Esprit Marina del Rey — Local services in Santa Monica

I have lived in this building for over 12 years now. Up until several years ago, it was a great place to live. There was a sense of community and everyone knew each other. It was clean & felt safe. Since it was taken over by new ownership it has gone completely to hell.

The building is now swarming with vacationers and a good portion of the units are being rented out as Airbnb’s. There are constantly unrecognizable people asking for directions around the building, walking around with rolling suitcases and using the facilities freely with no intervention from the building whatsoever. Short term leasing is not allowed per the lease, but the building refuses to hire daytime security to check to see if the people using the facilities are actual residents and the night time security only responds intermittently.

I live right by one of the hot tubs and there are constantly people that clearly don’t belong here in the hot tub. They also freely use the gym, the pool and the resident parking with, again, zero intervention from the building whatsoever. They are destroying the building & making living here a horrible experience.

Outside of just being a nuisance, the vacationers are also destroying the building & making much more work for the staff. There is dog waste all over the building because vacationers don’t care where their dog goes to the bathroom because they don’t live here. It’s gotten so bad that the staff has taken to just putting wet floor signs where the dog pee is. As you can see from the pictures, there are cushions missing from the fire pit which actually isn’t a fire pit because it is broken and doesn’t light.

When I asked why there wasn’t security on duty to keep the unauthorized renters from using the facilities, the reply I got from management (eventually) was that a security guard is too expensive. Meanwhile they are raising my rent nearly $400 a month as of next month.

It really is a shame because it used to be a beautiful property but it has now become an Airbnb hellhole with ownership that refuses to do anything about it. They will probably respond that they are trying to evict some of the Airbnb unit renters, but from what I’ve gathered it’s only the ones that have stopped paying rent. Only when it stops being profitable for the building in other words.

Please feel free to contact me if possible. There is a laundry list of other problems with this building that I can reveal to you, but too many to put into an online review.

Update: I find it ironic that the comment made from Melissa (the manager) was made on literally her last day at Esprit. She will be the fifth manager to have left in the past few years. The building used to be managed by the same company that owns the building & we had the same manager for 8 years, but now it is a fee managed building (meaning the ownership doesn't manage it) so the manager's office has a revolving door on it. Actually there has been huge employee turnover in general since the new ownership took over several years ago & many of the long time employees have left.

I love that they encourage people with bad reviews to speak to management about the issues as if we had never thought to do that. The answer we always get is "the building doesn't want to spend money on that". This building is sorely understaffed & nothing really gets done here because the managers keep leaving, much like Melissa who chose to post a comment on my review on her last day here. The employees that are left from the orignal staff are all angry and disgruntled & rightfully so. They didn't sign up to work in a hotel, just like we didn't sign up to live in one. The new ownership, Kennedy Wilson, has run this building into the ground & they should sell it to someone who has the money and the intention to keep it up properly. If anyone from KW is actually reading this - tyring to be a slum lord in Marina del Rey is a really bad move. People here can actually afford attorneys and a class action lawsuit will cost you much more than the money you're saving while overcharging...

Esprit Marina del Rey is a nightmare of incompetence, negligence, and rude staff.

If you are considering moving into Esprit Marina del Rey, do yourself a favor and RUN. This place is a scam disguised as a luxury apartment. Between rude, dismissive staff, endless maintenance issues, broken elevators, unbearable noise levels, and outright negligence, this was hands down the worst renting experience of my life.

The leasing office (minus maybe 1) is rude, unprofessional, and full of misinformation. After moving out, Esprit failed to properly handle my Tesla license plate, giving me only one hour of notice on a Sunday before threatening to return it after 7 business days. When I called the next day to figure out how to pick it up, no one answered. After multiple attempts, I finally reached someone, who said someone would call me. The next day, I got a condescending, unprofessional call from Teresa Daniels, who flat-out told me: “You moved out. We don’t owe you anything. We don’t even have to tell you your package came.” She also told me that I should've filed a change of address with USPS, as if she is in the place to tell me to do something I had already done right after moving out. I eventually learned that they already returned it to the sender, long before 7 business days had passed. To make matters worse, another staff member outright lied, claiming the law requires them to return packages of previous tenants after three days, which is completely false according to my uncle who is an attorney and to California Tenant Rights. This wasn’t an accident—this was an intentional effort to be dismissive and unhelpful.

