728 Lafayette Avenue,

Brooklyn, NY 11221

The apartment is large for a 1 bedroom. The rear balcony is nice. Close to the park and G train.

Where do I even begin?
The building might look like a fancy new development but it's a total piece of crap. Literally, every expense was spared in its construction.


The first red flag was when I went to tour the apartment. As soon as I walked into the building entrance I noticed an overwhelming pungent cigarette smell in the hallway. It turns out the woman living in the unit below my apartment liked to smoke cigs indoors and had been in the building for 10+ years... It reeked in the hallway and the smell had creeped into my apartment from the freaking power outlets - they had even turned a greenish-yellow color from the years of soot. I spent weeks and $$$ trying to insulate any gaps in the hallway doors, floorboards, and outlets to try and prevent the smell from coming into my unit. I had to purchase a freaking ozone generator to get rid of the stale cigarette smell in my apartment.

In my first few days there, not even a week in, I discovered that the central AC was not working, 2/4 burners on my stove were broken, and the shower didn't run. They replaced my stove 2 weeks later. The landlord hired plumbers to repair the shower but these idiots ended up flooding my entire restroom. Water was shooting out of the bathtub faucet uncontrollably, flooding the tub and spilling onto the floor. This is when I learned that the landlord was only hiring non-licensed contractors to handle all the work in the building. The AC repairman didn't come until a month later and they ended up having to make 2-3 more visits to the apartment over 2 months to try and fix the AC. Because of the way the windows are installed there is no way to install your typical window AC unit.

The tinted reflective windows seem like a cool idea but in practicality they are one of the worst things about the space. They are so heavily tinted and reflective that they block out tons of sunlight so that it always feels like dusk inside the apartment even on bright summer days. You need to have all the lights on during the day or you won’t know it’s daytime. Despite having so many large windows you get so little sunlight. This is not an overstatement - it feels like a cave inside. The framing around the windows looks terrible. Like they were installed by people who had no idea what they were doing. I'm no professional but even I can spot a sloppy installation job. There are air gaps everywhere around the windows and this really became an issue during winter with cold air seeping in from around every window in the apartment. I had to buy yards of insulating tape to place around all of them if I wanted to stay warm. Also because they are 100% reflective, it’s not rare for birds to crash into the windows and die. Many times I walked out onto the balcony and saw a dead bird that had crashed into the windows. There are also some birds who perch on the balcony and start pecking at their reflection on the window. It’s really loud, annoying, creepy and happens year round and will wake up at 4AM. These windows are such a stupid idea. There’s a reason why you don’t see 100% reflective tinted windows on any other residential building in brooklyn...

Without a doubt the worst aspect of the apartment are the floors. There seems to be absolutely ZERO sound insulation between each floor of the building. This means that, unless you live in the top floor unit, you hear EVERY single thing in the units around you. Every footstep from the person in the unit above me was completely audible and the entire ceiling above you shakes with each step. I can’t stress enough how annoying it was to hear every footstep from the person in the unit above you echo through your apartment all day long - loud enough that it wakes you up in the morning. I am not exaggerating how loud this is - I’ve never experienced anything like it and it started driving me mad towards the end. I had to start sleeping with ear plugs on because of how much sound passes through. The guy living in the unit above me was a “musician” and every time he played his Ed Sheeran covers it sounded like he might as well was playing inside my apartment. You can even hear the guy upstairs cutting up lines on his coffee table. The sound insulation is so bad you can distinguish what movie or tv show the people in the units around you are watching. Conversations are also very clearly audible - it’s insane how clearly you can listen to what people are talking about. You can hear when the person in the unit above you is using the toilet (peeing into the toilet water, heavy shits splashing… ) and when they flush you can hear all the water rushing through the pipes between the walls - disgusting. I’ve been renting in NYC for over 7 years and have lived in many shitty apartments with bad sound insulation, but absolutely NOTHING compares to this. This alone is enough to not even consider moving-in, it was the source of so much stress while I was living here. Please please believe me when I tell you how bad it is.

There are a few other things worth mentioning. The landlord hasn’t set up an electronic form of paying rent so you have to mail him checks. The refrigerator constantly leaks water so I have to keep a mop next to it. Little storage, small closet, no washer/dryer/dishwasher despite the rent you’re paying. There’s a mechanical room off of the living room with all the heating/AC machinery that gets really loud every time any of these things are running. It also has no ventilation so there is so much mold growing in there. During the winter, there was no running water in the entire building for over 36 hours.

If you care about having fast internet, an Optimum technician came to the apartment because I was having really slow internet speeds and he said the wiring in the building is malfunctioning in a way that inhibits anyone in the building from receiving consistent high data speeds. I was paying for 300 MBS and could only get 30MBS because of the bad wiring in the building. Unless the landlord rips up the wiring behind the wall and re-installs new wiring you won’t be having fast internet.

Previously, the landlord was renting out the apartment to his possibly illegal workforce of 8 guys who worked as delivery men. This was something a lady who had been living in the building for years mentioned to me when I moved in. This became pretty obvious when looking at how disgusting the kitchen was, the condition of the restroom, and all the floor markings. The top floor apartment in the building was completely flooded with water from a massive roof leak. The buzzer to the apartment is constantly breaking. There have been multiple package thefts. There have even been instances where strangers manage to enter the building and steal things in the stairwell.

This was the worst living experience I have had in the city and I was counting the days until my lease was up. I considered moving out early many times or even breaking my lease but financially that wasn’t possible. Even if it seems like you’re getting a good deal - do not fall into this trap. You’ll pretty soon start picking up on how the poor quality of construction turns this place into a hell-hole. STAY AWAY FROM THIS BUILDING!!!!

so many bad decisions were made in the design and construction of the building. maybe that's why you're having such a hard time selling the building since it's been in the market for years. just tear down the building and sell the land.