116 John Street

I am writing this review as a previous tenant of 116 John Street. I do not normally leave reviews unless it pertains to serious matters and I wanted to share my thoughts for a prospective tenant to be cognizant of when thinking of making 116 John your home. The good, the bad, and the evil.

The Good - 116 John Street is a beautiful apartment building located in the heart of FiDi bordering the Seaport district with great amenities, doormen/women, and apartment complexes. The crowd is generally young professionals with mixed in families, elderly couples, and everything in between. The apartments are spacious, have a lot of natural light, and the staff is attentive. Packages and mail are easy to gather.

The Bad -
1. Rent - Rent is raised disproportionately to market so do expect that if you sign a lease, your rent should be raised significantly. For example, after a year, my rent was raised $500 and thereafter when not signing, was put on the market for $1K more than the year before.
2. Sonder - The building is also home to a short-term apartment rental company, Sonder, who share most amenities and lobby access.
1. Sonder residents tend to be mostly international tourists who tend to clog the lobby. They are located on different floors than residents and use a different elevator set
2. Gym - Sonder residents have access to the gym. If a leasing agent tells you differently, do not believe them.
3. Laundry - Sonder residents do not have access
4. Rooftop - Sonder residents do have access
5. Elevators - the elevators used to be EXTREMELY slow to the point where you could be waiting 2-5 minutes for an elevator. They have since improved but the elevators tend to break down often.
The Evil -
1. Management - Silverstein properties to be more specific. Classic selfish, rude, and greedy property managers. I will elaborate on a couple scenarios below. These may be more unique in nature but should give you a good flavor of what could happen.
2. Rent Payments - there were 2 circumstances where there were “erroneous accounting” issues with rent and the security deposit so make sure to double check your invoices so you are not overcharged
3. Gym - Upon signing the lease and for multiple months thereafter, the gym was free to residents. The gym had mostly all the equipment that your average person would use, exclusive of a squat rack and bench press. Nonetheless, the gym was in great working condition and kept residents happy and active. Management decided to completely refurnish the gym with brand new equipment, mostly all the same equipment that was there prior but brand new. As per the property supervisor, they also wanted to have the aesthetic of an all black gym to “look nicer”. Totally understandable and fine. A week or 2 after the gym was completed, management decided to start charging residents $50 a month to utilize the gym, without prior notification that this may have been on the horizon to give them a heads up. As a point of reference, the gym was $0 for at least 8 years. As an daily user of the gym, I can tell you that everyone was obviously unhappy with this decision and the running theory is that management is trying to recoup their investment for the gym equipment by charging residents a monthly fee. Most residents did not end up getting the membership.
1. Residents can read between the lines and it was a lack of professionalism and under limited notice that ticked people off
4. Roof - The roof is open to all residents and Sonder residents as I stated above. However, management fails to explicitly state the rules of the road for the rooftop anywhere, which leads to ambiguity and arbitrary enforcement, leaving the resident powerless and at victim of whatever ridiculous rules management wants to bring up from time to time.
1. In my particular case, I had a couple friends over to enjoy the sunshine on the rooftop during the available hours of the day. No other residents were using

Its an easy commute to school. Convenient to Fulton St station which has all the express lines.

Great value for money. Right next to all express lines. Gym in building and concierge service.

Pros: Friendly doormen, clean gym, rooftop common area, new common area laundry machines, friendly neighbors

Cons: rent price ($2,500 for a studio!), area construction, occasionally noisy neighbors, limited closet space, small gym

Overall: Would recommend

There’s a great apartment building with lots of friendly staff it is a bit pricey and there have been some issues the amenities this year. Department itself is very nice with all new kitchen utilities over there is no oven in the apartment which you can’t be a issue additionally the drainage is not great we need to request repairs multiple times a month