Monarc at Met Apartments — Local services in Miami

Don’t even waste your time at this building. The staff here are rude, unprofessional, and waste your time. I read a lot of reviews that say they only care about filling units, and after this experience I can definitely say they don’t even care about that! My partner went to tour this building last week and Anja was helping us. She seemed super helpful at first and answered all of our questions so we decided to go ahead and apply. During our touring process, we advised Anja that a DUI would come up in the background check and asked if that would be an issue. She assured us several times (even in writing) that it would not be an issue and encouraged us to apply. The next day, she reached out to us and told us that the hold up with the application was due to the DUI (that we were upfront about) and that she just needed manager approval and we would be fine. I advised her I needed to let my current building know if I was leaving ASAP and she said her manager was out on a “budgeting retreat” until Monday but that she should answer her emails quickly. I had to check up on the status of my application daily, until I was advised on Saturday that my application was denied due to the DUI. It was confusing to me, because there were 3 listed reasons for denial due to criminal history. They were 1. Sexual harassment 2. A felony and 3. A crime against another person. The DUI matches none of those restrictions and was a mistake I made when I was young that does not affect my ability to pay rent or mean I’m a bad person. I looked up the management company of Monarc, only to find that RKW Management also manages my current building! Talk about inconsistency. After being offered no help whatsoever by Anja, who should have been happy to assist me getting approved, I then asked for the building managers info. At which point I sent a very nice email expressing my concerns and confusion but said I was still interested in the building. That was Saturday - come Monday at 2:30 I still had not heard anything from said building manager. I called in to the leasing office, and she was “at lunch”. I was promised a call back upon her return. At 4:30pm, I called once again to find out the building manager was “on a call” but somehow had enough time to tell Anja that she emailed corporate about my situation. I make a living off sales and customer service, and I would NEVER treat a client this way. Emails should be answered within 24 hours at minimum, and if she was truly working on approval from corporate a quick “I’m working on it” follow up email would have been nice! I have never been met with such unprofessionalism from someone I’m looking to pay. I was completely mislead, as I assume I’m not the first person with a DUI to apply to this building. Anja knew that I would be denied, but was eager to collect my $650 in application fees. At this point, I was so frustrated that I just asked for my money back as I felt grossly mislead and lied to. Anja then got a nasty attitude with me and told me “it’s not personal, it’s corporate” and told me she would only refund my admin fees. I told her I felt tricked into applying and that she should refund my application fees too. She then blamed it on the screening company, and said it was impossible. I told her that I would just call my bank then and dispute the charges. I also asked her to please have her manger give me a call back by end of day. Surprise, surprise I still have not received a call back. The reviews are accurate when they say the management looks down upon you as if you aren’t human, when in reality every tenant in that building probably makes more than the building manager. This building is gorgeous, but the management is SUCH a poor reflection of the building. If it was this much of a hassle to move into the building or even get a response, I can only imagine what being a resident would be like. This experience tainted my entire outlook on Monarc and I can say I’m happy to remain at my building where I am treated as a valued resident! Miami has beautiful buildings everywhere,...

**READ BEFORE MOVING

Property is nice, awesome location next to Bayfront Park, ULTRA Music Festival, and Wholefoods. Has some issues, but management/leasing team is AWFUL. If you think you will never interact with them, you will eventually (I thought the same).

I have lived here since 2019, never missed any payments, did not make a mess, 0 noise complaints, my month-to-month lease was terminated without ANY explanation as to why, without an option to renew or select another unit. Of course this was all done in "legal-speak" to flex some kind of authority or quasi-professionalism, refusing to negotiate on the matter.

A few months prior, I tried to rent a larger unit, only 150/month more than what I was paying already. They happily took two application payments ($300) to then tell me that "I don't make enough" and obviously kept the money.

The building has a number of issues, which do not get addressed for months/years, the management team is not responsive and spiteful to boot:

Cleanliness/Maintenance - while the actual cleaners do an awesome job, the management team neglects areas often. The garage had BROKEN GLASS in parking spots for weeks, when this was brought up on the resident portal/bulletin board, the post was immediately moderated/deleted. The Sauna is falling apart and wood is gray in color, has been for months, it's not clean, relaxing OR ever hot. Various parts of the building and amenities are chipped, broken, poorly maintained. Machines are often broken and neglected in the gym. There are water leaks.