Maintenance is a complete disaster. Get ready to spend weeks begging for repairs. From the day I moved in, my toilet was broken. It took weeks of constant follow-ups and maintenance requests before anything was done. The Service Manager, Mike Costanza, was rude and dismissive. Instead of urgency, I got attitude. He claimed that he found it '"odd" that I needed a replacement toilet. The toilet was broken before I moved in.

A massive water leak in our unit was ignored for weeks. We found water puddles on the floor, smoke alarms beeping due to water damage, and water flooding out of the ceiling upon return from Christmas travel. We immediately called maintenance. The next morning, Esprit sent workers who “checked” the ceiling and left without fixing anything. Hours later, water started gushing from the ceiling like a shower. For the next FIVE DAYS, we called emergency maintenance multiple times per day, only to be rerouted to the leasing office, where I was told there was no emergency maintenance line for the building. We were repeatedly lied to and ignored. We were told a third-party plumber, LA Hydrojet, would arrive on January 3 between 10 PM and 2 AM—they never showed up. I was then told they would arrive on January 4—they never showed up. For FIVE DAYS, Esprit let water pour out of our ceiling, ignored our emergency calls, and left our unit completely soaked and damaged, all while we were still paying full rent.

Noise Complaints – Nonstop partying until 3 AM. Common areas are used as 24/7 frat party spaces—residents drink, scream, and blast music until 3 AM. I called night patrol over 40 times while living here, and nothing was ever done. Management doesn’t care about enforcing noise policies, meaning you will never get a full night’s sleep.

Elevators Never Work. We were forced to move in using stairs. On our move-in day, the elevators were completely broken. Our movers had to carry everything up the stairs. Throughout my lease, the elevators were constantly out of service, and every single resident I spoke to hated living here.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Esprit Marina del Rey markets itself as luxury, but it is nothing more than an overpriced, poorly managed dump. If you enjoy paying thousands of dollars to be treated like garbage, have basic repairs ignored for weeks, and deal with a non-stop mess of noise and broken amenities, then by all means, move in. Otherwise,...

Leaving this review only to the leasing agents & management in front desk It was a nightmare of 2 weeks trying to reach Leasing agents/Assistant manager to figure out and get clarified on a layout information which is basic information which you guys should have knowledge on and give me inputs , rather than me digging through your web page and finding info. I have to feed your agents with information what i find on the website. I have to draw diagrams and explain to them what's on the layout.

Guesswork everytime and no firm answers on any of the questions asked . Can you please give adequate knowledge to your team and equip them with what they need to do on their job. Layout questions are something basic and I believe all leasing agents /assistant managers should know and cannot do guess work . I literally saved 500$ from putting in an application and literally saved myself from your unprofessional management.

Guesswork 1 : You told that 3b panorama penthouse and 3b panorama has similar layout, which it did not Guesswork 2 : you told that all beds on 3b panorama will have Marina views

Glad that I did my research , otherwise I would have put in an application and suffered on this .

Thank you for your very poor slow responses and sitting on emails and never cared to do your job as a leasing agent / assistant manager

I had to lose patience because my lease timeline is coming to an end and I need to finalize on things otherwise I would be left with no apartment. Hence I have been following back to back for more than 2 weeks . Whenever I call you always goes to a Entrata 3rd party answering service service and these leasing agents on the answering have no clue on any layouts or leasing . NOT SURE WHY are they sitting and forwarding all the messages . The folks at the leasing office will never reply to your EMAILS

I am sorry to say that These folks I talked to have no clue on what job they are supposed to do. I have to follow up several times and I have to feed them with information that I see on the website.

No knowledge on layouts No timely response No phone calls ever attended Guess work on all questions and never answer precise Can’t even search through videos to find the exact layout ( they did send one after nudging them several times , but simple enough to do it on the first go. If the leasing agent cannot understand a layout, what else are they supposed to know on their job ? , feels like your maintenance team would know more about the layouts) If I had a chance I would hire leasing agents/Assistant managers with young & hungry who are more professional & knowledgeable. I know you all get a fat rent check , but keeping professional and ethical is way more important.

Melissa I heard you’re the boss . If you care a dime about your management/organization . Please do call me . I wouldn’t run a show like this !! And do not leave a generic reply I see from other reviews , do yourself a favor and call your Entrata answering service and leave a message to your...