The Colony

Overall positive experience. Rebecca Molayem was our agent and she helped us a lot.
Ventilation is a problem in ground floor units

The Good: Beautiful unit and apartment complex, concierge, decent gym, compassionate landlord, excellent location (close to the law school with a gorgeous park across the street).

The Bad (part 1): Due to flooding a few years ago, the walls and courtyard area outside of my unit needed to be ripped out and reconstructed. The rental agent told me this would take 3 months. I'm now approaching my 20th month here, and as I type this, there is a non-stop loud drilling noise coming from the courtyard. It is headache-inducing. The renovations have been intermittent, but without fail there has been non-stop all-day construction during the month of finals each of my first three semesters. Seems like this will be going on for at least another 6 months. Fortunately, they are done with my unit and are working on others. Last fall, while working on my unit, they punched about 15 small holes into my interior walls by driving nails too far in while working on the exterior walls. Over winter break, while I was out of town, the construction crew had to come into the unit and fix the damage. On the bright side, once my landlord came and witnessed this first hand, they let me live here in December for free.

The Bad (part 2): There have been several domestic disturbances in the apartments that I share a courtyard with. The most obnoxious being a unit owner on the 5th floor having loud intimate relations with his guest at 3:00 AM on a Thursday morning. This somehow led to a verbal fight, which escalated into a physical confrontation and loud banging noises, culminating in the sound of glass shattering outside my unit. When I looked out in the courtyard, I saw that the window on the 5th floor was broken, with the shards scattered about the courtyard. I went and got the security guard, who did nothing. The police were called the next day, but the unit owner was not home, and ultimately nothing came of this. Since then, there has been a few minor disturbances coming from other units.

Nice and close to UCLA campus.
Walkable to multiple grocery stores, Sawtelle area, and nice park with tennis courts across the street.
Quiet doorman building with pool, gym and sauna, lots of washers and dryers available on first floor, and assigned parking.

The building is sort of 1980's chic, not a ton of storage, wall to wall carpet etc. but has doormen, a pool and a gym so I can't complain.