One Santa Fe Apartments — Local services in Los Angeles

Update: Phony response that is too late to matter. Worst managed building I have ever lived in and I've lived in LA since 2002 in MANY different apartments all over the city. STAY AWAY - THERE ARE MUCH BETTER OPTIONS IN THE AREA.

Original:

My wife and I lived at One Santa Fe for 5 years.

Location - The location was great for walking to so many great businesses in the area. Luckily there are MANY more buildings to choose from. Amenities - Decent amenities for only 6 months, then they were shut down NOT due to the pandemic, but because the pool was leaking into the grocery store below it. We paid premium arts district rent, but only got a fraction of what we were paying for. There was a miniscule concession for this that we received for 3-6 months, then they just kind of gave up on it. There was extremely poor communication for an accurate timeline of when amenities would be finished from management. Multiple buildings in the area had started construction and finished before OSF’s amenities were “completed” in 2023. When some amenities returned, they were worse than before - gym size, pool and jacuzzi size and filtration (floating human hair and algae), newly built pergola blocks entrances to amenities… Parking - Entrance to the garage is always broken, literally. It’s wide open as I write this. My wife and multiple other tenants had their cars broken into because of this. Management did nothing about this when it was reported. Packages - Concierge used to accept packages, then opted out and stuffed all packages into a mail room that is visible from the street and very easy to enter. Tenants are constantly having packages stolen because it is an unsecure location. Elevators - are constantly out-of-service even days after being “fixed”. Management - I have never lived somewhere with such poor management. Period. From communicating to preparing a lease agreement. The current manager at OSF made mistakes multiple times on our leases, leaving parking costs blank in a section where it says, in black and white, “if left blank, parking is free”. We signed this lease and then HE signed the lease which he himself had prepared. We officially had free parking. He then tried to intimidate us and told us “the landlord can change parking agreements at any time” which was a lie. We had to contact the corporate office constantly to get him to do his job correctly. We of course won the argument here because it was a legally binding document. Safety - We had heard complaints about squatters in empty apartments. I, myself, witnessed an altercation between the concierge and a homeless woman that had barricaded herself in a trash shoot room. The building is extremely easy to enter if you’re not a tenant. There were many AirBnB rentals in the building as well, which was not allowed, but OSF would not enforce their own rules even after numerous complaints from tenants. Tenants Association - A group of tenants had to start an unofficial TA because of how mistreated and unheard everyone at this building was. Representatives were able to schedule a meeting with management and the corporate office to address all of our concerns. The main point was increasing communication from management about the amenity timeline, out-of-service elevators, and general knowledge that tenants should be informed of. They agreed, yet nothing had changed to this day.

Overall, this building is an absolute mess and at this point, there are SO many other, MUCH better options in the area. Aliso is right across the street, Amp, Ava, Hewitt, Garey and Llewellyn are just a few MUCH better options if you’re looking to move to the arts district. Please consider these options over One Santa Fe. You’ll be doing yourself a huge favor. It just isn't worth your money...

There is a reason why so many people have left 1 star reviews for this apartment building. While the building itself is modern and in a nice area of the Arts District, and the concierge staff are really great, the management is frustratingly bad. There are very high monthly fees - you get charged a mandatory $25/month for a trash pickup service to your door (even though there's trash chutes along the corridor), $20 for sewer, and $100 or more per month for electricity and water usage fees (water is split evenly between all apartments and always high, nothing can be done about it).

SECURITY DEPOSIT - Mandatory fees will be removed from your deposit We left the apartment as clean as we found it moving in, but they remove what they call 'standard fees' from the security deposit, which includes a $165 cleaning fee, and $250 wall painting fee! After a lot of complaining they finally removed the cleaning fee but are still charging us a pro-rated wall painting fee (we lived there for 13 months, didn't paint or damage the walls, and filled in all picture hanging holes and repainted them with the correct color paint, but apparently that's still not enough). This is the first place I've lived in my life that I won't get my deposit back fully. We plan to fight it as it doesn't seem legal.

