Vida Apartments

I have been in my apartment for about a year and am renewing my lease. I absolutely love my place in the Vida. I looked around center city a lot for a one bedroom and this was by far the nicest and most cost-​efficient (for the huge space) of all the ones I saw. I have never had one issue with the building and the maintenance requests have always been completed within 24 hours of me submitting (even if I marked it as low urgency). People always comment on how quiet my apartment is for being right across from Fado and Howl at the Moon — this could be because I am on a higher floor, but hey, it works for me!
PS — Worth noting that the terrible reviews on here (which scared me before I moved in) are pretty old, so I am assuming many of these issues were resolved before I moved in, but in my experience the Vida has been a great place to live in center city.

I have spent the past 3 years as a resident and really enjoyed my time in the building. I never had any major issues and if I did, the building manager, Tracy, was able to quickly get them fixed for me. My apartment was extremely large and in great shape; I never had any bugs or mice in the time I was there.
Most residents in the building are students or young professionals. Everyone was so nice and it was completely normal to chat about your day with someone in the elevator. The building is also pet friendly, which is a plus.

I loved living here. I stayed over 3 years and had I not needed to escape philly I would not have left. The building has a lot of charm and the apartments are huge for the city, I moved to nyc where my room is basically the size of my kitchen in the vida. Tall ceilings, original hardwood floors. Each unit is different.
I have met some people that continue to be my best friends that live in this building. Most of the people are cool, you will encounter some young hipster turds but they go away fast don’t worry.
The staff is great. Kenny the head security guy always took care of me, he’s a true professional. Tracy has always been tolerant of my incessant emails. I’ve found if you treat people with respect it’s returned in kind. The maintence guys rock. Treat them well.
I saw rats were mentioned? I had mice one time ok it wasn’t even mice it was mouse one mouse, I emailed Tracy and the next day Bob came and did some magic, no mouse ever again…3 years. Maybe if you’re dirty you have rats. But I kept my apartment clean.
The location can’t be beat it’s hands down the absolute best in the city. I worked in a salon in the gym across the street, dry cleaners across the street, misconduct, fado, and good dog all around. My friends joked that I never left 15^th street. Well why bother?
The basements kind of creepy but easy solution… don’t hang out there weirdo! Do your laundry and get out. Some people would leave their laundry in the dryers, another easy solution… if they are all booked and someone has not kept track of their stuff take it out and put it on the table. Time that sh*t everyone has cell phones these days!
This is a dog friendly building. And my one dog passed away during the time I lived here when I was ready to adopt again Tracy kindly told the shelter any dog would be lucky to have me as a dog mom or something along those lines, and it made the adoption process easier. Hey people, side bar, socialize your dogs. Some dogs here are a holes but their owners know it you will learn which dogs to keep your dogs from. My dogs were obsessed with Kenny and he treated them well. The other security guard would also help me walk my dogs late at night (just down the street) considering all the junkies from patco would hang on 15^th street.
I loved living here. You will too. Quit whining people on Unilocal.I’ve lived in apartments where the ceiling literally fell out (7^th and south) or were over run with mice (9^th and pine and 12^th and spruce.). This place will work with you if you work with them.

It hasn’t even been a month since I moved here and I have already had my worst rental experience. The management is full of unprofessional and inefficient people, especially the Property Manager. As soon as I signed my lease and paid my security deposit, I realized that this was a big mistake. It began as early as when I called to schedule my move-​in. I tried getting in touch with the Property Manager several times with no success and when she finally responded her excuse was that «she thought she had been speaking to the tenant but was in fact speaking to the broker!» I mean, how hard is it to match up a name on the lease with a name in your email? Next, when I tried contacting her about the multiple maintenance issues (leaking toilet, leaking bathtub faucet, bathroom door wouldn’t close, drawers in the kitchen falling out) I was having (within one week of moving, might I add), once again, I received no response. When I finally badgered her to respond, her excuse was that «she responded but her response was sitting in her outbox». Again, how hard is it to check your *work/​professional* outbox to make sure that your *work/​professional* emails are being sent on time? Finally, the icing on the cake was when I had total power outage (in my apartment alone) due to faulty wiring and I filled out an EMERGENCY work order. Once again, no response from the Property Manager. After 24 hours of trying to get help, the security guard managed to send someone to fix the issue. The Property Manager callously replies after 3 days to say that «she never received the emergency request». Another classic excuse. If you were smart enough to check these reviews before making a decision (unlike me, unfortunately), DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT do business with PMC Property Group in general and definitely DO NOT move into Vida Building.

