All 11 tenant reviews.

“Pros: The concierge’s are pleasant. The apartments generally have great views facing the ocean or VZ bridge. High Jewish population & close to Seagate. Cons: For 3 years tenants were not allowed usage of fob keys to enter building, w/o explanations. The lobby has flooded knee high during rain storms. Neighbors are a nightmare with uncontrollable children that have broken a mirror wall in the gym. The kids in the building have also broken the foosball table (it wasn’t replaced), stolen pool table accessories & dumbbells from the gym. The sofas in th lounge have stains. The pool has been broken. Kids through your cellphone from your lounge chair in the pool while your swimming. The walls are incredibly thin and allow noise to come through as if it’s in your apartment. Security is openly biased towards 4 minority families. Marijuana smoke wafes through the vents. Security uses implicit bias to accuse tenants meanwhile a dealer lives in the building stinking up the whole floor. Tenants dogs take dumps on the pet free patio. Tenants stole all the laundry carts. Dog hair is hefty in shared laundry machines. Management is unresponsive & reneg on amenities like free shuttle to train & free parking ($300+ a month). Pool is cold in winter. Also for 3k a month, the building should be spotless. The walls have plaster where there was wall paper & grime in btwn the tiles. Advice to landlord: Have a diverse staff! Be attentive to tenants complaints. Clean this building like it’s a luxury building. No grime in tile crevices. No plaster, re-wallpaper.”

“Pros: Concierge. Most of them are exceptionally sweet. The rest and lovely. The parking lot is inexpensive and after enough mistakes, they “get” that they need to do it right. New manager is excellent. Cons: RedApple Management is run by Katzimatedis. He is known by insiders to mistreat employees and skimp. In other words, he is very cheap. 1&2 Ocean Drive are advertised as “luxury buildings.” Keep in mind that there are no standards for that, so anyone can say that. At first glance, the glass buildings on the boardwalk are beautiful. A deeper dive shows the following: Extremely high turnover of angry tenants. The revolving door of tenants moving OUT and in because they just had enough of management ignoring their requests for anything above the most basic repairs (READ: unless the hot water isn’t working or the handyman can’t fix it, management will ignore you and hope you forget). To make sure you understand: if you have maintenance requests that require a third party to investigate, IT WILL NOT HAPPEN WITHOUT A LAWSUIT, COURT/CITY ORDER, FLOOD OR FIRE. PERIOD!!! Security: There used to be 24 hour security with an AMAZING head of security who sat up front and chatted with the tenants. He knew when to get tough, and when to be empathic. However, to save $10,000/year, RedApple made the decision to eliminate him, and 24 hour security. Instead, they brought “bottom of the barrel” guards (one smelled so bad, he would keep anyone away) who split their time between both buildings. So 24 hour security became 12 hour security. Eventually, they brought back 24 hour security by folks who know what to do with a toothbrush. Unfortunately, they never brought back the one guy everyone loved…well those tenants that still remained. Windows: No screens. Understandably, they used to clean the windows twice a year. BUT…you guessed it, that costs money. So…they stopped. Now, there are no screens on filthy windows that can’t be opened because lantern flies and mosquitos will get in. Employee mistreatment: There are labor laws for a reason. RedApple forces their employees to work extremely long hours just up to the point of violating NY Labor Laws. That’s vomit sick. No wonder turnover is high. They have 1 qualified handyman (after 1 retired) the other is questionable. They used to send the porter to do handyman work…you guessed it…to save money. Which actually didn’t because whatever he did had to be redone by a REAL handyman. That porter got offended and found another job. Management is desperate: Tenants have a tenants only app and a tenants board (each post has to be approved by management). Tenants are angry at 100% lack of communication by management. They leave, they complain to 311. Management has been getting desparate. They sent out emails offering $500 for referring tenants. Nothing. They upped it to $1000. No help. People aren’t happy living here. Why would they refer anyone but their enemies, but then they have to live with their enemies! Management hired someone to put on social hour 1-2/months. She brings food and sugary soda (no water or diet soda) with a theme. They will install a coffee vending machine. After 4 years, they FINALLY switched the keyfob entrance to the building so that tenants can use their keyfobs to enter the building instead of wait for concierge to let them it. Advice to landlord: You're paying heavy for being cheap. Communicate frequently with your tenants instead on issues that matter instead of trying to bribe them with coffee machines.”

“Pros: Nice views. Quiet at night, despite the thin walls. Cons: Smoke everywhere. Far from everything. Advice to landlord: Respond better to complains”

“Pros: Building is great, staff is friendly and the amenities are awesome: swimming pool, gym, BBQ grills, front desk and package reception, underground valet parking. It’s also a new building and probably the nicest view (ocean and city skyline) that I’ll ever have. Beach is right there. Cons: It’s a bit far from everything. Friends and work are always a drag to get to. Ended up investing in a car just to make the place feel less lonely. Also, the area is pretty windy, so you can’t use the patio all year round. I haven’t experienced this first hand, but based on the community board postings, some people have bad experiences with neighbors smoking on nearby patios and in their apartments.”

