1203 Dekalb Ave,

Brooklyn, NY 11221

Very friendly doorman staff, quiet neighbors, decent amenities that are included in rent price (except for laundry which is 1.50 per load).

After your first year renting here, they increase the rent every 6 months due to some tax write-off the building has that's ending soon. Didn't know when I moved in that that would be a thing. I've been here for 2 years now and didn't gave problems with maintenance until now. AC in my living room has been broken for a month and no one has come to fix it, although the super has come twice to "confirm" that it was in fact broken. AC in my room was replaced with one that can't tell the temp of the room, having to adjust it 3-4 times throughout the night. Elevators break often but they fix them within a day or 2.

great maintenance team, door men

stifled by penny pinching from owners

had a parking garage, someone at the front door to collect packages, elevator

bad management, bad sink plumbing on first floor units, smelly hallways filled with flies

Street parking was great, good closets, decent appliance quality, doormen were great & helpful, common spaces were great & used frequently. I lived there for 4 years with roommates and a pretty good cohabitation space.

By the time I left, I could see the quality of the building going down. There were a few safety instances that raised flags throughout the 4 years. Also had roaches and rats towards the end of my time that went generally uncared for by the building.

Clean, better managed after they changed management companies.

Neighbors can get very very loud, especially on the top floor.

Hector the main doorman is great.

Build Super Jose is incredibly lazy and huffs, puffs and complains anytime a simple request is made. Fun fact, he actually left his abandoned SUV in the parking lot for about two years, when they towed it, all of the rodents living inside scattered and ran into the building. Jose also piled all the snow in the parking lot behind my car one year and completely locked me in for a week. I bought a new faucet in my apartment, he came in to do some maintenance... broke the faucet. I had a camera in the apartment and caught him on video using my expensive kitchen knife as a tool to fix a new faucet he had to buy to replace my nicer one that he broke. Eventually we just lived with the problems and never called him, it was better just let things be broken then watch him complain or be frustrated when he didn't respond.

Now for the non Jose related issues:
Get ready to lose heat a few times a year. Oh and if you like that elevator you pay rent to use, get ready for that to break once a month. The day they showed us the building there were multiple laundry machines broken. Those very same machines + more are still broken to this day 5 years later.

I can keep going, but you have enough examples. We stayed here for 5 years bc we liked the location and didnt want to deal with the hassle of moving.

Find a new building super and due some upkeep on the building. This could have been a nice place to stay.

Security at front desk, elevator

Mice, laundry not working, overpriced

Better mantienence

Clean, well maintained, large units, huge bathtub, roof access, responsive super, convenient to 2 train lines (M & J).

Up & coming area, units are new-ish but construction/finishes can be shoddy, poor communication regarding things like maintenance work (ex. water getting shut off).

Laundry & gym in the building, very close to the subway & bus station, big window

Maintenance is horrible. Laundry card charging machine is always broken, and so you cannot use laundry machine even though it’s in the building. Half of the machines in gym are broken. Management is so irresponsible and never gets back to you. Doorman is there and so it’s nice but they won’t sign a package for you.

Be more responsible

They are very nice and helpful

No cons so far

Be more responsive

Close to Trains, Rooftop View, Nice Resident Lounge

Laundry Room is small and machines always broken, elevators are always out of service, apartment fixtures and finishing are cheap and flimsy, building is not well secured, unresponsive property manager, etc. The building’s quality has deteriorated over the years and is not properly managed.

Respond to your tenants’ concerns!

It’s a green building, so my Con Ed bill for heat, air conditioning & electricity was always low. The Super fixes things well.

The Property Manager, Melanie Krauski, usually ignored & rarely responded to emails & phone calls; when she did respond, she was very nasty & unaccommodating. The weekday doorman, Hector, considered himself head of security, acting like he’s a police officer reporting you to management if he thought you were Airbnb renting & advising roommates to sue each other on matters that were none of his business, refused to sign for packages, and was generally unpleasant to guests. The fee for late rent payment was very high and illegal, and property manager never responded to rent bill errors or corrected them.