Happy to have lived there. Happy to have left.
This place has great location and is pretty cheap. However, there are rats. Oh boy there are rats. Luckily, I was on the 8^th floor where there weren’t too many of them. I heard horror stories of them piling up at the lower levels.
The guards, are usually friendly, but really do no guarding of the sort. There was a series of break-​ins during one week. Apparently they were only during the day (when there was a guard).
Because of the break-​ins, PMC changed the door code and instructed the guards not to tell any of the residents. That would be fine, if the lock on the front door didn’t jam up repeatedly. It would get stuck with the key in it. It was like that for months, even was jammed by the time I moved out.
They also auto-​renew your lease if you don’t opt out after 9 months, so you have to stay on the ball with them.
Not too friendly a company in my experience. I’ve moved out of CC altogether

So glad to have moved out of this place. We lived here 2 years, had so many issues, hated the management company, and felt we were being charged wayy too much. Everyone we know in the building complained about it and they have a very high turnover rate. Here’s the breakdown by pros and cons.
PROS
–LOCATION: about the only good thing about this place and the only reason we stayed as long as we did. Fado is across the street, Cosi below, Latimer Deli, Misconduct, Locust Rendez Vous, Good Dog, Jose Pistolas Red Mango all within a block. 2 Drycleaners within a block. Lots of yoga studios, gyms, shopping.
–Freight elevator to move your stuff in (but you have to pay for them to operate it).
–Good for parties (because who cares if you make noise/​spill everywhere/​destroy the place?)
–They allow pets (but this means that girl with the yappy dogs on your floor will annoy you nonstop).
CONS
–LOCATION: Fado is across the street. which means on weekends, if you wanna stay in, you WILL hear drunk people singing/​screaming/​yelling. The parking garage across the street means car alarms go off all night all the time. There is also a homeless man who sings/​wails on the corner every night. Not really close to any grocery stores.
–MICE. We set out traps and probably caught around 7 or 8 in our second year there.
–Slowest elevator ever. Also breaks down quite often so I hope you like stairs. Something to consider if you’re on the 12^th floor.
–24 hour doorman. HA. You’re lucky if there’s a doorman there half the time. You will have issues getting packages. Some of the doormen/​women are extremely unfriendly/​borderline rude.
–Laundry machines are $ 1.75 for wash and $ 1.75 for dry. Start hoarding quarters.
–Very drafty/​old windows which means they are hard to open and close, and your heating and AC bills will be insane (I’m convinced the AC didn’t actually work, sometimes it would be set to 40 and it would still be 80 inside).
–Old building. Read: cracks in the ceilings, holes in the floor, painted over walls a million times, leaks, floors will never be clean.
–LEAKS-​we had a leak in our ceiling which spread to a huge portion of the ceiling and wall, it took a month for any progress to be made and my roommate had to move her bed to the middle of the room to avoid things falling on her while she slept, they scraped it up and it smelled like mold for a month and we had to keep all windows open and the air on to air it out. Pretty sure they’re just paint over it after we left.
–OVERPRICED. We started at $ 1675 for a 2 bedroom 1 ½ bath, and it was $ 1710 when we left. They were advertising it as $ 1850 when we moved out. They hike up your rent every year (unless you argue with them).
–Completely incompetent management company. Impossible to get in touch with/​get repairs taken care of/​billing does not communicate with the management and they sent us notices that we weren’t paying enough rent for three months even though we had gotten a rent adjustment.
–Very little sunlight in some of the apartments: Our apartment looked like it was 2 am all the time in every room but one of the bedrooms because it faced a giant brick wall.
–There were some break-​ins when we lived there and some package stealing.
So yea, wouldn’t really recommend it unless you like dark mice caves with loud car/​bar noises for a lot of money.