Life in Williamsburg Luxury Apartments: Maybe Not That Great?
Brownstoner reports this morning that Williamsburg’s 53 Broadway—a relatively new luxury building with a troubled history that includes a stop-work order, foreclosure, and a change in ownership prior to its completion—is facing a whole new set of problems now that it’s up and running, with tenants complaining about astronomical electric bills, as well as problems with parking spaces and the 24-hour doorman they were promised as part of their lease agreements.
With electric bills as high as $700 and $1,043 (!!) per month, tenants are assuming that something’s wrong with the building’s wiring, and are also wondering whatever happened to the 24-hour-doorman that supposedly was part of the deal; the building has a doorman, but his shifts were quietly changed to part-time without any kind of announcement.
The parking also sounds like a disaster: “We were asked to give the other tenants with parking spots our phone numbers and be on call 24 hours a day and would be responsible to return home to move our cars within a one hour window so if you were blocking someone they would be able to get their car out,” said one tenant.
None of which is so bad in the scheme of things—not in a market where landlords literally destroy their property to drive out low-paying tenants—but still seems outrageous given what people are paying to live there; $2,704 for one-bedrooms and $4,216 for two-bedrooms, at the cheapest. Either a good dose of Williamsburg real estate schadenfreude, or an unfortunate comment on the potential irresponsibility of landlords at all ends of the spectrum, depending on your perspective. Still, better than being stuck on the Upper East Side?
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.