219 E 88th St, Manhattan, NY, 10128

I lived in a studio apartment on the top floor at 219 E 88th for 5 years. Here is my assessment's of the pro & cons: PROS: I was in a studio on the top floor, so it gets a lot of light, which is great. It's in the back of the building, so it's insulated from most street noise. Very quiet. There's also a very good view of the skyline. Also, being on the top floor, meant there was no tenant above me stomping around. Unfortunately, as I found out later, the tenant next to you can make even more noise than a person above you. The stairwells and trash were well maintained, and the dry cleaner next door was often gracious enough to accept packages (even when tenants weren't using their service, which I thought was incredibly gracious of them, and a bit presumptuous of the residents who would always slap "Deliver to dry cleaners!" on the building's front door, as if the cleaner's were an Amazon locker). Management Company: I thought they ran things fairly well. I didn't have too much contact with them over the 5 years. I left the apartment in perfect condition and got my full security deposit back. However, the the woman who runs the lease renewal department is extremely prickly. I had to deal with her a few times. One year, I called and politely asked her a question regarding my lease renewal. She was very impatient and basically scolded me for not knowing that my particular unit didn't qualify for rent stabilization, even though the building is rent-stablized. Also, at the end of my tenancy, when I contacted the office to say I wasn't renewing, the leasing agent, Ava, was very abrupt and nasty in her email response back to me, which I found odd, as I had always paid my rent on time and never given anyone any trouble. CONS: It's big one. The walls separating the studio apartments are very thin. I didn't realize this during my first 4 years because the woman next to me was super quiet. She also probably had lots of rugs to dampen the noise. But a new tenant moved in (a younger guy), during my last year, and suddenly I could hear everything: phone calls, conversations, tv, music, microwave, sneezes etc, so clearly it was as if he were in my apartment. He also had a habit of cranking his tv at 1am, but after I spoke to him about it, he was gracious enough to resolve it, which I appreciated. Unfortunately, he was also the heaviest walker on the planet. Like, bizarrely heavy-footed. Every time he walked through his apartment, my entire apartment would shake (bed, sofa, desk). It felt like an earthquake was happening. He was a nice guy, so I wasn't about to ask him to walk lighter, but I never got used to it. I ran into his downstairs neighbor before I left, and she said it was crazy loud in her unit as well. The only other thing is that the top floor apartments are very HOT. There is no cross breeze in the top-floor studio. I pretty much had to run my A/C from May through October. All together, I found it to be a good building, clean, and nicely renovated for the price. But the thin walls are definitely something to consider.