979 Park Place,

Brooklyn, NY 11213

It’s a really beautiful place with a lot of space. Most of the rooms are a decent size for NYC.

While the rooms are mostly decently sized, they’re overpriced for what you get. First, the basement rooms hardly get any light with one room having just one window facing a fence. The other room also gets little light with one window facing a fence and the other facing a bush. In the winter, the basement room with one window is the same temperature as it is outside. In the summer the room is musty, warm, and damp. The basement room with two windows is also very cold and drafty. Both need space heaters to be habitable which amount to around an extra $200 on the electricity bill. The heating bill itself is way expensive for gas heating. Even if you keep the heat low, you’ll end up paying a lot in the winter. We’ve come to the conclusion the house isn’t well insulated and may just be fiberglass insulation.
Then the backyard is shared, but the pool is only useable by the owners, so you get to watch the family swim every day from May to November but no access. It feels awkward. Going to the backyard oddly feels unwelcome. Additionally the still water from the pool creates a mosquito problem. Downstairs there are numerous bug problems, lots of house centipedes, ants in every room, and spiders. The landlords provide traps and they can be somewhat effective.
The landlords are nice people, but they seem opposed to hiring professionals to fix problems. Expect the husband to come in and DIY the fix, which may or may not solve the problem. He’s a nice guy, though, so it was always fun to see him, even if overall it was kind of stressful to 1. have to convince him we are having a problem 2. have him be the handyman regardless of expertise. It becomes frustrating when you’re paying them almost $5,000 per month and they seem to want to spend no money on upkeep.
The rooms upstairs also don’t hold heat due to their large windows. They’re okay, but you’ll have to hear EVERYTHING that happens upstairs. It’s three loud, rowdy, angry children. Sleeping in is no longer an option, and then you may also have to experience secondhand trauma of listening to kids gain mental illnesses from a stressful home life. The landlords seem to not like each other and we can hear all of their marital issues very clearly. We know a little too much about the family, a lot more than they’ve revealed. They’re all individually somewhat charming, but we found that living beneath them gave us all depression. You can hear the yelling and fighting even in the downstairs rooms.
They also seemed to spend their money on some things and not at all on others when they renovated the house, like for example aside from insulation, there isn’t a kitchen clock or timer on the stove somehow (no big deal, we all have microwaves and phones), there aren’t towel racks or bathroom cabinets, and they removed the support beams from the bottom floor so the upper flow is bowing? And some things need upgrading because they’re old and broken, but they won’t do that.
You also can’t nail things into the walls or burn candles or incense. And they won’t open the large doors for you to bring large things in without holding it over your head. They tend to do a lot of things that are pretty inconvenient or inconsiderate and then get bothered when you ask for anything of them. There isn’t a fire escape for the second floor or a way to get out in case of a fire aside from the stairs downstairs.
We read that they paid off the mortgage for this house already so we aren’t sure why they’re charging basically $5,000 per month for this place. One has a law degree and was a lawyer, the other is in tech, so their salaries seem to be fine... It’s a little weird.
Also, because they live above, they pretend to be like family even though they’re kind of in control of if you have housing and also if you can get housing in the future. It’s a weird power dynamic they’re oblivious to. You’d think this would be pleasant but it isn’t. They never Actually treat you as familiar, it feels similar to when you work in a corporation and you boss welcomes you “into the family”.
The experience was advertised as “you will hardly see us” but the reality was that it was an experience of constantly seeing and interacting with and hearing through the walls and floors our landlords. You will never forget that they’re there unless they’re on a trip. That isn’t so often because of the school year.
So finally, when you’re moving out, they will show the apartment as soon as you announce that you’re leaving as often as possible, early in the morning, late into the evening, on weekends at any hour, regardless of your schedule.
It’s an enticing place and we all had planned on spending a few years there, but it just came down to being incredibly unenjoyable in almost every way.

I would price the apartment about $2000 cheaper given the negatives vs the positives. $3000~ is what makes the most sense here. Or I would re-insulate the house and invest money in repairs and/or replacing old things and then try to work on the noise level. Then I think $4000 is somewhat reasonable for NYC.