Avalon Midtown West — Local services in New York

The ONLY reason why I gave stars is the FRONT DESK and MAINTENANCE TEAMS. They are the most kind, helpful, and authentic group of people and I am grateful to have them be the caretakers of my home.

Front desk, shout out to Rodney, Latanya, Nick, and Bill. Thank you for supporting me when I got my first puppy, making me smile when I had a bad day, and making me feel safe at home. I have moved since and let me tell you, you will NEVER find a front desk team like this ever.

The maintenance team is ON TOP of their stuff. They always come through within 1-2 days if I ever submitted a maintenance request. Stairwells, gym and laundry room are constantly being attended to. Shout out to Adam and Wardrick for always humoring my puppy and just being great people to chat with, you guys work hard, I appreciate you!

Location is fine, great access to subway stations, but the tourists get tiring.

Now to the not so fun stuff:

The management team was pretty lacking in my opinion. I lived in a corner unit so I had one neighbor next door, one above, one below. I had a next door neighbor that smoked weed and my whole bedroom would smell like a blunt EVERYDAY and they pretty much did nothing about it. The smell was so strong, so nauseating, it would wake you up from your sleep. At first it was "we cannot confirm it is next door, we need physical proof." Lucky for me I actually caught the guy smoking, sent my proof to them, and they called the neighbor to warn him. Few months later, the smell started coming back. Management said the rule is you have to catch them 3 times but because so much time has passed, you're back to square 1. Their solution was to have maintenance come in and duct tape the electrical plug between our bedrooms (smells go through). This is a NONSMOKING building. I had to have the front desk bang on his door a few times at 3AM to tell him to quit it. And no surprise, the man would lie and lie. I tried opening windows, using fans, nothing would waft the smell out. The question is why do I keep having to change when it is management's job to handle situations like this. Lucky for me, the guy decided to move out a few months later.

A few months before I moved out, new people moved into the apartment under us. They loved playing music until the early morning, my floors would be vibrating the whole time. Okay, I can tolerate it. Then the weed smell started piling up again and this time it was my whole apartment. Well it couldn't be next door, its empty. I assumed it was downstairs. Contacted management to figure it out. Again, no proof. Okay, it's been 3 years, I'm really not playing this game anymore. I go to work early, 6AM, they're still playing music, went down to check myself, the music was blasting, the weed smell was through their hallway. I had enough, nobody wanted to help me so I contacted management one last time, I was done being nice, clearly I have to handle things myself. Go figure, the smoke smell was gone for the remaining of my stay at Avalon. So management can do something about it huh? Interesting.

I met a lot of kind people from neighbors to friends but not every apple is sweet if you know what I mean. There are the bunch that trash and I mean TRASH the laundry room. If you drop detergent, pick it up, there are paper towels. I'm pretty sure if you know how to pay rent, you know you need to clean the lint out of the dryer. If you use a communal laundry area, maybe you should set a timer to pick up your clothes instead of letting it rot in the machine for 3 hours. There's not that many machines and there are 50 floors. I have seen kids smoke in the hallways on my floor. I have seen grown adults walk around in the lobby with their bongs in hand. I have seen people break gym equipment.

HUGE shout out to the guy who almost kicked my puppy, started a fight with my partner, and yelled at us "THIS IS WHY THERE IS ASIAN HATE," enjoy living here for the next 26 years, bastard.

It's a great starter apartment is how...

I’m extremely confident that Avalon management paid for all the nice reviews here.

Absolutely horrendous/the worst experience with unethical management that steals your money as much as they can. My friends who were about to apply for Avalon buildings did not apply because they heard my stories.

No gas for 1+ month esp during early month of the COVID 19 pandemic. This meant that I wasn’t able to use the gas to cook any food for over a month. They got us a tiny double burner thing (just one per unit) that was barely usable. I couldn’t use the oven at all during this time. I’ve asked for a deduction in my rent given access t gas is a BASIC NECESSITY for anyone and definitely expected for a luxury building like Avalon but I got no deduction from my rent

Elevators breaking down EVERY WEEK. There were so many scary incidents where I got trapped in the elevator when the lights were either fast blinking (like an electric shock) or completely out (super dark) and I had to force the door open desperately for survival. I was living on a high floor so taking the stairs wasn’t super convenient, and I paid a high rent for a doorman and elevator building to avoid taking stairs all the time. What’s the point of living in a luxury building when half of the time I had to take the stairs all the way to the 25th floor? Another issue was that I could not press 25 on the elevator because that 25 button was NOT WORKING. This meant that I had to either go to 24 and take the stairs or go to 26 and come down through the stairs. This was fine for a few weeks but it lasted for over 8months (majority of my lease). I’ve requested the management to repair the elevators many many times but nothing got fixed. This was super inconvenient because whenever I have a large package, I always had to carry that package, go to a different floor, and then open the heavy door to the stairs to finally get to my unit.