Get a courteous, appropriate daytime doorman. Hire a management company and property owner who are responsive and nicer to tenants.

New building with doorman

Super sucks, management sucks,

New super and new manager

Spacious apartments, great location

Management is unresponsive and it takes a lot of following up to get a hold of anyone. Everyone experiences issues with the ClickPay rent payment system; it took me 3 months of following up to get it resolved. Super is nice but repairs will take a long time and you'll need to follow up often. Neighbors can be loud; I didn't have issues until my current next door neighbor moved in, and now it is extremely noisy all night. Neighbors have complained about roaches but I have not personally had a problem. Washers and dryers are often broken, and laundry room uses a laundry card system requiring a card that the super does not provide (need to rely on other tenants to hand down old ones)

Ensure FirstService is responding to tenant emails! Update laundry system, ensure super has cards to distribute to new tenants

Elevator works well, doorman and package room is good

Super is lazy, building manager never does anything on time. I have things in my apartment that have been broken for 8 months with no repair in site, and these are major items. No covered parking for tenants is unjustified and wrong, zip car contract for the property owner is not more important. There are abandoned cars in the parking lot. Washing machines always broken. Buzzer doesn’t work. Heater has been broken for a month. Dishwasher as well.

Get better management and stop being so cheap.

- Staff is great!
- Super is responsive!
- Not so bad building
- Amenities are worn, but not old

- WHERE IS THE PROPERTY MANAGER?! they do not respond! UGH

Please update accoringly! A no update update is good too! At the very least

doormen and women are nice and very helpful. a/c and heat work well. good location. newer building. nice floor plans. good view from roof. packages are secure which is important cause people steal packages a lot in this neighborhood

management is very unresponsive. super is also not responsive. they are not giving rent decreases during the pandemic even though they are now being foreclosed on for not paying their own rent (lol). overall greedy and corrupt management. management currently in a lawsuit with tenants for illegal rents in the past. claim a gym as an amenity but it has been closed for over a year with no plan to reopen. problems with roaches and mice do not get addressed. most of the washing machines and dryers stay broken and never get fixed. trash sometimes sits in trash rooms for days. no good reason to move here as you can find a better deal elsewhere.

good luck with your foreclosure and lawsuit I guess. It’s obvious you could care less about your tenants and are trying to milk us for as much money as possible while you haven’t been paying the bank for your building for the past year. Hopefully once the bank takes control they will manage the building better or sell it to someone more competent. It’s a nice looking and well built and designed structure it just has bad and rotten management.

It’s near the J and M trains. The some of doorman staff is great.

Good luck trying to get a response from the property manager. You will need to call like three times, leave multiple messages AND send emails to maybe get a response.  You can also expect weird mistakes on your ledger. So please stay on top of things so you know exactly what you should owe and should be paying.

I was one of the lucky apartments to not have an infestation issue but there are numerous apartments in the building that have dealt with this problem.

The laundry room is a bit of a mess in the sense that washers and dryers break all the time and the machine to load money onto your laundry card crashes a lot.

The super is not the most reliable person. You have to remind him multiple times to stop by to get things done. But keep in mind he is the only one for a large building… so as long as you stay on top of him, your issue will eventually be resolved.

Respond to people! Your communication the entire time I’ve lived here it’s been absolutely terrible. I shouldn’t have to call multiple times, leave multiple messages AND send multiple emails to maybe get a response. 

The building is modern with laundry, gym, "hangout area", rooftop access with views of Manhattan, pet friendly, and no amenities fee. The building also has 24hr door people (though some in the past on the graveyard were creepy).

The building was also very accommodating to me about my lease as it was coming due just as the pandemic hit and I had no idea what to expect job wise.

This was a good apartment to start in NY or for those fresh out of school. Decent rent, amenities, and close to the M line.

It can take a hot minute to get stuff fixed with the exception of heat or a/c issues. Minor nit. You deal with a property management company and never the owner which is understandable in a building this size.

Convert some of the outdoor space for dogs. The surrounding area isn't always great to walk around solo and it would be great to just be able to let your pet do their business in the courtyard without being harassed.