Tenant Reviews for 669 Levering Ave

To whom this may concern, I have taken a while to sit down and write a review on Levering Arms Apartment due to the huge disappointment and anger that I have felt since I moved in August 2017. I decide to do it now, as I consider that a sufficient amount of time has passed and I have a realistic review to share. First of all, if you have $1800 to spend on housing per month and a $3000 deposit DON'T make the mistake I made and settle in Levering Arms which does not at ANY level represent a $1800 rent. Let me start by the the management: The manager, T. Schwada (you will never know her real first name because she refers to herself in person as T. Schwada) is completely unprofessional and rude. After exchanging 58 emails in the last month before my lease terminated, asking for my deposit and complaining about a carbon monoxide beeper that kept going off in the middle of the night, T. Schwada decided that the only matter to address was to argue with me that I had never contacted the management team regarding the carbon monoxide detector. After sending proof (screenshots of the calls that were made to her and her team), T. Schwada kept arguing that I had't used the "pager" correctly. Ridiculous and pointless. Let me further explain the pitiful exchange of emails from the management at Levering Arms: As I communicate through email my questions and queries before the end of my lease T.Schwada hangs on to the "pager" situation for 1/3 of the 58 emails, claiming that she is available 24/7 and that "In over 30 years, I have not missed a page". By email 28 T Schwada decides that she "agree's there is no point in debating any further your incompetence in communications with us". I argue back informing the management that if I had to contact them in the first place it is due to the poor state the apartments are in. The reply I receive to this: "Then why did you rent an apartment? We have video of the apartment before you moved in. It was in excellent condition". The "excellent condition" the manager refers to might be the WORST condition I haver ever had the displeasure of being trapped in. If excellent condition to anybody implies a carbon monoxide detector going off at 23:00pm when I had NEVER used the gas or heater (which had to be repaired on several occasions throughout the year), not to mention a toilet and a shower with poor drainage then we certainly have a VERY different perception of an apartment in "excellent condition". When I mention the heater, for anyone who is reading this, I might add that it did not work throughout the winter. Thank goodness I was living part time in San Francisco and did not need to use it during the cold months. As the correspondence continue with the management I feel insulted on various fronts. I am apparently "confused" on the whole matter and T. Schwada decides to backfire with an argument related to "a constant stream of people you have had living in apartment 8 while you were out of the country". The stream of people the manager refers to was my cousin who stayed for less than 10 days when I was out of town (what I think is normal, given that I pay $1800 per month and considering I am out of town). I get various aggressive emails from T.Schwada "Read your email." "Read your lease" etc... To make matters worse, I repeatedly asked the management to give me an approximate budget of the cleaning cost that would be taken from my deposit, in order to assess if hiring a private cleaning service would be cheaper, but once again the management refused to reply to my queries until email number 7. With all these ongoing emails, I decide to send the management proof of reviews that acknowledge the poor state of the apartments and the reply I get from T.Schwada is..... "Yes, we live in a world of fake news." UTTERLY SHOCKING. This is the management you will get at Levering Arms Apartment. Now let me get into detail into the poor state: Minute, old apartments with HORRIBLE shower and drainage system. Bathroom clogged on various occasions. A heater which is there as decoration, and a carbon monoxide detector that doesn't work. As previously mentioned, an apartment in "EXCELLENT conditions". Now I feel it is appropriate to talk about the noise level. NEVER in my years of LIFE have I had to deal with such noise levels, to the point that I was left sleepless on multiple occasions. Levering Arms Apartment might be the noisiest street in Westwood and I would dare to say LA and I would recommend you living anywhere else BUT there. Conclusion: If you ever come across a lease with T Schwada SPRINTTTT!!!!!!

Do not live in this space. The management sucks and will not return your full security deposit. The space is loud. They'll bring up fake charge when you try to ask for maintenance fixes. Do not recommend having lived there recently.

I have really enjoyed my time here. The manager Jake is super nice, and the units are big and the apartment is really quiet. I do not understand all of the negative reviews. This was by far the best apartment I have had since being at UCLA.

