Pico Lanai

I lived there from August 2013 to March 2014. It was crowded, extremely loud, all college students (as was I, but not right out of high school). Not to mention it’s a complete rip off and the actual apartments are smaller than any hotel room I’ve ever been in in my entire life.

Very bad
a international student, I have to deposit $ 3400 (in the end I only get $ 1400 back.), they have a long list of this fee and that fee. Like bathroom cleaning $ 200 – 300, carpet cleaning several hundred.
one year lease, otherwise they won’t let me move in and I really Need a place to live. But this is the worst decision I have made in my life in USA.
Insects in the apt (very mini apt), very bad environment.
You can hear your neighbor talking.
The carpet has flea at that time we move in, I asked them to clean it. They did. But the flea still there. I have to pay money to clean it by myself.
The staffs always come into your house to check this check that. no matter you are at home or not. Once I was sleeping in my bed and the door just open. The Ridicules Thing is, they come to the apt the check if the apt is clean or not, and there is a fine $ 200. It makes me feels like I’m living in a school dormitory, makes me feel very uncomfortable and worry all day.
They seems try everything to get money from you.
As you can check, the crime rate is very high in this area. To be exactly in this apartment area.
Really? 1750/​month + this fee and that fee.
Very noise, very small, no AC.

Dont ever come here because this is the worst place I’ve ever lived in. First of all they made me believe that this place was a safe place to live in… with all the new security camera installed and security guard walking around at night… its just all a lie. There were some crazy fights out there in the apartment complex where a girl went missing after a window break incident and some other crazy issues that happened in the middle of the night, talking 3 – 4 in the morning. There were so many times where cops showed up and everyone was awaken in the middle of the night frighten.
Secondly, mario who is in charge of fixing things in the house is terrible at keeping time and ALSO answering his phone. According to Pico Lanai they said the maintenance guy was available 24 hours. He never picks up his phone nor does he do his job right. I had called him to come to my house and fix the kitchen light, it took him 3weeks to switch the light bulb. Not only that but he installed only two, leaving me with a note saying «i had to order another light bulb since we ran out, we will install once the item is stored.» Literally 4months passed and I only have two light bulb. I am moving out soon so I had set up a house inspection date and he never showed up. His excuse was that he never gotten a email saying that he had an appointment.
Everything here breaks down so quickly. The water is inconsistent, bugs crawling everywhere (no matter how I clean my house, spiders, centipede looking bugs, crock roaches.
Now that Im leaving theyre already to take my deposit money away because without even doing the house inspection, they were already telling me the price of how much it will cost to clean the whole house, repairing the damages. This is complete bullshit. Just cause I’m a college student, they think its easy to get away with it but no I’m not going to let this by.

Lived here over a year and moved out Jan 1^st 2015, absolutely hated everything about this place. From the terrible tenants to the even worse management staff (s) seeing as how it went through multiple agencies and ownerships before I moved out.
But that’s not what Im here to talk about. Im here to talk about how whoever was in charge of handling the security deposits (IN THE FORM OF A TRAVELER’S CHECKS) seems to have misplaced mine. Not only did they FAIL TO RETURN MY SECURITY DEPOSIT, THEY’RE SAYING I NEVER GAVE THEM ONE AND HAVE NOW SENT A BILL FOR $ 453 TO COLLECTIONS WITHOUT HAVING EVER CONTACTED ME OVER THE PHONE OR THROUGH MAIL.
Fuck you guys, that is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. You guys are taking advantage of young kids who are just trying to get an education and robbing them of what you owe. I went to apply for a new apartment and was denied because of this discrepancy. And now I come to find out that not only did you already take that money from me when you failed to return my deposit in the first place for whatever reason, you want me to pay it again!
These guys are a bunch of crooks who just want to bend you over and make you their bitch for the duration of the time you reside here before realizing you’re trapped in the worst apartment community on the West side.
Eat shit and die.

Honestly I toured this place 3 months ago and the overwhelming sadness that it evoked has stuck with me. The property can best be described as a cheap motel disguised as residential living. Don’t let the website fool you, this place is awful. Don’t even waste your time, I promise you.
Also, they use the management office bathroom as a mail room. They literally poop on your packages.

