Birchwood Properties LLC

Great building overall

But a dark dank place for price point

garbage collection, clean spaces

management not super responsive, especially with pest complaints. Cold building.

Amazing location in the East Village for the price. Small sizing, but a good option for roommates.

The responsiveness of the owner/super. Delayed and sometimes unresponsive.

Invest more into building

Location, great kitchen

Closet sized bedrooms, bathroom and living area; Cigar smoke from the bar below permeates the entire building and everything we own; Spent winter 2020-2021 without heat; Management refused to address building security concerns after a break-in with theft; Owners/management impossible to reach by phone, no response to emails;

Extremely questionable handling of rent-stabilized units (entire building was rent-stabilized just a few years ago, now only units with 10 year+ residents still stabilized; no investment in building renovation, only
individual units with very minimal improvements that clearly did not cost enough to achieve deregulated status); Failed to notify me of the unit’s rent-stabilized status in the lease agreement as required by law; Lawyers determined my unit was illegally rented out to me at market value for $3350 as the documented rent history of the unit shows it was registered as and leased rent-stabilized by the tenant before me, with the most recent monthly rent rate being roughly $780 - a 430% increase.

Overall this is a good building in a great location. Street noise can be a little loud when cars are honking a lot, though this probably varies by unit. Never had any pest issues or problems with heating.

The owner we dealt with was hard to contact and extremely difficult. Only after several emails and multiple phone calls did they send over the lease renewal that they said (in a previous email) would be offered. This was two weeks before the end of our current lease and came with a very large increase in rent. Personally, I wouldn't rent from them again even if I loved the apartment.

great apartment
lots of natural light

had some pests

Had to get through two doors in order to get into the building. Apartment door automatically locked when closed. Spacious living room and decent sized bedrooms. Bathroom was a little outdated, but still worked out well. Had high ceilings and lots of natural light. Kitchen was redone when we moved in. Lots of cabinet space, but small kitchen sink. Decent sized dishwasher.

Hallways were very echoey so you can hear people coming and going a lot of the time. One bedroom was right by the main doors so you constantly hear them opening and closing. Can hear mailman/ups/fedex come in to drop things off. Fridge was a little small, but it wasn't a big deal. The oven couldn't open all the way, but we made it work. Floors were a little slanted and creaked a lot. Only one closet in the one of the bedrooms.

-affordable rent
-nice neighbors

-pests in apartment. cockroaches, mice, bugs, you name it.
-not clean. Kitchen is disgusting, bathroom has so many cracks and gross areas
-unrenovated. Walls are gross. Toliets old. Appliances bad.

Clean the apartment and communicate with your tenets.

Suspiciously cheap listings -- lived here for two years with no major issues and saved major money while doing so. Super accessible in EV and the super is very sweet once you get a hold of him. Nice view/light. Very much a soft spot for this apartment.

not super clean building -- even the apartment despite deep cleaning was impossible to be pristine -- old kitchen and bathroom. Had pests for a few weeks and was able to eradicate with help of management/pest control. Issues with boiler/water meant that we often had no water or no hot water with no notice for 48ish hours.

Be more responsive to tenant requests

location, new super is an improvement

Barely passable. Chronic building issues, unresponsive management - it’s a fight to get any relief. Repairs delayed weeks or months, or ignored altogether.

Communication !!!!

this was a great first apartment for me in lots of ways— affordable with roommates, great location, amazing neighborhood, respectful neighbors, and surprisingly quiet (my unit faced the back of building, not street)

not the greatest management, rent has gone up every year and nothing’s improved, landlord takes awhile to respond and act on problems (i.e: problems with heat, plumbing, bugs, etc.) rats by the trash and they get noisy at night 🫤

The apartment units themselves are super nice for the price and the location. Nice neighbors who look out for one another.

The management is poor with responding to small problems (lights that need changed, outlets that don’t work). Even bigger issues get completely ignored. Almost unreachable management - I feel ghosted. The retail space under us is a cigar bar and it smells really bad in units for some people and awful in the hallways. Heat basically doesn’t work.

If you’re going to own an apartment building, be attentive not MIA.

Great location, updated kitchen

Owner and super never reply….you’ll pretty much have to fix any issues yourself. They occasionally have exterminators come by but there’s still bugs.

Location and setback from street

Pests — my apartment was full of roaches.
My fridge went out and I was not given assistance to fix it for 8 days. Massive leaks down to the neighbors below. Unresponsive owners of property

building location was great, super is very nice

super thin walls - you can hear everything happening above and below you and within your individual apartment. also Birchwood properties is unprofessional and completely unresponsive to emails. They refuse to give working phone numbers, so if you have an issue the super can't deal with you're probably out of luck.

i moved out of this apartment a month ago and have been ghosted by the company. the super confirmed the apartment was left in good condition, yet we have received no information on the status of our security deposit, despite NY law requiring return within 14 days.

Give us a working phone number, clean up the common space, get pest control for the roach issue

Nice neighborhood, unit had good sunlight

PLUMBING ISSUES ARE HORRIBLE. Dealing with the super & management is a horror story, when issues arise (and they will) expect a 3-month battle for a semi-adequate response, if any at all.

Have multiple available plumbers you can discharge to the building if you’re going to keep renting out units without functional plumbing. This is absurd and multiple tenants in the building complained to no adequate response from management.

Loved our apartment with low townhomes next door so it felt open. Some neighbors were fine while younger people moving in tended to be loud. There are a lot of rent controlled people in the building who try to rope you in to things to fight the landlord against, we chose to just not involve ourselves in that since we were renting. The super was easy enough to get a hold of when needed, we never had any issue with him.

The heat works sporadically. When you want it to work it doesn’t and when you don’t want it to work it does. Noise also travels in the building when there are people having parties mainly. Also the property management company is impossible to get in touch with.

Small building on a quiet street. 1-2 units per floor with 4 floors so not many neighbors who and fairly quiet and keep to themselves. Pest control is good no bug or rodent problems.

Owner and super are extremely unhelpful in every way. Not willing to help with even the smallest things. Super never around and no security cameras so I have had packages go stolen from inside the 2 locked doors.

Like the hardwood floors. Building is generally in sa good area away from too much east village noise

Landlord was so hard to reach. Downstairs neighbors were absolutely crazy and came pounding on our door to tell us to quiet down when we were literally in bed. Windows were shitty and one time literally just fell out of the track.

amazing location above punjabi deli

the building is literally cracking at the foundation and going to collapse….. also just generally awful.

tear it down