Sergii Lakosnyk
Hollywood, FL
4.1
Avg Score
–
Years Avg Stay
1,325
Avg Rent
–
Recommended
Rent at your own risk...
Posted 3 years ago
I echo the sentiments expressed by the other reviewer, and am aghast at how accurately it reflects my experience. I hope that any future renters look this up prior to renting from him. The security deposit shakedown was particularly frustrating.
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BEFORE RENTING FROM SERGII LAKOSNYK OR ANY APARTMENT 1701 WASHINGTON STREET YOU SHOULD READ THIS...
Posted 5 years ago
Below is my true & honest experience, based on 100% facts with documentation to support. I am writing not out of resentment, but of genuine concern for any prospective tenants who might consider renting with realtor Anna Husser - or at 1701 Washington Street - or landlord Sergii Lakosnyk. We rented an apartment with realtor Anna Husser last July. She represents our landlord Sergii Lakosnyk who we were tenants of for the past year. Right after we moved into apartment 304 at 1701 Washington Street, we found the unit & building to be badly infested with roaches & other vermin. We saw roaches all over the building & our apartment. We were forced to pay for extermination out of pocket (I’ll get back to this later, this was surreptitiously changed in our lease & undisclosed to us). I had to arrange for the exterminator to come several times in the span of three months, & then every month after that. It was STILL not under control. Even after continuous treatments, we were still finding roaches everywhere...crawling on our toothbrushes, on our dishes, on our bodies, & one morning my boyfriend woke up to one crawling on his face. Please understand how traumatizing this experience was. The infestation had seemingly gone unaddressed for a long time, as had the upkeep & maintenance of the building. In addition to the cockroach infestation, we discovered from public records & observation that there were a ton of health & safety code violations both in the building & in our unit 304 - for example: the elevator inspection expired in 2010, the fire extinguishers were expired, the smoke alarm in our apartment was disconnected, the laundry room flooded, there was water leaking in electrical room where there appeared to be build up of mold &/or bacteria, there appears to be a massive unaddressed leak down the entire line of our bathrooms which has caused an unbearable stench that smells like sewage, the lobby/mail room stinks of urine, there was a faulty exterior light hanging which buzzed when you walk by (looking like you could get electrocuted), to name JUST A FEW. After the bathroom leak was left unaddressed for months after we moved in, we observed something like a black mold developing in our apartment 304 (which was later confirmed by mold inspectors & his own plumber). The bathroom floor was always wet, the sheetrock & particle board vanity were soaked, the woman below us told me that the ceiling in her bathroom below us was caving in & cockroaches were spilling out of it. We expressed our concerns to Mr. Lakosnyk who basically just mocked us & blew off every single complaint without doing anything to help. Apparently he thinks we are just “picky” tenants. In the beginning of the lease, I expressed that our apartment smelled like mold & sewage. Mr. Lakosnyk said to his knowledge there was no presence of mold in the apartment but if I want to spend my own money to get an inspection, go ahead. After months, I eventually SAW mold visibly growing. We were feeling sick every day, so I went ahead & paid out of pocket to get a mold inspection done. We were told that there were high levels of toxic mold in the apartment. When I sent him the report, he insisted that mold is not a problem & he would not do anything to fix it, but he said would send his plumber to investigate. He sent his OWN plumber who told me that mold was not good to breathe in & he confirmed the stink we’ve been smelling all year was people’s sewage due to the unaddressed leak. His plumber said the walls must be opened up immediately because the leak is totally out of control & has clearly been unaddressed for many years. I reached out to the new building management (since there was none for the first ¾ of our lease). They said they needed to enter everyone's apts immediately, that it was an emergency & they must address the leak right away. I never heard anything from them again. I do not think any the apartment owners live in the building, or at least very few do. Therefore these conditions never affected them. Only AFTER making numerous complaints to the relevant departments who could help with these issues (which I was forced to do because the landlord wouldn’t do anything to help), & the building was being threatened with fines, did they start taking any action. As far as the lease change I mentioned earlier. I had rented this apartment with realtor Anna Husser - who represented our landlord Mr. Lakosnyk. We went to her office to thoroughly review the lease & we signed it. She called us the next day while we were at work to say they had drafted a new lease with one change that we were to sign now digitally. She said the landlord was changing the due date of the rent from the 1st to the 5th, since our move in date was the 5th. She assured us this was the only change in the lease, & to sign it right away or we would lose the apt. We did not have time to do the same thorough review we did the night before, as she was calling us while we were both at work. We promptly signed the new lease, relying on her representation, & assuming we could trust an agent of a company as reputable as Century 21. After we discovered the cockroach infestation, Lakosnyk insisted it was our responsibility & was sending photos of our lease, referring to a box that was checked providing that the tenant was to be responsible for the cost of vermin control & extermination. I did not remember agreeing to that. I went back & looked at the original lease, the one we had physically reviewed & signed the night before. I discovered this box was NOT checked off in the original lease. In the original lease, the box next to landlord was checked off. We were amazing tenants. We took great care of Mr. Lakosnyk’s apartment & left it in better condition than we got it in. We never made an unreasonable complaint. We paid our rent early or on time every month. He withheld part of our deposit for unreasonable things, & would not tell us anything when he came to inspect the apartment, which we left in impeccable condition. He just subtracted money from the deposit automatically without proof of anything. Even toward the end of our lease when we were trying to get approved for another apartment, he told the new landlord we were picky & demanding, that we complain everywhere, & wished them “good luck” with us. If what I have described above is “picky & demanding,” I wonder what Mr. Lakosnyk would consider a legitimate complaint. I have never been inclined to write such a lengthy review, but as you could understand from my account, this experience was traumatizing enough to motivate me to do it. Please be advised, & be aware. Check public records, such as housing department, health department, code compliance, broward county, & fire department before signing a lease.
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