They charged $300 for cleaning fee when my roommate and I literally cleaned every corner of the apartment. I am a clean person and cleaned the apartment every week and of course everywhere in the apartment before vacating (every inside parts of the fridge, counters, bath tub etc). I was never charged a cleaning fee from any apartment before. The reason from them was that the kitchen sink wasn’t 100% clean — which doesn’t make sense because it was made out of white plastic and not a good materiel so every time I used it the color turned yellow. I am not a professional cleaner who can bleach yellow plastics into white. It was already stained and yellow when I first moved in so there is nothing in my capacity that can do turn into a brand new kitchen sink.

I’ve never met a management that refused to split security deposit between me and my roommate. This meant that either 1) my roommate and I have to coordinate a time and a place to meet up to go to a bank together since we only get one check not two separate checks — super inconvenient and not COVID friendly as my roommate was living w his family in NJ at that time and I was still living in NYC or 2) get a notarized letter that states that my roommate is okay to put my name only on the security deposit rather than both of our names, so that I just go to a bank to get the money and Venmo him later. This was crazy inconvenient and not COVID friendly because every notary was closed due to COVID and when we finally found a place they charged $30 for it.

They charged me and my roommate for amenity fee ($95 per person not per unit which is NOT cheap) WHEN EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED during COVID. I had no clue why I had to pay $95 every month when I couldn’t even access these amenities for months. I had to fight with the leasing office to avoid paying this. They should not have asked us in the first place. As they had so many unhappy residents leaving the building they were trying to collect pennies and dimes out of every resident who doesn’t check their rent...

These reviews gotta be joke. Did Avalon Midtown West pay these people?

There are 41 floors in this residential building. There at only 3 moderately big sized elevators running, at least for the past few months. If you are a working professional with normal business hours, you will be waiting for an le stir to go to work and come home for 5-10 minutes, and it’ll remind you the rush hour subway ride.

Often there is no elevators running at all because there is a fire alarm test or false fire alarm tests (they say the was a mistake). Happened three times just this week.

Doormen change everyone I see someone by the door. And of course newbies don’t know what to do. They just play on their phone while the residents get in and out pushing the doors themselves with grocerie bags on both hands or not. I have expressed a concern about this to the management and well I didn’t even get a reply.

The only good and working hard people are the ones who’ve been at this building for years. Won’t name them here as I know they don’t care about this, and they know I appreciate them (year end tip).

Been living here years and I’m staying here just because I like my apt and it’s so much hassle to move. I go on business trips fairly often and every time I come back home I get the mixed feelings as soon as I pass the lobby.

Back door (service entry way) hasn’t worked for years. Even before the renovation the lobby never picked it up and opened the door. If you use the garage near the 49th street, have fun pushing that never-working intercom because you will never hear a word out of it. The management has been saying they’re fixing it it should be working by next week next month or even “now,” for over a year.

During the time I’ve seen so many people saying now they’re the residents manager or something who’d be dealing with the problems of the building and listening to the residents — oh can they handle the job more than a year? Nope they can’t. Simply because there are so many problems and so many residents!

There was an action by some resident who was trying to come up with a law suit by gathering people together and their signature to sue the Avalon Midtown West and its management. I wonder what happened to it in the end.

The on-going renovation is a joke. Can’t even remember when the due they said was — if this was a pregnancy, there’s a need for a giant c-section because it’d be a toddler not a baby anymore.

Amenities might look nice at first, just remember it comes at a cost. You can enjoy nicer gyms nearby at the same price with more of gym equipments and “gym amenities”. Personally things were better before this renovation. Laundry room still goes out of service time to time (out of service for a while during the renovation, and then even when it was in service the machines were all busy eating up your money and messing up the laundry.)

People also steal. Oh they do. People use the luggage carts and do not return. Lobby is always like a construction site. You will never know who’s coming in to the building and going up using the elevators. So many freakin people/tourists with so many luggage, by the way. Almost like a hotel. Why can’t Avalon try to find those units running Airbnb harder? Just looking at Airbnb and online communities running by foreigners I could find a few units already.

Joke. This place is a joke. The reviews here lol and the 4.8 stars...