The apartments are clean and the kitchen is huge. I really like the landscaping. The plants and trees make for a relaxing environment. the manager is really nice and I can walk to campus and everything in Westwood. This is a great place to live. I am graduating and moving to SF, but I really enjoyed my time here.

This is by far the worst lease I have ever had the displeasure of being trapped in. The manager, T. Schwada (I don't even know her real first name because she refers to herself in person as T. Schwada), is a complete ---- ----- who will go to great lengths to squeeze every single penny out of you while being as smug and controlling as possible. The apartment is located above one of the noisiest streets in LA in a terrible area surrounded by extremely loud UCLA undergraduates and their cars without mufflers. There was construction going on across the street that made the apartment shake with noise levels beyond the permissible limit and T. Schwada refused to cancel the lease or do anything about the problem despite the severity of the problem. The apartments are tiny, old, in the worst part of town and cost 50% more than even surrounding apartments. She is incredibly infuriating and follows the law to the letter. If one signature is out of place she will reject the document until it is corrected. She lied about only taking cashiers checks or money orders for rent, I sent official personal checks mailed from the bank but she accepted them without a problem. If you ever see a lease with T. Schwada as the manager, run.

I lived in Levering Arms for a brief period of time and it did it's job as a place to live, but that's about it. It was a quiet place to live as far as the neighbors went which was nice for studying in the afternoons, but since I lived in a unit facing the street I had to endure a lot of outside noise. There were many a night where I was kept awake frequent car alarms and primarily by loud, drunk students going to and from parties until 3 am or later. I'm a pretty deep sleeper, but the party-goer traffic was heavy enough to be pretty irritating. The studio was just big enough for 2 twin beds and a dresser, so I wouldn't recommend trying to fit more than one person in it like I did. The unit was old and dingy when I moved in. The carpets had stains that I had to request be steam cleaned and overall the carpet had an oily, matted feel which discouraged us from ever going barefoot. The bathroom had a nice linen closet for storage, but was on the dirty side. The blinds were so rusted that the rod broke clean off after a couple of turns. I scrubbed the shower with multiple cleaners upon moving in, but it always looked dirty due to old, stained grout and tiles. The shower drain was slow upon move in and the toilet clogged frequently. The kitchen was decent, but the water from the tap was awful. Invest in bottled water when living here. Also, upon move in I had to retrieve metal debris from the disposal because it wasn't working. The power tends to go out if you run the microwave while someone is using a hairdryer or if multiple lights are on. It might not bother other people, but the one washer and dryer set was in a cold concrete room that was always fairly dirty. When moving in take pictures of everything and get the manager to do a walk through with you so that he knows what not to charge you for and some things they'll just fix for you before move in if you ask them to. If you don't document the state it's in at move in, you'll get charged for a lot of damage and dirt that you weren't responsible for.

I lived at this building while attending grad school at UCLA. I enjoyed my stay here and recommend it to other grad students. The manager who lived at the property was very friendly and helpful. When I moved in, my apartment was clean, freshly painted, had new carpet, and a new stove. All appliances worked well. No electrical or plumbing problems. Water pressure was good. What I really liked was I got my own covered parking space - not the problematic fraternity-style tandem parking that is so prevalent in the neighborhood due to the parking shortage in Westwood. Street parking in this neighborhood is almost impossible to find during the school year, so having a private space saved me a lot of hassles and parking tickets. :) Most of the other people living here were grad students and I think all the apartments are singles and studios, so the building is relatively quiet compared to other student buildings in the area. No parties and the manager enforces the community rules, which I myself was happy about, but others who like to get wild and party might be happier somewhere else.