FRUSTRATING PRACTICES - charged $400 for parking in wrong spot in my apartment building (rather than a simple phone call to move). Berkshire Communities employs a lot of temp workers so when we moved in they couldn't help with quite a few questions. When we moved into the apartment, the temp pointed out some parking spaces with large white signs that were for the Metro parking but didn't say that most of the 2nd floor parking is Metro only (with small floor-painted writing half-faded, much less obvious than the few large white signs). Within the first couple of weeks I accidentally parked in a spot one night and came down the next morning to find my car towed. I had to pay $400 to get the car back. Note I had a One Santa Fe resident parking sticker visible on my window screen. I parked the car at ~8pm and came down at 630am to find the car towed overnight. When I picked up the car, it had a big sticker on the driver's side of the windscreen that took me a lot of elbow grease to completely remove. All they needed to do was call me and I would have moved it immediately. The parking in building 100 is never full so this really was unnecessary. I contacted management about it but they just said there was nothing to be done. I asked them to please paint the faded floor writing for other residents, but they never did.

BUILDING LAYOUT There is no access to stairwells except to exit, so when the elevators break (once our elevator was broken for 3 weeks) you have to walk to the other end of the building to use a different elevator as stairs are inaccessible. There is no way to access the gym/pool except by elevator, so again, when it broke, I had to walk the entirety of the building to go through another entrance area. If you live in the 100 building there is no access to the courtyard, so you have to exit the building to the street and re-enter through the drive-in entrance.

COMMUNITY FORUM shutdown There used to be a residents online forum to chat, but when people noticed the high monthly fees being charged, and started talking about it on the forum, management shut it down! Luckily we saw this and spoke to management and they did reduce our monthly fees after that (apparently there was an 'error' in their overcharging us!).

HOT TUBS Are excellent, generally very hot, with a great view...

Where to begin... Save yourself some heartache and look elsewhere. You can get a lot more for a lot less. Even if One Santa Fe provided everything they promise and advertise (which they don't) it still wouldn't be worth your time and effort.

Communication: What communication? My contact person was Michael but you will never have any communication with the agents or management. The concierge are pretty friendly most of the time and can be helpful.

Amenities: You've got the shops. That's it. F45 gives you a class on Mondays, "Kombu" is convenient as is "Here and Now" both being pretty good. However, you will not have a pool. You will not have a fitness room. You will not have a lounge. Though still advertised, they've been under "renovations" for about 3.5 - 4 years but wearing the mask of "should be ready in 'X' months".

Parking: If you plan on coming home after 6pm good luck. It's an extra fee to get a spot in the garage and they gave away more than they have so the common spots are first come first serve. There are some spots that are designated as reserved for an extra cost but these will never be available for you. There is a waiting list that unfortunately is never updated. While there seem to be an abundance of empty reserved spots, you will go mad doing loops around the parking garage to find a non reserved spot available.

Rent: Though you won't use the amenities, you are of course expected to pay for them each and every month. Not only are you charged the full amount but your rent may even increase without any amenities opening up.

Mail: You are expected to register a "Parcel Pending" box (mainly for Amazon) but it's really hit or miss. It is an extra cost even if it is not used. Also the mailroom is not monitored, easily accessible for anyone to get in, stolen packages are pretty common, and it's usually a collection of Amazon carrier crates so good luck hunting for your packages only to find it was taken.

Maintenance: Probably the only redeeming quality. I've never had a problem with them. Response time is pretty quick. One of them has a little bulldog puppy.

Fire alarms: Was more of a problem in the summer. We stopped leaving for them. Just buy some headphones and connect them to your tv.

Trash services: I'm not going to complain about any service that requires a worker to dump my trash can for me. It's convenient, I hope they are paid well.

The real upset is that the apartment could actually be nice but the owners and agents and managers absolutely ruin it. It's an okay area and there are other apartments that seem to be doing it right. If only One Santa Fe could get out of their way. It is a true punishment to live here and your hosts treat you as such. They sucker you into a lease and try to nickel, dime, and penalty charge every cent out of you. Why waste the time, heartache, and hassel? Take care of you and go anywhere...