky and not smelly there's also bike parking in the back which is great. Super Alex is like always there and very very helpful he helped me hang my TV yeah just generally a great great building. Even though the unit was small and like pretty close together I never heard my neighbors.

The building is pre war and there's no frills. the scaffolding is up which is like really irritating and the units are pretty small. During coronavirus package theft was ridiculous

Honestly think that the property owners are really really fair the only thing I would say is just get rid of the scaffolding as soon as possible because it attracts unwanted people

Building management, super, and even owner are kind and receptive.

Kindness doesn’t fix the heat, plumbing, noise levels, safety hazards, property theft, etc.

Lower your prices - even in peak condition we are all over paying. Make sure your apartments are in working order before renting them. Solve the problems instead of band-aid solutions.