L Seven — Local services in San Francisco

Living at L Seven has been stressful and tiring. I recently moved out and wanted to move on without posting a review, but as I'm still having to deal with paperwork from L Seven, I've decided to share my experiences:

When I signed my lease, everything in the apartment was great. When I moved in a week later, the apartment was dirty, and the fridge was broken, and filled with onions and popsicle juice! When I reached out to them worried that someone had broken in and stayed in the empty unit, they admitted that they didn't realize I leased my unit, so they replaced my working fridge with someone else's broken one! All of my food went bad as it took 3 days for them to replace.

They replaced the fridge with one that was covered in scratches and dents. I asked the leasing office when they could properly replace the fridge (or just fridge door) with one that was similar to the one that was in the apartment that I signed an expensive lease for, but they kept saying "it's in the works" for two weeks, and then I never heard from that topic again.

If you are sensitive to noise, L Seven is not the place for you. The neighbors are not your issue -- the "car loop" inside the complex is. For half of my time at L Seven, a car would come by and idle in the car loop for 1-2 hours /blasting/ music. I lived on the 3rd floor, but my windows would shake from the volume. I am not exaggerating this, as I could hear neighbors across from me with a sound-sensitive child /crying/, and I could hear people on the first and second floors SCREAMING expletives out of their windows at this car to stop blasting its music. Sometimes this car would come by near midnight on weekdays -- or even at 6:00AM -- making my job quite miserable. I complained to L Seven about this on numerous occasions (every time the car came by), but their security guard claimed to never have noticed this car (!!). With the uncertainty of quarantine policies in the future, I want to stress how difficult this is when you can't escape this situation.

Suspicious cleaning staff?? For some reason, the cleaning staff has access to all units. Sometimes when they were cleaning the hallway, I would hear knocking on my door. I would open the door, and the cleaning staff ignored me -- okay, no big deal, they must have accidentally bumped into my door, no problem. One day though, I didn't open the door, and after a second I hear another knock, and the cleaning staff enters my apartment. Once the cleaning person saw me, she immediately closed the door, clearly embarrassed. I opened the door and calmly asked her why she tried to enter my unit, but instead of responding, she took her phone out and refused to look at me (??). I asked her again, and she kept looking at her phone and hurriedly walked away!! I'm worried about what would have happened if I was away from home and the staff unlawfully entered my unit.

Unfriendly amenities. I paid an expensive monthly rent for amenities which in my stay at L Seven, I was never able to use. L Seven boasted "community events", yet organized NONE in my entire stay -- they never tried to have digital events during quarantine, and when quarantine was lifted, they still never organized an event! Moreover, when the gym opened, they required you to make 1-hour reservations to use the gym at least one day in advance. I had a busy work schedule, and so was never able to predict when I would have time for the gym, and the gym was not open late, so I couldn't go after work. I asked the leasing office why this was the case, and apparently their security guard received a printed-out paper copy of the gym schedule every morning, and so couldn't receive updates!! Even if the gym was empty, you can't enter unless you made a reservation the day before! With many free, web-based, account-less scheduling solutions online, I'm surprised they went with paper.

And finally, my last point: They charge you for vague "damages" when you move out, and keep your security deposit, but can't say what the damage is when...

Moved in July 2017. Overall: extremely expensive rent, no security, high-crime area, poorly insulated apartments, cars/bikes often vandalized, stolen packages, careless tenants. Other reviews seem to agree on this too.

Let's start with the pros since it's a very small list: the building is new, so it is mostly clean. The floor plans are well arranged and depending on your budget, you can have enough space for two people; staff is friendly, but that stops here (if you have an issue, they raise their hand and show you the lease), and cool view of San Francisco from the rooftop.

The list of cons is by far longer:

Poor security for a high crime area: the entire premise has very limited security. Bikes are vandalized and stolen (saw a melted Kryptonite u-lock) despite them promoting a "very secure bike storage". Packages are consistently stolen, we've lost hundred of dollars of unreimbursed packages. I've seen cars being vandalized directly on the premise (including the garage). There are no functional cameras, so whatever happens, you can't even go to the cops (they ask for the recording so does the insurance LSeven forces you to sign up for).

Apartment is not well insulated from the hallway and the outside. If it's cold, the apartment gets immediately cold. And if you don't have sunlight (which is our case), it tends to be freezing. The heaters are dysfunctional, it takes them hours to warm up the room. Windows aren't soundproof, if someone decides to scream outside, you can hear them just fine.

Rent is abusive. The fee you see on paper is not what you end up paying: they force you to pay for a specific (bad) internet plan (you won't have a choice, it's required). Additional costs occurs for electricity and garbage. The free month they offer to everyone is gone in no time.

Community areas: from topless guys at the gym to obnoxious people throwing music parties at the rooftop, or screaming at their phone, trashy behavior in these common areas happens all the time. Mid-night, it's not rare to hear drunk people screaming in the hallway.

Amenities: the apartment comes with cheap amenities (fridge doesn't even have water dispenser, sounds small, but consider the rent you'll pay), the microwave doesn't unfreeze food, the oven is probably the only one piece that works ok.

Instead of investing on what actually matters, they organize "parties" and "events" to make the place more attractive. Understand: you pay for these events even if they show as "free" or "perk". If you care about "dating tips", or "cryptocurrency investment", you might find them awesome though. I don't. So I'd rather pay less and have this building be more secure for...

I lived in this apartment complex for many years, and over time, the quality of management has significantly declined. What used to be a well-maintained building now feels neglected.

The most alarming issue is the security—or complete lack of it. The doors for Building 7 were broken for over five months which apparently are fixed now after i moved out. This left residents vulnerable to theft and unauthorized individuals entering the building.

In the first month of the security failure, someone broke into my apartment while I was sleeping and stole all my house and car keys—then stole my car. I reported this to the property manager, Danielle, who initially claimed she would investigate. She mentioned checking the door access logs to see if someone had tampered with the locks, only to later tell me that the battery-operated locks don’t track entry logs. She also said she would review garage camera footage to see who stole my car.

However, when I followed up in person and via email, her attitude completely changed. She became dismissive, yelled at me, and said she couldn’t do anything without a subpoena from the court. Where is the empathy? She went from being "willing to help" to essentially saying there was nothing she could do—abandoning any effort to resolve the issue. When I pointed out that both the apartment break-in and car theft were connected, her response was: "The camera in the garage would not confirm if anyone entered your apartment." If my apartment was broken into and the car was stolen who else could it be? and how are they not interconnected?

At the end of the day, she did absolutely nothing.

This was the final straw. I no longer felt safe living there and moved out—which turned out to be the best decision I made.

Other observations:

Marco, another staff member, is hit or miss. Sometimes he’s helpful, but other times he’s full of attitude. If you're talking to him, he cuts you off mid-sentence, saying, "Let me finish."—which is just rude and unprofessional. On the positive side, I did get my security deposit back, and service requests were handled in a timely manner. The apartment layouts were great but you did hear your upstairs neighbors walking or jumping. But if you ever need to deal with the leasing office, prepare yourself for a frustrating experience. The units themselves are nicely designed, but security is a joke, management is incompetent, and dealing with the office is a nightmare. I do NOT recommend renting here.

If you value security, professionalism, and good management—stay far away. I’m much happier in my new place, where the management actually cares about...