Quality of Tenants has fallen significantly. With the amount of background checks, credit checks, handing over your entire life that these buildings require for leasing, you would think that wouldn't be the case. Two years ago, I had noisy neighbors who would party every night, be extremely loud, and blast music at 2am on a work week. When confronted, they were hostile, said they were celebrating Crypto, and told their angry neighbors who woke up to confront them - to shove it. It took MONTHS for the building to evict them. Dogs urinating in elevators is a regular occurance. Trashy behavior, leaving garbage everywhere in the public areas is a fairly regular thing. If you are a young working professional, Monarc may not be the place for you. If you are OK with a "frathouse" type of building, it may be fine.

Management just kind of does whatever it wants. For example, the pool/grill area was often "locked" in the evenings, even though the rules say it's open until 10PM. No explanations were given other than there is an issue with the scheduling/access control system. Which is likely BS. They just didn't want people there at night. So if you planned to grill dinner or wanted to relax on the pool deck after dark - you're out of luck.

Garage. Since the garage is shared with many others and Monarc technically also "rents" the space and charges you a fee - they take 0 responsibility for anything that happens there. I have received tickets and fines from the garage itself, having done nothing wrong and parked in the correct area, Monarc refused to help and told me to deal with the Garage directly, who also do not pick up the phone. A Mercedes burned up inside the garage, which is a scary thought as far as liability goes.

Packages. They are lost very frequently. Be prepared for your Amazon and other deliveries to not arrive, be sent back, or be lost in their system for days. Had an international package be sent back to make it's way around the world for a month.

There are nice sides of the building as well, the location is nice if you like to be in the middle of everything, the pool is nice when you are allowed to use it. But overall, management treats you like a second class citizen, is on a power-trip, and does not hold maintenance and accessibility to amenities for the crazy prices they charge. I have moved into another building nearby and the experience is FAR better.

Hope Monarc reconsiders the employment of their management staff to improve their brand and...

I visited 12 properties in Downtown, Brickell and Sunny Isles before choosing Monarc and came up with a score system to evaluate 15 different aspects that were important to me before making a decision. At the end, Monarc was the chosen one. Now that I have been living here for almost 6 months and after reviewing most of the comments, I can honestly say the following:

Pros: modern and well maintained building, friendly staff, including at the reception and leasing office, well distributed and spacious floorplan (I live in a 2 bd/2 bath apartment), lots of cabinets in the kitchen (compare with some in Brickell and you will notice the difference), good bang for your buck especially when you get the 1 month free promotion on a 13 month lease, excellent location (walking distance to Metro mover, Brickell, Bayfront, etc.), pleasant work-space in the second floor, well-equipped gym.

Cons (caused by the residents and a consequence of poor enforcement of the rules): most of the problems in the building stem from the fact residents are not respectful and Monarc is reluctant to enforce all the rules that were imposed to was when we signed the 100+ page lease. Couple of examples: (1) apparently people are grossed out to open the trash parachute and they just leave their trash open in the trash room. Sometimes, I can barely go in because of the amount of trash people leave on the weekends (2) pool area can become a no man’s land on weekends, with people bringing dogs in the pool area, drinking champagne from glass cups inside the pool and people competing who has the loudest speaker. Sometimes I have the feeling I am at resort or hotel and not really a residential building (3) I am pretty sure there are people renting out their apartment through platforms such as Airbnb because half of the people fit the description of tourists spending the weekend in town (4) I love animals but this building is too pet friendly meaning you will find piss and poop in the elevator and hallways. However, Monarc tries to clean it as soon as possible.

Cons (caused by the location): (1) the building is at one of the busiest intersections/blocks in downtown. Windows are soundproof but apparently honking is a sport in Miami. Be prepared for noise. (2) Regarding homeless people, this is a problem everywhere in downtown and even Brickell. Nothing Monarc can do except prohibiting them to stay close to the entrance.

Cons (caused by Monarc): (1) elevators are an issue here. There are only 4, including the service elevator, for probably 500 apartments and they constantly break down. How about assigning elevators to floor levels? Elevator 1 goes to floors 1 through 8 for example. I don’t see a long-term solution, and nobody is trying to creatively resolve this issue. (2) Service entrance: the loading dock where you park the Uhaul is next to the big trash bins. I understand the lack of space, but this is the first time residents are interacting with the building after signing the contract. The place needs to be neat. Why would someone want to step on slurry and glass while moving their furniture in? Monarc needs to do a decent cleaning of the space! (3) I still haven’t understood the recycling situation here but apparently nothing gets recycled. Some people have the impression that the building does recycle since there are instructions on some of the floors, but the fact is that nobody cares.

I believe this is a very honest and thoughtful assessment. Despite these...