Domus — Local services in Philadelphia

A glorified dorm full of students.

Back in mid 2017 before we moved in, during the building tour, we were told that this place allows only grad students and professionals. Now someone told us that this is not true since they changed this rule back in 2010 so clearly someone was giving us a false information.

This building is full of students, many of whom are still enjoying party lifestyle. Most families and professionals must have left this building as we have seen fewer and fewer of them over the past 12 months.

Since majority of tenants are students, this has impacted many living conditions such as public dumping in stairway and hallway area, playing loud music during the day and night, loud noise in the hallway, unflatten cardboard boxes, trash chute door left ajar that stinks up the elevator area, moving equipment around in the gym but do not put it back, not wiping down after finished using gym equipment, playing loud music through portable speakers in public areas such as the pool and the gym, etc. These examples are something one would expect from a student dormitory, not from a place that cost this much.

Not to mention the fire alarm latches are being pulled for fun numerous times a month and the management is not sharing if they have a plan to stop this behavior. All they do is posted a piece of paper by the mailroom - no email ever been sent out regarding this fire alarm issue. Imagine having to get out of your bed at 4.20am and standing outside the building for 20 minutes. Well, this happens quite frequently.

Security personnel are generally nice. Facilities team is very responsive. Management team doesn't do enough with noise complaints. Usually they will give a run around without doing anything. This could be because we have already let them know that we are leaving so we are no longer a priority. Also the building director would not stop mentioning this review during a few meetings we have had yet nothing about the party noise is being done. Their main goal is to keep bringing in more people.

Just to share this one particular incident: we were woken up in the middle of the night by this angry (and possibly drunk) young lady across the hallway who was knocking on people's doors trying to find out who made a noise complaint about her party. Something we didn't do since we could not hear her with the hallway in between. The same girl woke us up again 3 weeks later at 2am accusing us of stealing her floor mat (the floor mat was moved/kicked and landed near our front door area) and threaten to have her important lawyer mom sue us. She also left a nasty note on our door of which we have shared it with the management team. Again, nothing was done. Talk about a dorm-like experience.

This place is ideal for students who want to live in a flashy and posh place. It has everything one would need, the pool, the gym, study room etc. It's safe with 24 hour security. Most parents would probably like this place at first sight.

If you are not a student, stay away from this place. The rooms facing Ludlow are extremely loud with trash trucks operating every night from 1am-7am. Each trash truck emptying a dumpster visit will last approximately 15-20 minutes usually will come at 2am, 4am and 6am servicing nearby buildings. Between 6pm-midnight, prepare for banging noise from trucks re-stocking, loading and unloading products. Yes, it is very loud.

After almost 3 years, this is when we decided we have had enough. We work hard and when we come home, we cannot relax as many of our neighbors are blasting audio from their stereo systems. We have been woken up in the middle of the night on a weekly basis. We have reported this but nothing has changed. We had to sleep on the couch a few times because of the thumping bass from our neighbors.

We are moving out when our current lease is done. It was good in the beginning and now it has become intolerable and unbearable.

Note - I would seem Domus reported my review to Google so my reviews are now not showing to the...

