Robin Goh
1/5
I was mentally exhausted for one year and want to warn anyone who will be bothered by noise and cold & unresponsive landlord. This is a review for an apartment at 148 Southwood Ctr Apt 4, South San Francisco, rented from Cary Kletter of Kletter Law.
However, to be fair, here are some good things about the apartment.
The pros:
* lots of sunlight during the day and the whole house is well-lit with ceiling lights during the night.
* Washer/dryer is one of the best compared to other places. (Samsung front-load large size)
* Nice wood flooring throughout.
* Nice floor plan with no waste of space
* Tons of kitchen cabinets for storage
* Double-paned glasses cuts outs voices. (*but the building structure itself allows all kind of low-frequency sounds to pass through the walls)
* Good ventilation due to having a relatively stronger kitchen vent than normal and lots of windows
* Rent is relatively cheaper than the surrounding managed apartment considering its square footage and number of bedrooms
Here are the downsides of it that made me moved after living for a year
Unresponsive, unfriendly and very cold landlord (Cary Kletter, from Kletter Law)
* Always ignored my first few message inquiries and only responded after subsequent attempts days apart.
* Asked about electric car charging in garage, give an estimated cost of $400 and refused to give how he got the estimate. He falsely and unfriendly assumed I don’t want to pay for charging
* Complained to the landlord regarding the garage noise issue and he just acknowledged with a single cold sentence.
* Request for maintenance on dishwasher, team came once and said to order for parts and no follow up afterwards.
* Quoted $900 to $1600 deductions from security deposits for what should have been considered normal wear and tear for a few patched drilled holes.
* Sid the leasing agent was nice and courteous when helping us moving in but the landlord Cary, who handles any issue/inquiry during the lease, is not a nice person.
* In addition, beware as this landlord did not return the security deposit within 21 days after move-out and only mail the check one day late when a demand letter is sent.
Extremely poor noise insulation. I constantly have panic attacks for the past year and didn’t have good sleep on most nights. These are some of the example instances of noise I observed.
* People shouting on the street at 11 PM
* Garage downstairs vibrating the floor at 12 PM when neighbors get home
* The unit is on the path of airplane runways, and thus airplanes rumbles all day until 2 AM
* Car speeding with loud engine at 2 AM that awaken me
* Trash pickup truck beeping and making loud noise at 6 AM
* Cars alarm beeping every now and then
* Will hear any non-electric car passing by
* Washer regular draining cycle shake the whole house like it might fall apart.
* Hear every movement from neighbors next door despite them walking just normally.
* Hear cabinet slamming from next door despite they’re being closed normally.
* Music from neighbors downstairs and one-unit-away vibrates the floors and shared walls.
* Hear ravens fighting from the ceiling/rooftop
Other cons:
* Moldy smell that will not go away despite a dehumidifier and air purifiers running every day for the past year.
* It’s super cold most of the times as the thermal insulation is bad
* Strong jet fuel smell on non-windy days (about 4 weeks in total last year)
* Bathroom tap water occasionally flows reddish brown water every month. It happens during the first few minutes of turning on the tap and becomes clear afterwards.
* Marijuana smell that leaks through the building seams despite all windows closed
* 7-eleven truck unloading engine noise for an hour every 3 days
