Apartment Review for Palazzo East - Los Angeles, CA

From the outside, the Palazzo looks like a five star resort. It has everything you could possibly imagine- resort style swimming pool, state of the art gym, a "dedicated" staff, top of the line security features and of course "luxury" apartments. I lived there for six months and was very happy to get out of there. I think the apartments are shamelessly overpriced. My carpet had not been updated in quite some time. While the units look really nice when they are being shown, it is mainly how they decorated them that is appeasing. When you enter your vacant unit, you will truly see the doors are very cheap, the kitchen cabinets do not have knobs, the walls are very thin. The bedroom and kitchen floors that looked like ceramic you will come to find is actually fake flooring. It's one single strip of cheap flooring they put down. Very deceiving. I would say the motto of palazzo must be to make it look as good as possible with the cheapest possible materials. I would always hear my upstairs neighbors stomping around. They ask you not to run your washers and dryers after 10 pm. It's because you can essentially hear everything going on in any other apartment. In terms of security, I will have to say that I was not impressed. It was very rare that they would ever call me if someone came to see me (as promised in the lease.) One of my guy friends got into my parking garage,(which has the elevators to go to the apartments, you can't access the apartments from the visitors parking) and said the security did not stop him or ask him who he was, they just opened the gate for him. If anyone wanted to get into the place and had bad motives, it wouldn't be a hard thing to do. I was very disturbed by this. I wasn't shocked when cars were broken into or apartments were robbed many a time at this complex. They would send letters "informing residents" of the activity but would always give excuses for why it happened and say it wouldn't happen again. It did. over and over. Security is there 24 hours but they are not on top of things. To be honest, I was a little sketched out BY security. Some are nice, but some are sketchy guys who use their power to "hit on you" if you happen to be an attractive young girl like myself. There were many a time when they would insist upon "escorting" me back to my apartment. They would ask really personal questions. They knew everything about me, when I would leave the apartment and when I typically came back. I was very sketched out and did not feel safe at all. They also recognized my friends dog when I was walking him and asked me why I was walking "Michelle's" dog " Cleo". When I asked her if she knew the security people, she was sketched that they knew her dogs name and that they knew was her dog when she had never spoken to them before. The complex is not mainly young people, as is advertised. It's a lot of kids and families, which is great if thats your thing. However, if you have images of yourself relaxing by the pool- that is quickly taken away by little asian kids screaming and playing swords with those swimming noodles people use to float on. Also, most of the residents are there temporarily for work related things or until they find somewhere else to live. No one would pay those rent prices when you could own a home for that. That's why everything is set up very easy and they encourage you to rent the furniture. You don't get internet or cable included in the 3,000 rent bill. That is all additional. The residents are mainly people who can't think for themselves- that is why they live there. The outside courtyards appear beautiful, but if you plan on sitting outside at night, you are most likely going to be drunkenly solicited by the residents coming come home around two am. You are going to hear puking in the bushes and random people having sex in their units. I went to walk my dog and saw a couple having sex in their living room on their ground floor apartment. No one bothered to close the blinds. They didn't care. This is the type of thing you experience here. The masseuse offered to give me an "afterhours" massage in the spa for free. I declined, because I knew what that ment. I later found out that he was known for bringing girls to the spa after hours and f---ing them. The lady who rented me the apartment was pretty far from her professional demeanor when I saw her at a wine and cheese party in the spa. She was running around with nothing but a towel on, incredibly intoxicated, and kept running from the locker room to the room where they were having the gathering. Why no one else was baffled I don't know. I didn't renew my lease and the staff was very rude after that. They told me they would be showing my unit to potential renters and that they would need full access to the apt- whenever they wanted. I found this strange because they have vacant staged units to show, those are the ones they showed me. No one ever came by to show it, they just like to invoke the feeling that it isn't your home anymore- even if you are still paying for it. The place looks beautiful from the outside but the apartments are all very standard. There are granite countertops, but it is the cheapest granite money can buy. They put in a stainless steel fridge, that retails for a few hundred dollars. It is THE cheapest stainless steel fridge money can buy, I looked it up. If you think your rent money is enabling you the use of great appliances, think again. The carpet starts to show stains after a while, they have it cleaned so it looks great at first. Big waste of money. The residents are ridiculous. The hallways smell like pot day in and day out. The area to walk your dog is a poo yard. Also, people leave their cigarettes everywhere and the staff doesn't clean up after it ( i don't blame them). I had a five hundred dollar vet bill from when I was walking my dog around the palazzo and he got a hold of some drug paraphanelia someone had left on the floor. Another time my friend and I found ecstasy pills by the pool. When I invited my new neighbors over for a drink, they did a coke line on my counter like it was the standard thing to do. I was shocked. Most people here are majorly into drugs, and it wasn't really my thing. I couldn't afford to pay those prices anymore, especially when it wasn't getting me anything. The place felt like a drugged up five star resort. It was never a homey feel to me. They were incredibly rude on move out day, they threatened to charge me 500 dollars for a parking decal I had misplaced. A decal. Luckily, I found it at the last minute. I was trying to make my flight out of there and the woman at the counter told me rudely that "she would be right with me" to go over the paperwork. She sat at her desk checking her e-mail. (I know because I looked over her shoulder.) I told her I had to make a flight and that I was just going to have to leave it, and she reluctantly then went over everything over and over. She couldn't count right because it took her three times to make sure I had everything turned in. I hightailed it out of there and realized L.A. was not for me -especially the Palazzo. Luckily, it was a good lesson that in life things are what they least appear to be. I'm not saying someone could not enjoy this place and make it work for them- I did meet some very normal people. It was just that the majority of this place represented something else, and I didn't want to be associated with that. Goodluck!! Hope it helps!