I live here with my bf and we pay about $4000 give or take every month. I appreciate that they gave my bf about a month's time to move from his old room in Domus to this new one, but I really do not appreciate that there were so many things wrong with the room when we moved in. The toilets and hardwood floors were brand new, but the kitchen sink piping leaked and flooded the first week we were there and the master bath toilet was clogged (it turned out that the previous tenant flushed lysol wipes down the toilet and nobody noticed that the toilet wasn't flushing until we moved in and tried to use the bathroom). Maintenance came in to fix it but managed to leave brown scuffs everywhere. Kitchen faucet needed repair/replacement but nobody noticed until I put in a maintenance request and the guys were nice enough to put in a new one for us. The lightbulb was already out in the dining area when we viewed and still out when we moved in (how do you miss that?), and there were 2 large cracks running up the ceiling. The guest bath floor tiles are cracked and although we reported this they still haven't come to fix it. Patio was absolutely filthy and had cigarette butts. Asked Domus if they could clean it but they still haven't gotten back to me. I wanted to scrub the floors but I didn't want the scum dripping to our downstairs neighbor and the poolside grill area, and honestly it should have been already cleaned when we moved in. Railings were filthy but they took so long to get back to me that I scrubbed it myself, being careful not to drip downstairs. Bedroom walls and microwave/under cabinet areas were sticky and disgusting like it hadn't been cleaned in years. I was trying to stick something onto the bedroom wall so I wiped the area down with a wet paper towel and it was a solid brown color after a light wiping. AC vents were absolutely filthy as well, and completely clogged with dust. Bedroom window was missing a window latch. We also had trouble making the cable and internet work because Comcast told us that the contractors messed up when installing the parts into the wall and to contact Domus, but management kept telling us "it's a Comcast issue" and had us running in circles, not to mention management getting impatient with us when it still wasn't working. Ended up not having cable or wifi in our apartment for almost a week due to this even though it should have been a simple transfer of services. Wash machine also kept spitting out gunk and even though I called maintenance back twice this issue has not yet been resolved. I feel really bad for the maintenance guys that we have to keep calling back, but we are also sick of having to call them back over and over. This apartment was obviously not ready to be rented out, and most issues could have been resolved before our move-in had management been paying attention. Lately we had a power outage and a wifi outage, all within our 1st month of moving in. During the power outage we had 0 power and although I do realize that the outage was due to no fault of Domus, I expect backup generators in an apartment that we're paying approx. 4000 for, not to mention there was no announcement that the power was out in most of the building and Domus management/concierge was unreachable over the phone. Even my previous apartment which I was paying a quarter of the price for, had a run down building, and absolutely horrid management had a backup generator that powered all 25 floors. I didn't even know there was a building wide power outage until another tenant I coincidentally met in the hallway on my way to the front desk told me he was out of power too. I also had issues with their vendor concerning packages which was only resolved today - approx. 1mo after I started setting up an account. All of these issues are a little too much for me especially considering the price. The only current pros: friendly concierge, fast elevators, and...

I wanted to give this a more positive review but unfortunately I did not have a great experience living here. This review is based on me living there for 3.5 years as a graduate student.

Domus is NOT a quiet building. The walls are so thin you can hear everything that goes on next door / the apartment above / the hallways, and the residents living here can be really loud as most of them are undergraduate students. If you are unfortunate enough to have undergraduate students as neighbors (which is likely), this means a lot of loud parties and people over at all times of the night weekdays and weekends.

I was surprised to read one other review stating they were getting woken up every week as this has also been my experience but I thought I was the only one. I do agree with that reviewer in that this seems like a glorified dorm room. There are families and professionals living here as well but the majority are students who aren't really considerate or resepctful. The noise happens during the day as well, I could never really enjoy any peace and quiet in the apartment. When it's not the students next door, it's the students above making so much noise it felt like they were having the party in my own unit (that's how loud it gets). I chose to move to another community when my lease ended because of this issue as to me the longer commute was worth living in a place where I could be in my apartment without being disturbed so often by all the noise.

The community director is great and has always answered my emails, met with me and was very sympathetic and did her best to help with this but unfortunately the problem was never solved (no matter how many times I spoke to her and no matter how many times she spoke to the residents) as the residents disregard complaints and keep on having parties / people over despite the director reaching out to them and talking to them. The noise has continued to be an issue even up to a few days before I moved out. The only time it was ever quiet was around the holidays when the students were traveling.As many other have said, fire alarms go off far too frequently.

For the pros: great location (walking distance) for students at Penn / Drexel or anyone working at the hospital. The units themselves are spacious and nice. There's an adjacent supermarket. The staff and everyone here are helpful and friendly. The gym is open 24 hours and has new equipment / everything you need for a good workout.Maintenance responds quickly (usually same day) and are great.

This is the nicest place to stay in at University City but to me the thin wall structure of the building and all the noise and disruption coming from students and their parties is not worth it. If you must live here, I would recommend a unit on the top (8th) floor at least you would eliminate one source of noise coming from above.

Unless you are somehow lucky and end up with quiet neighbors or respectful graduates / professionals for neighbors, I would not recommend...