Hi there - you've probably ended up here because you're considering renting the location at 2238 Soho Bay Court Tampa, FL 33606. Nice place, right? Yep, certainly is - just wanted to share my feedback on living here the past year.
Location: Pros: fantastic, close by many great restaurants and lots of night life. Cons: can be a bit noisy on the weekends, the train tracks are close by & loud around 3AM a couple times a week, and South Tampa can flood pretty seriously in the summer rains.
Interior: Pros: nice structure, can be a really nice spot if furnished well. The patio on the top floor is a great place for relaxing. Cons: four floors can be a bit of a hike if you forget something on the top or bottom floor, poor water pressure on the top floor.
Landlord: Pros: None. Cons: Here. We. Go.... The landlord was nice enough the first few months of the lease (I signed 12 months) - but then at the first sign of an issue it became "my problem" (when the washing machine leaked water through the third floor and into the living room) it was never handled by a professional, leaving me and ole' reliable YouTube to figure out how to fix a washing machine from 1994 - fun stuff. Then, the A/C - really the reason for me setting up this website, the issues with the A/C really pissed me off. The first issue was based on an unbalanced condenser fan that clearly hadn't been replaced in a baker's dozen years essentially exploding and flinging shrapnel into the condenser itself. I tried for about a week to get ahold of the landlord but was constantly told "Jim" (her A/C tech.) was out of town. Sure, great, by day 5 I had to take matters into my own hands and ended up paying about $700 to replace the fan and get weekend service by a local company. They said that the whole thing would need to be replaced (about $5,000) but when I called the landlord she was emphatic that only the bare minimum was to be done - got it.) Fast forward about 8 weeks and the condenser goes down again (probably due to the fact that the fan blade exploding flung shrapnel into the coils much in the way you'd think about a hand grenade detonating in a dishwasher - probably not optimal for machinery function. Mind you, we're in Florida, it gets hot as hell and a functioning A/C unit is really table stakes down here - you can't do much without it, let alone live in the house. So after a couple of days of back and forth with the landlord on trying to get the unit fixed and the house cooling (it's in the lease that the landlord is responsible for HVAC) her guy "Jim" (guess he's back from vacation, woohoo) is able to come out at 5PM on a Friday and astutely diagnose that the coils are punctured (golly Jim, what insight - they only look like Wolverine attacked a chain link fence whilst hammered on Jack Daniels). Annddddd to top it off things can't be fixed until Monday because he can't pick up the part from the store (guess they're not open on weekends - sure, ok, fine.) Once I was able to speak with the landlord, we had a nice back and forth on the situation, (she hung up on me) - I let her know she could either pay for my hotel (Florida tenant law affords me this right) or prorate my rent for the days lost. She said she'd be doing neither and once again hung up on me.
I can assure you this will be resolved one way or another, but in the end frankly, I just don't want someone else to have to deal with this nonsense. There are plenty of other locations and you'd do yourself well to rent one of those.
/end rant. toodles.
