The Gramercy Residences — Local services in Makati

Nice amenities when you can use them, great location, condos are 60/40 real / fake luxury, but every staff member is a bossy HOA rules lawyer and martinet.

Gramercy pros:

Location

Nice pool, lap pool, and sun deck

Decent gym, has some barbells and two places to do pull-ups, you can do real squat or bench, but they won’t let you deadlift

Good views

Elevators are abundant and well run

Vaulted ceilings in condos

Gramercy Cons:

All the staff are bossy martinets trying to order you around and denying you access to the amenities you’re paying for

Condos are cheaply built in several places and not soundproofed well

View windows and curtains + aircon arrangement isn’t thought through AT ALL, it’s doomed to interfere and render the curtains pointless

Kitchens are a joke - bad for washing dishes, nowhere to dry, poor ventilation, terrible and tiny electric range

Physically in terms of location, infrastructure, and amenities, I’m probably happy enough with Gramercy to keep staying there.

Experience wise, if I’d known I was going to be continually surrounded and pestered by HOA-style martinets over stupid and pointless rules, I wouldn’t have stayed here, and that’s what I’m leaving over. If that would bother you too, avoid Gramercy.

HOA martinet examples:

The gym forces you to sign in every time, AND forces you to have closed toe shoes (a completely pointless rule, if I drop a 180kg loaded barbell on my foot, no shoe in the world will help). They literally chase you down and try to make you sign in.

The pool forces you to sign in every time, AND has ridiculous rules. They wouldn’t let me swim in the completely INDOOR lap pool, because it was raining outside. Twice! They’re paying some idiot to sit there all day, denying you access to the amenities you’re paying for! It wasn’t even raining in the times they blocked access, it had just rained earlier in the day!

If I want to swim indoors while it’s raining outside, that should be my business, and some rules-obsessed martinet being paid to waste their life shouldn’t be able to stop me.

You need a special badge to use the elevators, and it will waste a day and a half going back and forth and waiting around unable to use the elevators getting temporary and permanent badges over two days, AND they deactivate them all the time, I had to be trapped in the elevator and forced to go downstairs to the front desk to tell them their badge doesn’t work again multiple times.

The security guards are up in your face if you sit ANYWHERE in the stupid lobby - sit on the giant bench shaped ledge? Don’t sit there. Sit outside on a ledge? Don’t sit there. Sit in one of only 4 chairs put in the lobby by the doors for that purpose? Don’t sit there, you can’t have two people in a chair. All the other chairs are full, that’s why we sat two in a chair. All the chairs are always full, because you have only 4 chairs and 20+ people continually in the lobby waiting around for various things.

It’s a very “the customer is always wrong” sort of atmosphere and place, and frankly, I’m used to being treated pretty well basically everywhere else in the Philippines, so...

We were very excited for our stay at the Gramercy Residences, but unfortunately — aside from the stunning view from our balcony — our experience led us to cut our stay short and to finish our visit to Manila at the nearby Milano Residences instead.

Upon arrival, our stay at the Gramercy was frustrating at best. The concierge staff, while polite, were not helpful and did not provide good service. This building requires each guest to obtain an photo ID access card that the front desk charges you for and needs to make for you in advance of your stay. Despite providing the payment and our IDs in advance, and even arriving a day after our check in date due to travel delays, our access cards were not ready when we arrived. No problem, we said — we will come back later for them, no big deal. They told us to give them 2-3 hours. We went back four hours later, no cards. No problem, we can come back again, we said. We went out with friends and came back hours later — now, one of our cards was ready, but not both. Again, not the end of the world — but it wound up taking an additional two days to get the second card. We even asked if they could just call our local cell phone number when it is ready so we’d not have to keep bothering them for each time we passed by the desk, and though they said they would, they ultimately did not ever call to let us know it was ready. We noticed, too, that we never spoke with the same person more than once, and each time we’d have to explain who we were and what was happening all over again. Poor service, overall.

The biggest issue with the Gramercy, however — and the primary reason why we ended our stay early — were the cockroaches all over the kitchen and eating space within our unit. We were staying on the 50th floor. Our host was very lovely and did have the place fumigated and deep cleaned on our third day while we traveled outside of Manila, but immediately upon our return, there were still cockroaches in the kitchen. We cut our stay short by twelve nights and instead transferred across the street to the Milano. We’ve stayed in the Milano before and now know for certain we will go back to Milano again if ever we’re back in Makati.

If you plan to stay in Gramercy or are booked for a future visit, I’d strongly advise you to check with your host in advance to see if there’s a history of insect issues within their unit. Only after we’d been there a few days did we dig deeper on Airbnb and other sites to see that lots of other very recent travelers had the same issue. Had we known in advance, we never would have booked there. Our stay was in June 2023 but we’d booked it six or eight months in advance. Hope this is helpful...

This may be the worst condominium in the city of Makati. I can’t even begin to explain how bad the service in this building is but I’ll try: Your visitors need to leave an ID in order to come up to you. Without ID they can’t go up unless you go to bring them. If you forgot your acces card in your unit you need to fill and sign a form or they won’t let you back. Even after living there for 2 years when all the guards know you already. If you lose your acces card (standard plastic hotel card) you need to pay 3,000 pesos. If you need a second card for your family you need to deposit another 3,000 Pesos. They closed my water one time because of an overdue water payment of 2 weeks of 157 pesos (about 3$). Happened an hour before I headed towards the airport for a flight. When you order pizza or any other food they keep the delivery guy sometimes 30-45 minutes until they send him up with your food. Why? Because the service elevator is not working now and they won’t allow him to use the other elevators. When you wait outside for a taxi and lean on the walls they ask you not to lean on the wall. If you sit with a laptop in the lobby they ask you to go to the “designated area”. You cannot use a laptop in the lobby. There is a guy there who’s job is to “spy” from the building across and then slip notes under your door telling you not to put things (luggage for example) in your balcony. This building has a colony of cockroaches living in it. No pest control can fix this. They come everyday. There are so many of them that you need to learn to live with them. There are 2 doors in the front entrance. You must enter from 1 and exit from the other. I dare you to try and do the opposite. All the furniture and finishing is very cheap. Things fall apart very easily. The walls are thin as paper. The only good thing I can say about Gramercy is it has a really great lap pool (which I used about 3 times). Other than that unless you are into self torture, masochism and generally like to be abused on a daily basis I’d stay away from this building...