“Unit 10D Pros: Beautiful modern buildings and apartments Cons: In over 40 years of renting, many of them in New York, this is the most unprofessional management company I have ever dealt with. The concierge and janitorial teams are great, however, the rest of the staff is incredibly unprofessional, particularly Andrea and Maria. It’s a running joke amongst the residents about who is privileged enough to receive a response from either one of them. The buildings and apartments are beautiful but the neighborhood is so sketchy and isolated at the end of CI, it’s not worth any savings you think you’re getting in rent. I ended up abandoning my lease with 2 months free rent remaining - that’s how unhappy I was living at Ocean Drive. When I vacated, I left my keys/fobs on the counter and told Maria. Miraculously she responded “perfect” but they still deducted $450 from my deposit. I had to get the state attorney general involved to get it back. Red Apple then backdated the check to make it look like it was sent but postmarks don’t lie. Here are the issues I encountered, some of which are not management’s fault but one should be aware of them before moving into the buildings. 1. Management allows residents to have dogs in violation of the pet addendum regarding weight, dangerous breeds, and behavior. Dogs defecate and urinate inside the buildings, and onto the balconies and balcony furniture of other apartments below them. Some dogs are left on the balconies to bark for hours. When I complained about this, security told me that I “don’t like dogs.” Residents also bring them into restricted areas like the residents’ terrace and lounge. Security does nothing besides send threatening emails. 2. The neighborhood is very noisy. Even though it’s at the end of the boardwalk, there is a lot of boardwalk noise in the summer and drag racing on Surf Avenue late at night. I needed a white noise machine every night to sleep. 3. The appliances are junk. They look nice and have the Whirlpool name but they are pretty much useless. A big selling point is having a washer and dryer in the unit but on the day I moved in, maintenance told me to only use it for small loads. I know several residents besides myself who had the washer/dryer units replaced but they are just replaced with the same crappy unit. The washer doesn’t spin all the water out and the dryer doesn’t finish drying. The washers in the laundry room are not much better. The oven has a sensor so it continuously clicks and reignites and sounds like it’s about to explode. 4. In the D units, the smoke detector is so close to stove that in order to cook I had to turn the vent to max, put a shower cap over the smoke detector, open the balcony door (if it wasn’t windy), and have a fan set to high to keep from setting off the alarm. The kitchen was sometimes unusable for cooking. 5. The bathroom looks gorgeous but does not have a practical design. The vanity mirror is so close to the sink you can’t put pump soap or a toothbrush holder on it. The shower walls are textured so there’s no where to put a caddy or keep essentials. 6. Its extremely windy by the beach. Several times a week we received messages about having to bring our balcony furniture inside and close our doors and windows. This gets old fast. There are no screens and my living room windows didn’t open so the balcony door was the only way to get fresh air. Balcony furniture ended up inside the living room most of the time. 7. From the moment I moved in I encountered black dust in my unit. I thought it was from new construction but after almost a year I had a daily covering of black dust on my counters and furniture. I’m sure in my lungs as well. 8. Getting mail/packages is a problem. Mailmen constantly mix up the two buildings and leave mail in the wrong box. You can’t get your mail unless the other tenant gets it for you. You cannot pick up any packages unless a concierge is at the desk. Security cannot release them to you. 9. I don’t know what the promotion is now but when I toured the unit, I was promised a restaurant and store in the building and a ferry to easily get to Manhattan. None of that materialized. No one wants to invest in the neighborhood. Retail shop buildings and restaurants remain vacant. There is one small market about 10 minutes walking distance. No cafes, no nice restaurants. Nearest subway is a 20 minute walk. You will definitely need a car if you can afford the parking. There’s is nothing worthwhile in the neighborhood and it’s incredibly difficult to get anywhere else like Manhattan or Long Island. 10. For a concrete building, the walls between apartments are paper thin. I could hear every word my neighbor said, coughing, music, tv, iPhone alarm, etc. It’s also difficult to tell where noise is coming from. Security told me this is because of the rebar in the concrete and the way it conducts sound. I could hear dogs barking from four different apartments through my apartment walls. Some of these apartments were on other floors and down the hall (thru elevator banks) not even close to my apartment. Also, when people used trash chutes on other floors, I could hear garbage rattling down the chute thru my walls. 11. If your balcony is over the terrace it is very noisy from late night parties, etc. 12. The most common complaint, besides noise, was about the smell of smoke (marijuana and cigarettes) coming through the ventilation system into other apartments. The buildings are non-smoking but numerous residents violate this rule. If your balcony door is open, you get smoke from people smoking on their balconies. Again, management does nothing besides threaten tenants with eviction which, to my knowledge, never happens. They ask tenants to report other tenants to management, however, since the smoke comes thru the ventilation system, you can’t tell where it’s coming from so it’s difficult to know who to complain about. 13. Security is too familiar with residents. I am aware of a few single women, including myself, who received odd texts from the head of security after hours. These buildings look beautiful but trust me, it’s a golden palace on top of a pile of shit, run by a shit management company. There are way better options in NYC. Advice to landlord: Try more honest business practices. Make one building a non-pet building”

“Pros: Lovely and personable front desk personnel. Pool gym beautiful views of the sweeping ocean. Cons: Nothing at the moment”

“Pros: The building is right on the beach. That’s it. Cons: Management (Red Apple Group) is the worst. They have zero respect for tenants. They run this place like a dorm. People both old and young hate the restrictions and curfews placed for common spaces. Understanding the current climate with Covid m, they are way too rigid considering there are very little tenants in the building. Also, they had a covid outbreak amongst the staff and didn’t tell anyone Advice to landlord: They are too afraid of fines and lawsuits and not the happiness of their tenants”