Thank god I moved out!!! Not only are the apartments smaller then a garage but it’s $ 1700 a month! They make you put a $ 500 down payment which is reasonable EXCEPT what they don’t tell you is when you move out they take $ 130 out for «cleaning» fees. The first day I moved in I could tell it was not cleaned so I’m not sure what their doing with that money because if you move the stove you’ll find cockroaches and other gross crap. If you have a package delivered you better go to the office because they certainly won’t tell you. The drawers fall off, the heat doesn’t work, if you need something fixed they won’t come for at least a week. Some new company recently took over and they are making some improvements but nothing worth $ 1700! There was a flood near the office and because of that the water was over for a week with no accommodations! Not to mention I went home for over two weeks for Christmas vacation, I come home to all of my stuff thrown on the ground, my whole shower wall was missing! My mirror was broken, my toilet didn’t work, and they broke another cabinet! When I confronted them about not having running water, a working toilet or shower for over a month I still had to wait a week for them to fix it! When everything was fixed it was very poor and whoever moved in after I’m sure everything broke all over again. I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone it’s a total rip off.

Suitable place as it nearby to downtown Santa Monica and easier transport access especially Hot spots such as Hollywood, Universal Studios and Beverly Hills.

Well we are moving out. Time to move on to the next part of life’s journey. New management is on it and handling things professionally. I can see they are trying to turn things around at the complex. Over the year we have noticed very positive changes.

Worst living experience you could find in Santa Monica
Sink won’t stop flooding, loud/​high pitch notices screeching from the bathroom, crazy wanna be frat boys n fake thugs fucking up the place, also u could get a livable apartment of much higher quality for the same price!
Lastly the new security guard is the icing on the cake, he literally thinks he’s a cop he has no respect or poise
This place sucks I can’t wait to be out of here in August

Awful! Violence, break ins, parties, drugs, meth dealing, drag racing in the parking lot, I could go on and on with the brief time that I lived there. A new management company came in and said they would be better and so far it has been worse. They do not follow through on ANYTHING they say and it is difficult to even get a return phone call or catch the office open when it is ‘supposed’ to be. I would not recommend this to anyone, especially anyone with a child or someone who is a professional.

Pico lanai, let me tell you something about this complex. Do you like living next to a bunch of drug abusers that yell and rap at 2am every day? Would you like to experience not being able to sleep due to high off drugs college students? Would you like to eat a nice breakfast and have company of small critters (roaches)? Then this is the place for you!!!
This place is absolutely disgusting. Drug abuse is ridiculous, management does not give a rats ass, and you will probably hate this place immediately after signing the lease. Look for something else before coming here!
Moving out as soon as the lease is up.

Now that we have lived there a year we couldn’t move out fast enough. Total rip-​off, save your money.
New management was not attentive while we were there.
Would never recommend this place to anyone I care about.

No wonder this place has so many units available all the time, it’s because it sucks to live there and everybody moves out almost as soon as they moved in. This place is garbage.

Tried to complain to inept, oveconfident 20 something asian Manager about the hoodrat wannabe thugs & the insane amount of noise/​trouble they cause after-​hours. Several months have passed & it’s only gotten worse. Perhaps if he spent time solving these issues instead of doing ‘Damage Control Unilocal Responses’ the environment at Pico Lanai wouldn’t be the disaster it’s turned into (in the last 3 months or so). If you’d like to see what its like living in Compton or South Central, but for $ 1400/​month, then this place is for you. Plenty of corny Kanye’s around for all the unsuspecting foreign & white girls to get harassed by. Most of the student populace living here gets arrested or evicted for non-​payment within a few months. Then a whole new batch of financial aid hoodlums & Trust fund brats (both trying to imitate each other) move in to take over what would, could, & should be a decent property. Read the other reviews good or bad, & count the number of references to ‘partying’ or ‘noisy kids’. Cops have been here 5 times in last 3 months since most recent batch of shitheads moved in. After midnight they seem to multiply like wet Gremlins. *Avoid* unless you enjoy subsidizing these inner city millenials first foray into the civilized world.

