Brava — Local services in Houston

THIRD EDIT Boosting my review from 2 stars (given because of ghetto behavior from tenants that I think prospective tenants should be aware of) up to 4 stars because management really has been taking steps to curb the nonsense and slap lease violations on bad tenants. SECOND EDIT Updating with more tenant nonsense. The garage door that was destroyed and just got fixed 2-3 weeks ago IS DESTROYED AGAIN (5/4/24) because some feral, braindead animal that calls itself a human adult followed in behind another car instead of waiting to go one at a time LIKE THE SIGN VERY CLEARLY TELLS YOU TO DO. This is such a nice building, but the ghetto tenants are ruining it. I've never seen such idiotic behavior from so-called ADULTS in my life. EDIT Updating with new impressions 4 months in. PRO TIP TO MANAGEMENT: Y'all have to get serious about fines and lease violations and evictions. Nobody will follow the rules if there are no actual consequences. Then the only people who WILL leave are the good tenants, and you'll be left with all the trashy tenants. I still stand by much of the positive of what I said about the building and the people who work here, but I entirely retract my statement that Brava seems to do a good job of screening who they rent to. This place has the trashiest, most selfish, obnoxious tenants of anywhere I've rented. Are many tenants perfectly fine? Yes. But the ones who are awful are A.W.F.U.L. and should be evicted. People smoke weed in their units constantly. I'm not against weed, but smoke it on your balcony bc when you smoke in unit it stinks up EVERY UNIT ON THE ENTIRE FLOOR. There are small children on my floor. Let me find out the ones smoking are the ones with kids so I can call CPS. To Brava's credit, when I complained last weekend about an especially overwhelming stench of weed on my floor, they sent an employee up with me who said he would try to identify the offending unit and do something about it. I hope he did, and I hope those people ended up with a fine and a lease violation. Then there's the garage...One tenant vandalized my car, costing me hundreds in repairs. Several tenants double park which makes an already crowded parking garage even harder to park in. Those people are supposed to be fined and given lease violations, but something tells me that the rules aren't being enforced. Same with weed smoking in units. Supposed to be fines and lease violations yet these people still do it and are still here. Amenities are constantly being trashed because apparently these trashy tenants are feral animals. The garage door has recently been destroyed, likely by some feral idiot who tried to follow in behind someone instead of waiting like they're supposed to. At least Brava put a young man to mind the garage door overnight. I hope they pay him well. And then just this morning (3/8/24) while leaving for work, I see the front entrance door is broken and boarded up. Hmm what else, cops were called on someone on my floor recently, and the 2 hour conversation the cops had with the tenant out in the hallway made it hard to relax since you can hear everything. I'm sure I'll have more to add to this list as long as Brava keeps letting people get away with everything.

I recently toured Brava and signed a lease, thanks to the expert care of Cloressa. She runs a tight ship and worked hard to make my life easier throughout the process. From her firm handshake when we met, all the way through her emails and phone calls during the leasing process, she was a consummate professional. I was looking for a community with a good quality of life and high standards for who they rent to because, let's be real, sometimes landlords just want to fill a vacancy, and then you end up paying all your hard earned money to live with trashy neighbors. I got the distinct impression that the little things matter to Brava, as they should. Obviously, I don't have the depth of knowledge or experience that longer term tenants have, but I will of course update my review if my thoughts change, for...

I lived at BRAVA for over a year and I have been really disappointed in the quality of the leasing staff and the building itself. While it is a beautiful property, there are numerous reasons it did not meet my expectations.

Cleanliness of the building - The elevator floors are always dirty and so is the carpet on the resident floors. Of the 15 months I lived at BRAVA, my windows were never cleaned. I was told they would be cleaned twice a year, but that never happened.

Monthly fees - The monthly fees in addition to the rent are outrageous. After living in my apartment at BRAVA for over six months, there were numerous monthly fees that were added to my account that were in excess of $100. When I went to the leasing office to inquire about what they were, I could not get a clear explanation, but was told they were listed in my lease, which all of them were not. When I moved out last month, there were fees that were dated on my bill after my move out date that I was forced to pay. They subtracted the fees from my deposit before refunding my deposit, so I was forced to pay them. The leasing office worker, Jenna, claims they are for the previous month, but they are clearly dated for the upcoming month. If the charges are for the previous month, they should be dated as such.

Malfunctioning HVAC - Before I moved out my heat was not working for almost two weeks and it took multiple calls to the emergency maintenance line and multiple online Maintence requests to get someone to come look at it. The maintenance guys from the building could never figure out the issue. While Houston weather was not super cold during this time of year, I was using the heat at night as I have two small children and when the temperature was in the 40s outside, the temperature in my apartment would drop to 75-76 degrees, which feels like it’s freezing. Because of this huge inconvenience, I reached out to Jenna in the leasing office for some sort of concession for that month’s charges, but my email was never answered.

