Essex at Miracle Mile Essex Miracle Mile Apartment Los Angeles Rental Los Angeles California

My wife and I lived in the Cochran building of Essex at Miracle Mile for 2 years and during that time we had various negative experiences. When we first moved in, we thought we were getting a fairly nice apartment at a competitive price but we quickly realized that most of the “amenities” were just a fancy veneer over an aging building and an unhelpful staff.

For example, given the particularly rainy year in LA last year we had multiple instances of major water leaks in the foyer and garage areas. The leaks made huge puddles and caused the dry-wall to fall off the wall. Each time these problems would be “fixed”, only to recur with the next rainy day. The pipes in the garage would also leak onto our cars with each rain.

As far as our apartment goes, we had multiple instances where our A/C unit would break, then be “fixed”, only to break again a week later. We also had multiple instances of dirty water bubbling up from the drain of our showers and also leaking down through the ceiling on one occasion. There are 6 washers/dryers and at least 1 or 2 is always out of service. There are 2 elevators and there is always at least 1 out of service as well, and as of our leaving in April of 2017, both elevators were expired by over a year for inspection.

All of this would probably earned Essex 2 or 3 stars if that had been all but the management staff are some of the most disorganized and unhelpful people I have ever experienced in my life. Stefania in particular was painful to work with, not only was she unhelpful but she would fail to complete tasks she said she would accomplish. In our specific instance we had a sit down meeting with her in January of 2017 to give notice that we would be leaving in April and to ask if Essex could extend our lease for 1 month and our normal rate. She stated that she would ask upper management but never relayed the information. Therefore, Essex never got back to us on our request and ended up raising our rent by over $1000 for the extra month. They also did not consider this meeting “written notice” and charged us an extra $1000 for the last week of April even though we moved out April 5 and payed through April 20.

Overall, I recommend that you should not rent from any Essex property. They are a huge company that sees you only has a number and never is willing to work with you as an individual. They complete the bare minimum in order to make as much money as possible.