701 St Marks Avenue,

Brooklyn, NY 11216

The neighborhood is really beautiful and great - lots of restaurants, coffee shops, bars, supermarket, stores, etc all within walking distance. All tenants that I have come across (which is quite a few) are all amazing people.

Aside from the neighborhood and neighbors, living in this building was a disaster. Major rat problems in the garbage area and ground floor. Bugs/roaches were a fairly big issue. Getting a super to come by wasn’t too hard for fixes, but the quality of the fixes were very shoddy and low grade. Multiple instances of carbon monoxide exposure. I found human feces in the stairwell on more than one occasion. There was a weeklong period where the key fob to the building simply didn’t work, and tenants had to ensure there was an occupant in the building they could buzz to be let in. Our apartment flooded due to the apartment above us - the building management said the issue was due to the tenant, but I suspect the issue was due to improper maintenance of the above unit - either way a bummer. Not a lot of good things I can say about the building.

Good tenants seem to want this building to be better

Management does not care that for over a year we have issues with no heat, hot water, CO and lots of roach problems in apartments

The tenants are organized and overall kind to each other. There’s a lot of solidarity among neighbors. The location is decently central. And the super is fairly responsive; many of the issues with this building are not his fault.

We had a persistent German cockroach problem for over a year. Every time the exterminator came, he told us that because the infestation wasn’t originating in our apartment, he couldn’t do much of anything. Building management didn’t do anything more. We were seeing between one and ten roaches a day.

The building has frequent carbon monoxide leaks from a boiler that management refuses to fix or replace. The fire department is called, they shut the boiler off, and then the building is without heat or hot water for anywhere from 12 to 72 hours.

The radiators are too old to be adjusted or closed, so when the heat kicks on in the winter, most apartments are *sweltering* hot. Management is unresponsive on this issue.

There’s a colony of rats living in the trash-filled alley.

The back steps leading out to Rat Alley are rusting out and super dangerous. But you have to either take that route or wade through the alley trash in order to reach the basement laundry machines.

This corner of Nostrand is also just exceptionally loud, and most units of this building (the E block, I believe) are incredibly noisy.

Finally, we moved out of unit 4D after paying $2300/month for 2.5 years. Oak Tree Management raised the rent for that unit to an egregious $3400 without addressing any of the long term issues either in the unit or in the building overall.

If you’re going to continue renting units in this building, at least take care of the ongoing health hazards and don’t jack the rent up by $1000 every time someone moves out.

Management let nearly our entire building break the lease without penalty because of all the clearly known and reoccurring issues. It's proximity to A,C,4,5 train lines.

Bedbugs, roaches, power lines hanging from the building causing electrical humming (I lived on the 3rd floor), leaks, no heat in some rooms, rats galore by the trash, broken mailboxes (they didn't lock), constantly broken main entry doors, people getting high in the hallways, cigarette smoking in the buildings, neighbors partying outside the building during the Summer, extremely noisy/not sound proof at all, constant gas leaks and boiler issues...pretty much everything 🥲

Tear the building down...this is a cash cow asset that has seen so many violations (ask the local fire department that has visited quite often). It should be illegal (and I'm sure it is) for this place to run but since NYC real estate is so corrupt, I know why it still stands. These types of owners are completely hands off (they don't live in the city) and property management does just that...manages and mitigates issues in a vacuum type of fashion so nothing ever really gets "fixed" and everyone continues to make money unfortunately, at the expense of tenants welfare. If they don't want to see so much turnover, rip this place down and rebuild it... it'll be easier to "manage" that way and maybe more lucrative 🤷.

Location, apt size, easy rent payment system

Cleanliness, pests, noise

Very warm in the winter.

Rats near garbage and roaches sometimes inside.

Fix the pest issues

Mgmt was responsive

Building is loud