After hours pool usage- during the summer there were weekly large pool parties that would go on till 1-3am. There would also be people utilizing the pool well past the closing hour of 10pm after the parties cleared out. Most recently, people were in the pool till 5 am and making a lot of noise that woke me and my kids up. I made multiple complaints this summer about people using the pool after hours and being very noisy to the point that it would wake up my children. Only a week ago did the management send an email stating the doors to the pool would be locked at 10pm. This comes months after I requested this. Large parties are prohibited and only two guest are permitted to use the pool per apartment, but this rule was never enforced. Sometimes the gatherings would be so large , that the paying residents couldn’t enjoy the amenities. Again, I made multiple complaints that were ignored. Supposedly there was a security officer that was supposed to enforce this rule nightly, but it seldom was.

Thin walls- I unfortunately chose a unit next to the garbage disposal room, which was extremely loud. It was so loud that it would wake my children up at night. So please believe all of the posts about how thin the walls are in this supposedly luxury building.

Overall, I would not recommend anyone live here. The staff seems to be more concerned about impressing Instagram influencers/real estate agents to post their property on their pages and the events are also geared toward the same thing. The focus should be on keeping the residents happy and offering us a true luxury experience, which it is not. The staff is not responsive to emails as I had multiple emails that were never answered. Jessica was the only exception to this. She is amazing and very responsive to residents. For the amount of money it costs to live at BRAVA, how the leasing staff treats the residents is very...

It's not all bad at Brava, but it's not all good either. No place is perfect, and there are things you sacrifice with community living, but if I could describe Brava in one way, it's an act. On your next tour, ask a resident their honest opinion.

Outward appearance is how they get you in the door, and excited about the space. Don't be fooled. The space looks great in drone footage.

But living here has been a nightmare. I've been renting in Houston for almost two decades, and I can't say I've ever lived anywhere so expensive, and so frustrating.

From the day we applied to the day we were approved was no more than 72 hours, and the price increased by $700 per month, but had a "special." I don't get the strategy, The special made us feel a bit duped, and we understood that we would potentially be facing a crazy increase toward the end of our lease. We called that out and got it changed. Artificial price inflation should have been our #1 clue that wasn't getting better.

Of the buildings in the area, we pay the highest price per square foot. While the area is good, it's not $6,500+ for an 1,800 sqft apartment good. We have pretty good amenities, but they're nothing incredibly unique for a high-rise. The pool is nice, the amenity floor is good and has some nice work from home options. The gym is spacious and clean, Concierge and Valet are excellent. When the 47th deck isn't closed, it's nice and peaceful up there.

Every building has their maintenance issues, but we seem to have an excess. Elevators, flooding, water shut offs. It's a hot mess. Though, maintenance has always been kind and responsive to individual requests.

Our unit hasn't had too many issues overall, but the building itself is another story.

For a few weeks now, after the front doors of the building were blown off or whatever. Came downstairs one morning and there was glass everywhere, and the front doors were shattered. We still haven't had any communication about why our front doors are (still) boarded up, or the incident on the property. It's a bit...ghetto for the price we're paying. I lived in the hood for most parts of my life – my rent was $500, but we always had doors at least.

When we can't walk and out of our building's front doors, and it's a glaring and obvious issue, it would be nice to have it addressed.

The parking gates have been broken for some time. To the building's credit, there is security out there. Valet has been great at directing the flow, and fellow residents are patient about it, so while inconvenient, it could be worse.

We've also had situations where because the building is on a boiler and not individual hot water heater in units, our water has been below the proper temperature. It's both inconvenient (like, a cold shower, blech) and unsafe.

Things happen but when it's happening consistently, is it chance, or is it dysfunction? We pay a premium to live here. Like, a big one. The building itself isn't really meeting the standard. It's sub-standard.

We like the area a lot, and toured every building around Market Square Park to be sure it could be a good fit for us. It's walkable, close to the bayou trails, far enough away from the bars not to get disturbed, and close to all of the interstates. Complete convenience.

The initial impression was that this would be a great place to live. It is not. And it's incredibly overpriced for the quality. I really wish I would have taken the low star reviews more seriously.

If our unit was like $1,000 cheaper a month, putting up with the other stuff could be worth it.

Edit March 26 - 8 floors of the building flooded yesterday at 5 p.m. water up to the ankles, and in everyone's apartments (at least on my floor) they turned off the hot water again for the 4th time in the 6 months I've been here).

UPDATE: Management is communicating, and I give them props for recognizing it needed to happen. Hopefully things...