I stayed here for 2 years while attending UCLA. It is the only place I've lived aside from my parents' home, so I'm unable to compare it directly to other apartments. Instead of making qualitative judgments I will just try to present the facts of my experience. The management consistently addressed problems within 3 days of being notified. I know this because the first time I tried to use the oven or garbage disposal, I found them both to be non-functional. They should have been operational upon the beginning of my lease, but at least they were replaced promptly without much hassle. The toilet also broke 3 times, but was fixed promptly. I liked the atmosphere of the place; it was quiet, had lots of plants and other greenery, and was not some large, impersonal building. Main complaints: The unit was "minimal" to say the least. Lack of a dishwasher turned out to be worse than I had expected. I thought hand washing dishes would be simple, but I soon came to regret not choosing a different apartment with a dishwasher for $50 more per month. Insufficient electrical capacity (2 15-amp circuits for the whole unit) meant that I couldn't run the microwave at full power (it was on the same circuit as the fridge that was old and ran its compressor almost constantly). Even on half power it would occasionally trip the circuit, especially in very hot weather. The microwave was a high-power Kenmore; a smaller one may work better, I don't know. None of the electrical outlets were GFI, even in the kitchen and bathroom, and only one outlet in the unit was a 3-prong grounded outlet. I had to hook up all my expensive computer equipment to an ungrounded outlet just to have it on a different circuit from the microwave so as not to risk damaging it while heating up breakfast and having the power go out. I bought an uninterruptible power supply for my computer but had to return it because it warned not to use it with ungrounded outlets. The mini-blinds were bent, rusty in places, and dented. The original toilet seat had urine stains on the underside (it eventually broke off its hinges and was thankfully replaced with a new one). I had to bleach and scrub the bathtub before I could take my first shower because it was filthy. The carpet had stains from the previous tenant that resurfaced after steam cleaning; it was also ratty, discolored, and dingy, like it had been steam-cleaned too many times and was worn out; I think it should have been replaced prior to my move in. The manager made a note of the carpet stains but then "couldn't find them" for my move-out inspection. They charged me almost $250 for the "badly damaged carpet" upon figuring my deposit refund. This was on top of all the things you expect from landlords, like phantom water damage re-caulking ($35), painting ($50), additional cleaning ($45) even though I cleaned for 2 days prior to move-out. The problem was that I didn't cover myself. I didn't insist on inspecting the unit once more immediately before signing my lease, I didn't take pictures and put them in a sealed envelope with the manager's signature on it, I didn't insist on copies of the notes the manager wrote about the resurfaced stains - I was in too much of a hurry. Don't repeat the mistakes I made; I certainly won't. Otherwise, the unit was satisfactory. No pests; management was congenial during my lease period; the place was quiet, even in an otherwise noisy college locale. My main regret is simply that I didn't take more time - more time to protect myself from unfair charges at Levering Arms, and more time to investigate units a bit further away from campus but still on a bus line. UCLA students can ride the bus for $0.25, and I had heard of other students who paid hundreds less then me in rent but had more space, a dishwasher, free wi-fi, an elevator, air conditioning, etc etc, because they were willing to ride 30mins each morning to campus. If you want to live right next to campus, my guess is that Levering Arms is as good or better than the alternatives, at least from a cost/value perspective. Just make sure you take the steps anyone should take when renting a new apartment anywhere. Other notes: Faucets/fixtures were old and leaky. I don't know how the parking assignments work but there is virtually no street parking available at most times. Unannounced inspections for water leaks were annoyingly frequent (I awoke to find my spouse letting the management in for one such inspection while I was still in bed, naked, around 9am...). Periods when the water was shut off entirely were also more common than I'd expect. The faucets were missing the little mesh pieces that fit inside them. When I put my own mesh screen in the kitchen faucet I found that bits of gravel accumulated inside of it, causing me to switch to drinking only bottled water the entire time I lived there. I figure the dirt and gravel got into the system during whatever it was they had to keep shutting off the water for, but I didn't want to keep putting up with it after the first few months, so I payed for bottled. The stairs leading to upper-level units are painted, and perhaps made of wood, so hand-trucks that scrape against stairs (i.e. most hand-trucks) aren't allowed for move-in/out (which makes it a NIGHTMARE). There is only 1 washer and 1 dryer for all 17 units, so there were many times when I had to put laundry off for a day or two, and there were many times when I'd come into the laundry room to find someone else had snuck a load of laundry in between my loads and I had to wait for their load to finish just to finish drying mine. I don't know if pets are allowed for tenants, but I occasionally saw a cat or two in the manager's window over a several month period. Pictures were taken on my move-out day.