i5 Union Market — Attraction in Washington

Would give this building zero stars if I could. Worst living experience I've ever had. Leasing office folks have been consistently disappointing, unprofessional, and unaccommodating. I moved out in mid-June and the leasing office sent me a "move-out acknowledgement letter" in April stating my pro-rated rent balance due for June. I paid the stated amount on time and confirmed with a leasing agent that my account balance was good to go when I turned my keys in. Two weeks AFTER I moved out, the account manager emailed me surprising me with a $400 surcharge with zero explanation, forcing me to take the time to call the leasing office and figure out where this outstanding balance is coming from. Turns out the leasing team can't do math and miscalculated my June pro-rated rent and was now chasing me for an extra $400 that wasn't outlined in the official documentation they sent me in April. I found it very unprofessional of the leasing staff to be putting me in this distressing situation AFTER I moved out and allowing a whole 76 days to elapse between the date they sent me the move-out acknowledgement letter and the date they "corrected" their error. I tried asking them to accommodate me with at least a partial discount since this was entirely their fault, but the leasing staff was dismissive and was just like "yes it was our error but hey we found the error 2.5 months later! So pay us the full updated amount and we won't accommodate you whatsoever!"

And that wasn't my first time experiencing a lack of accountability from the leasing office. I lived in a co-living unit and when my first roommate moved out, I emailed the leasing office asking when my next roommate will move in. The leasing office replied assuring me that they'll notify me before my next roommate moves in. They never contacted me and I got zero heads up before my next roommate showed up at my door to move in.

In my experience, the leasing office folks are consistently negligent and apathetic, and I've oftentimes gotten better customer service from the concierge at the front desk. I'll give you another example. I don't recommend co-living for a number of reasons, but if you're considering co-living and are drawn to the perk that you get toiletries (paper towels and toilet paper) included in your rent, just know that the cleaning staff will only give you a limited supply every 2 weeks and if you run out, there's no way to contact the cleaning staff to restock your supply. The leasing office doesn't care and told me "it's a fixed amount and we can't offer you any more toilet paper if you run out." So just be warned that this is the type of cold response you can expect from the leasing office, based on firsthand experience. On multiple occasions, my co-living unit was without toilet paper for up to 5 days.

I won't go too much in detail about my terrible co-living experience but... do NOT do co-living if you care about your mental health!!! Please be warned that the co-living units are extremely small/compact and you and your roommate will likely have bedrooms that are right next to each other and sharing a wall. Therefore, you will hear EVERYTHING going on in your roommate's room. You are out of luck if you have roommates who like to blast music on their Amazon Alexa, bring guests over frequently, and talk on the phone all day (I experienced all of these issues with my roommates). Also be warned that roommates are completely random, so if you're female it's a 50/50 chance that your roommate is male, and you probably won't have the same cleanliness and temperature/thermostat preferences as your roommate. So keep that in mind!

In conclusion, co-living is not worth throwing away your mental health for! It's highkey also a scam because the price is too high for the little space that you get. For young professionals looking for a place to stay in DC, I recommend renting in a rowhome/group house with a private landlord. That'll save you money and you won't have to pay all the extra fees and deal with the bureaucracy and unprofessionalism of...

Since Sam and Justine left at the end of 2020, the leasing office has gone from a 5-star experience to a 1-star experience. It took tweeting at Bozzuto corporate to finally get my lease renewal offer after a full month of trying to get it directly from the leasing office (and also a full month after I was required to give notice if I was moving, per the current lease). I then had to wait another month (until the day before my lease was set to expire) to receive my actual new lease to sign, and only received that after tweeting at Bozzuto corporate AGAIN. I've lived in several other buildings in my decade in DC and have never received such procrastinated/delayed service from a leasing office before and I'm sure they're losing tenants this way. I've overheard a couple people say they were moving to other buildings just up the street instead. There's also other small issues, like them not approving posts to the building's resident portal (virtual bulletin board) rendering it useless for the past several months.

Since I agreed to renew, the building has also experienced a ton of really inconvenient service disruptions recently. A few weeks ago there was a scheduled power outage all morning on a Monday (which started late and ran until almost 2pm when so many people are still working from home). Then the building's internet went out for several days, which affects things like package notifications, freight elevator reservations, and internet connection on the gym machines like the Peloton. Yesterday we were notified that there would be an emergency water shutoff all day today, from 8am-4pm (could this not have been done overnight?). To make matters worse, management never notified us that the work was finished until I inquired because the water pressure never came back in my kitchen. I was told by the front desk that maintenance would come up (do they not believe me? It was clearly a result of the water shutoff), and they never showed up. So now I will continue not having adequate water in my sink tonight.

