Hanover Brazos Street — Local services in Austin

I want to provide a fair, non-emotional assessment of Hanover Brazos as a resident who has lived here for the past year. My rating was intended to be 2.5 stars rather than 2, but I didn't see that as an option. My reason for that is that I find this property to be "impeccably average" compared to what my expectations were, how my experience unfolded. Not good, not bad...just very, very average (thus I am moving to a different property just over 2 weeks from now).

First off...the community of other residents is wonderful! I have made some great friends while living here, some of whom I might do some work with and will continue spending time with after I move out. While obviously the property management company doesn't have a ton to do with how well people connect and get along, clearly a lot of similarly minded people were attracted to this property. A lot of business founders who want to better themselves in mind, body & spirit is common here, and I've been very grateful for that. I would say undoubtedly this aspect has been the highlight of my experience here, and that's a pretty big one.

Probably the biggest disappointment from a structural standpoint with this building is the open floor plan of the co-working space on the 44th & 45 floors. I rented here mostly because of my experiences at the Hanover Republic Square property as a guest, which has a great co-working design with multiple enclosed offices and private areas...admittedly I expected Hanover Brazos to be similar. It 100% is not. There are two very small enclosed spaces on the top floor that weren't even enclosed until another resident complained about it. The rest of the space on both floors is completely open, meaning that if more than 2 people are in the space it gets noisy. I have zero clue why the co-working space was designed the way it is, but if you're looking to get quiet work done (or need to get on calls), it quickly it becomes a distracting environment (not to mention the WiFi doesn't work great, and phone reception is spotty). I expected this aspect of things to be MUCH better than it turned out to be- quite disappointing (despite admittedly nice views of the city).

I haven't had many issues with my individual unit- a few heating issues here and there, though I can second other reviews I've read mentioning appliances that go out the first time you use them (no clue why) and I know lots of residents who have had issues with their heat/AC...mine's been mostly ok...just some things you wouldn't expect from a brand new building. Also they replaced my air filter last week...it was nasty. The maintenance person said they are meant to be replaced every 3-4 months...so my question was "why is this the first time it's been replaced?" Not much response.

The mail room has been one of the biggest disasters I've ever seen in any building I've rented at. It's on the third floor, but probably 70% of the packages you get notifications for wind up NOT being on the designated shelf for your floor, and it's a wild goose chase to figure out where it is. I've lived at many properties and this is the worst I've seen. I don't know who is actually at fault (the system or the carrier) but it's a mess for the resident.

So again, I want to be fair...it's not a bad place to live, I've loved the people I've met...but it's VERY overpriced for what you actually get. The gym is ok, the pool area is nice but over-regulated by management who employ childish rules they claim are there to "protect us" (like the government does) but wind up alienating the residents...no one is being super loud and we're all adults who pay a lot of money to live here and want to enjoy social times together.

The building I'm about to move into downtown is $500 less in base rent, has a sauna, steam room, two cold plunges, 12 individual offices for co-working on the top floor, a salt water pool, a gym with a full squat rack, a golf simulator, a market...I could go on!...

For what's available on the market and for what you get at Hanover Brazos, there's better value...

I’ve been living here for 8 months now and have had mixed feelings of my apartment, I agree with most of the five star ratings that the amenities are stunning, the staff is nice, the spaces are clean, and the concierge always greets you with a friendly smile. I do think, however, this building has a lot of issues they fail to address and it is going to be the deciding factor to if residents will choose to stay at the end of their lease. Here are a few things that I haven’t been satisfied with:

1. strict amenities usage hours, we are promptly kicked out of public spaces at midnight and the media room isn’t accessible to us at all except 7pm-12am after the leasing office is closed. It seems a little unfair to charge such high fees and limit time in amenities.

2. the quality of the units, it’s been 8 months since I’ve moved in and out of the 10 lightbulbs in my two bathrooms only 1 lightbulb is left and all the others are burnt out. The cost to have maintenance to replace the bulbs is $7/bulb. The paint isn’t the best quality and so easy to stain the walls. Our floorboards have been warping from unknown reasons. Our oven jumps the breaker frequently. Overall our unit has breaker issues since the first month we’ve moved in, we had an outlet that wasn’t connected to any electricity source, washer breaker jumping, and more.

3. package room, this has been one of my biggest issues as many of the packages shipped to me are not properly processed into the building’s package system so it fails to give me a notification for pick up. I’ve had fresh food deliveries twice that was put into the mail room without notifying me. I missed these packages and my food ended up rotting in the mailroom by the time I finally went to check if my package has arrived.

4. management’s problem solving efforts, the team truly have the nicest people though sometimes they don’t handle concerns/complaints well and don’t do much to solve current issues. I feel like they focus a bit too much on bringing new people in and less so on the current tenant’s happiness (which is equally as important.) I hope to see our voices...

To start with, I do really love my apartment and the layout, I think most of the units I've seen here are nice. The pool isn't bad, the gym is ok despite being on the small side, but overall the amenities are one of the main reasons I assume people would live here.

My frustration comes with the actual day to day reality of living here where there are lots of rules and leasing agents who live on site watching everything everyone does. For example, I have a motorcycle and pay for a full size parking spot. I am not allowed to have a guest park there if the spot is free, nor am I allowed to fit my bike plus a car... which is obviously easy to do. There is no guest parking in the building, which is something I've never seen before. It would be one thing if we were at capacity, but when something clearly works, and would make people happy, we are still not allowed to do it.

Others in the building have complained about lots of other issues, this is just the first thing to affect me. It's a small issue but there's just no reason to have rules like this in place. I have no idea how there are so many good reviews for this building. It's nice, yes, but far from feeling like a "home". If they want those of us who moved in early to stay I highly recommend they look at the way they treat the tenants.

Edit: it’s worth noting that I’m only able to add one parking spot for my apartment, making this rule truly idiotic.

Also- many of us are having our maintenance requests ignored and when we bring these issues to management we are told they don’t care if we stay because they “like turnover”. Interesting timing to see things go downhill just as the building is listed for sale.

Very different vibe here compared to other similar buildings in the area. Things might improve if we get new staff with a potential sale, but we can’t count on that so might be best to avoid living here until things...