Under New Ownership

I moved into my apartment in August of 2008. I love it here and don't want to move unless I absolutely need to or could comfortably afford a two bedroom place so I could have a proper office.

My building was sold to new owners at the end of December. I was a little worried as you never really know what kind of management you are going to get, but they have been awesome. Unfortunately, they are being too awesome and I fear for how much rent is going to sky rocket when my lease is up at the end of July.

The great things they have done to the building so far is give everyone access to free WiFi, re-carpet the stairwell (the old carpets were torn and frankensteined in places, lit up the garage and common areas and put in energy saving washer and dryers. The laundry upgrade is good and bad. On the one hand, it went from $1 wash and $1 dry to $1.75 wash and $1.50 dry. On the other hand, half the building stopped using them so there is no wait and I got the energy saving detergent from Costco so one bottle will last me until after the world ends in 2012.

To my apartment, they came in and asked me all the things I would like fixed. I had no major concerns really. Minor little inconveniences that I just learned to live with. I didn't like rocking the boat with stuff because they hadn't raised my rent in two years.

I had them snake the drains. It's weird. I just got used to showering in ankle deep of water. It kept my feet warm. I have a light switch that was backwards and they flipped it for me. They flattened out the track on my bedroom closet so the doors actually roll on the rollers.

About two weeks after I moved in, my water heater broke and they replaced it with a new one. Unfortunately, they left it on all the factory settings. I had about 6-8 minutes tops of hot water and then about 2-3 minutes of luke warm water until it went ice cold. I mentioned it to the old landlords and they always said it was on their list, but never did anything about it. So, the new maintenance guy looks at it and fixed the settings. WOW. The water actually gets HOT and I can take a long shower in hot water the whole time. AMAZING. However, I find myself keeping it on the mid-warm levels because after over two years of having it that way, I'm still getting over my Stockholm syndrome about it.

I made some suggestions to the new owners for other improvements. I got shot down on having a trash can in the garage, but they are looking into adding a recycle bin near the mailboxes for dumping junk mail. They are also looking into a better place to keep UPS & FedEx packages. We don't have a manager on-site so if the driver gets in the building, they leave the package resting in the basket of the fake tree in our tiny lobby. I suggested losing the tree and getting a table with a cork board so they could leave packages, but also notes to others in the building like garage sales, passive aggressive notes about noise levels and lost mittens. We'll see if anything happens with that.