Also, anyone planning to take a concession should be prepared to pay it back in full if you break the lease. This is not disclosed anywhere until you receive your lease (which they aren't sending in a timely fashion based on my experience and other reviews, so that's not helpful).

The cleaning staff is still great but as someone in a google review mentioned, the carpets in the hallways are all disgustingly stained (and that's not something the staff can deal with without special equipment -- they do keep-up all the hard surfaces and the gym really well). Things like carpets and windows have not been cleaned once in the year I've lived here. The building really needs to hire a service for those.

I have not used the pool at all since I moved in, but I plan to try during a weekday now that the pandemic is settling down. On weekends, some party promoter(?) hosts pool parties on the roof and promotes his clothing line (which frankly looks like club/escort service branding), despite the lease saying business shouldn't be conducted in the apartment unless it has been authorized. It's not clear if he actually knows his guests or if they're just random strangers he's invited into the building. I'm not comfortable with that, so I've avoided the roof on weekends. [You can see i5 tagged in all these posts on Instagram.]

Otherwise, the apartments themselves are still nice and the location can't be beat. The front desk staff is great and I can't speak highly enough of Nicole, Wanda, and the others. The gym is well-kept. Knocking down to 3-stars to reflect the large decline in management between 2020 to 2021.

Update (7/9/21): Maintenance came first thing this morning and were very professional and acknowledged that they knew exactly what the issue was and I wasn't the only one. Wanted to update to give kudos to them. Communication by management acknowledging that this was a known issue would have...

tldr: I would not recommend living here unless you want to wake up every morning wondering if your heat and AC is still working.

I lived at i5 for about 2.5 years. At the start, it was great; by the end it was a negative experience that I cannot recommend, especially at this price point, and I didn’t renew. The highlights:

AC and heat: I don’t know what’s wrong with the AC and heat on the 7th floor and elsewhere in the building, but it is an ongoing problem. In late Feb there was a 2-month-long AC and heat outage for my entire floor which management took days to acknowledge and provided functionally no updates on for weeks. Since then there have been at least three other multi-day outages on multiple floors that management did not communicate about promptly. With the two month outage, it took weeks of emailing management to get an estimate of how long the outage would be, and the only financial remedy they offered was a refund of the $50/month HVAC fee. I negotiated an additional small refund for the fans I had to buy, but they declined to provide any rent concessions for this or subsequent outages. Their only proposed resolutions were a) email blasts saying this is why renter’s insurance important and to contact our insurance if we needed anything and b) eventually providing bulky portable AC units that were not safe to use around pets (required an open window flimsily sealed up to operate), were much too loud to use while sleeping or working, and also didn’t cool down much of the apartment (they were not rated for a space the size of most studios in the building). I will note that a week into first outage, they did provide me use of the building’s guest apartment after I emailed Bozzuto corporate, but there is only one of those in the building…and the AC/heat ended up going out in that apartment too. People have broken their leases over this, and it’s still an ongoing issue. Service outages: This building has had multiple unscheduled all-day power outages; water outages; and extra fire alarm tests. Earlier this summer we had all three happen over the span of 5 days. At most, we got 24-36 hours notice about them. Flooding: An entire side of the building was completely flooded a few months ago. No reason was given. Safety: It’s not uncommon to come home to police in the lobby. At least once, they were there because someone had come in and threatened the front desk staff. The building has sent out zero notifications about this, and doesn’t appear to have made any changes in response. Management: It is very hard to get in touch with management. Negotiating a small refund for buying fans took me countless emails (many of which were just never replied to); phone calls; and eventually just waiting in person until management was in the office. All told, this took months for a simple request.

To be fair: the apartments themselves are fine in terms of layout, I’ve never seen any bugs/pests and the location is very convenient. The concierge staff and maintenance staff are great, and doing their best. The management team seems pretty overwhelmed, and they just took over managing the shared apartment side of the building so I can’t imagine that will change. This building could have a lot going for it, but instead it’s been a constant headache and one of the worst experiences I’ve had in six...