Review of Fedora Woods Apartments, Koreatown, Los Angeles, California

I have lived at Fedora Woods apartments a little over a year and am finally moving to Studio City. Fedora Woods is located at 861 Fedora St., Los Angeles, CA 90005. It is part of Koreatown and near Downtown Los Angeles. I will be sorry to leave my spacious apartment and will miss the hardwood floors, new kitchen appliances, ceiling fan and air conditioner, but I will not miss the lack of parking at all! Street parking in Koreatown is awful. My car got bumped while it was parked, and I was never able to discover the perpetrator. The one time I parked a bit too close to someone's driveway, my car got towed.

One upside to living in Koreatown is that there are many great Philippine eateries like the famous fast food restaurant "Jollibee", and the traditional bakeries "Goldilocks" and "Red Ribbon." Little Tokyo, which has awesome eateries like "TOT" and a Japanese grocery, is also not too far away. The University of Southern California (USC) is just 15 minutes away by car. Wilshire St. is very near as well, and driving down west on Wilshire brings you to Santa Monica Beach.

Finding Fedora St. is simple. You turn west of the main Vermont St. onto James M. Wood and then turn right onto Fedora St.

The Fedora Woods building looks nice enough from the outside: a green art deco building with a small courtyard (which I never got to enjoy, because tenants let their dogs run there, and I'm terrified of dogs). There are security cameras, and the apartment manager is awesome. She'll gladly reboot your power when you blow it out by having the TV and hair dryer on at once.

Unfortunately, the building management (William Holdings) are rather hard to reach by phone, and they increased my rent by $50 the month before my lease was up! I tried calling them to complain that my lease specified the monthly rent until a specific date, but they never called me back and threatened to start the eviction process if I didn't pay the extra amount of rent for that month. I just gave in and paid the extra.

In the past year, the only improvement to the building is its new window treatments. The windows are still hard to lift though. Mine broke the day after it was installed, and the repair man replaced the broken part but didn't fix the problem! And even though I went through the management company to get a repair man, I was expected to pay him onsite. I'm still waiting for William Holdings to reimburse me. That is looking doubtful.

My other complaints are that the room heater is ancient and its pilot light goes out very easily. Since it is an old building, there are also occasional roaches and mice. Bring lots of traps with you if you move here!

The only upside I see to this place is that it's reasonably priced for the space you get. I will be moving to Archstone Studio City, which is a lot more costly ($300 more for a smaller studio), but it has gated parking, a gym, a pool, a basket ball court... the list goes on. Wish me luck at my new place!