Pros:
My unit is renovated with new appliances (including in-unit washer and dryer!). I like the shower water pressure and the central heating. After 10.5 months, I have luckily not spotted a rat nor cockroach inside my apartment (*knock on wood*). The back facing apartments are really quiet as there is a significant buffer between the apartment and the next street. However, unsure if the people in the floors beneath me or facing 10th street have been so lucky pest and noise wise. The super is really nice and responsive as well. Management can sometimes be unresponsive but if you complain enough and get them on the phone, they are pretty reasonable.
Cons:
This is a rent stabilized apartment but I could only afford it because of a free month I got last year so now I am being priced out. The new rent price though seems unreasonable for the very small space. The square footage of my 1 bdr apartment is tiny and a classic railroad style apartment so even studio apartments are often more spacious.
For about the first 5 months of living there, the construction noise was unbearable to the point that I almost tried to get out of my lease. Due to the construction, we had water outages for a couple hours a few times. Our cooking gas was also turned off due to a Con-Ed violation for 5 months but we were given a rent concession and hot plates.
There is also no central AC so in the summer it gets really hot without your own AC.
Lastly, my living room gets light for only 2 hours a day because it faces a small gap between buildings. That gap has many pigeons that you can sometimes hear and is a generally gross gully, so I never open those windows for fear of pests. Speaking of fear of pests, at night I try to avoid the sidewalk outside the building as much as possible because its poorly lit and there are a lot of rats roaming around. But again, so far, living on an elevated floor (and due to the apartment's elevated ground floor from 10th street), I haven't spotted a rat indoors *but seriously knock on wood*.
Advice to owner:
If you can somehow install more lights on the outside of the building, I think the rats would feel less free to dominate the sidewalk. The common space could probably be redone as there are a lot of cracks in the hallway floor. Central AC would be nice especially given the amount you are charging for the renovated apartments.