I went to view this place last week. From the moment I was in the leasing office they were rude. First they pepper you with irrelevant questions before even wanting to show you a place. They ask for a lot of personal info just to let you in to see a unit. And then they ask for your ID, and not just to see it, but they want to «hold it» while they show you around. On top of this they were very rude. I think its because they are used to having rowdy college students staying there (its right by SMC on a disheveled part of Pico Blvd). I ended up not even wanting to see a unit after a few minutes of disrespect, so I just left.
Save your time folks!

People working in the office are really nice. They are always willing to have whenever you have problems with your apartment and your neighbors.

The staff here are very friendly and made signing the lease, moving in, and paying the rent a breeze. I was in Austin while they were in Santa Monica and we managed to Skype our way through a walk-​through, with the help of a friend. We ended up shielded from the pool and not too far from the laundry. So far, everything has been great!

I have currently been living here for about a month and I wanted to chime in and let you guys know my experience with Pico Lanai.
We moved from Las Vegas to Santa Monica for a job and we needed to move in a matter of like 2 weeks and Akira was simply amazing. She helped us with everything and made our move super easy.
To be honest, we only saw pictures on the website before deciding to move here and so far we have not been disappointed. We did our fair share of checking around in Santa Monica and this place is definitely one of the more affordable places that we found.
The Pros:
— we were able to get everything done over the phone, and through email.
— when we got here Akira took us around the complex and showed us where everything was at and showed us the apartment we had picked out to make sure we still wanted to live here before signing our lease.
— she let us know that they actually have a pest control company come out once a week or once every other week to spray outside and that if we wanted them to spray inside that we could request that and it would be at no additional charge.
— the complex is gate guarded which is pretty nice.
— it comes with a full kitchen with a fridge, sink (with disposal), stove and dishwasher.
— there are multiple laundry rooms and a small workout room
— the people in general are really nice and friendly.
— the location is great, close to tons of restaurants and only 2 miles away from the beach.
— if you aren’t home for packages that get delivered, usps, ups and fedex all leave it at the office for you to pick up so you don’t have to go and get it.
The Cons:
— it can get a lil noisy at night but usually quiets down around 10pm which is the noise curfew so it’s really not too bad.
— you have to pay to wash laundry but this is just a personal con, I’m just used to having a washer and dryer in the unit: p
— the apartment itself is pretty small but it’s not necessarily a con, it’s just something to get used to.
overall, I think this place is nice and clean. They cut the grass every week and I always see someone from maintenance cleaning outside or mopping inside the laundry rooms and getting stuff done. People here are really nice and we don’t really feel the noise is a really big issue. We are used to living in downtown vegas where its pretty loud so this is nothing compared to that. So far we like living here and for the price it’s nice! I’ll update at the end of our lease and let you guys know the overall experience.

iWARNING DO NOT MOVE INTO THIS APARTMENT!
I signed my lease with two other girls last february, we were all three students at SMC and anxious to move in because of the prime location the campus, the pier, main street and the venice board walk were all walking distance. After we signed the lease we read the Unilocal reviews and saw a lot of people were complaining about noise complaints and students partying, being 20 years old and not knowing anyone in LA yet we were stoked to hear that this was a party complex. The first few months were amazing, we made friends that will last a life time, and had some of the craziest experiences of our lives. Since SMC is such an international campus you have students from all over the world living at pico, which makes living there a melting pot of culture and dank food. The young community at pico becomes family in a matter of a couple days and you catch yourself never wanting to leave because you always want to be surrounded by the «pico hoodlums». Unfortunately the rules and security started to become really strict about half way through our lease, and everyone started to slowly move away. We weren’t to worried because we assumed new people would move in and we would have a new «pico family» to connect/​rage with. However this wasn’t the case, they new crowd got worse and worse and than glitz of Pico Lanai completely wore off. (I don’t live there anymore but I have a couple friends that still live there and they said Pico is completely dead so there are absolutely so perks about living there anymore and no reason to deal with the shitty management)

After this we started to notice how much of a shit hole this apartment actually was, my roommates and I were complete neat freaks however the bugs were constantly in our kitchen, living area, BEDROOMS and bathrooms! No matter how much we cleaned, on move out day a roach literally fell from the celling onto my head. Even though every single apartment had this roach problem management still charged a $ 200 for someone to come in and you have to physically remove every single piece of furniture out of the apartment yourself. Surprise! The bugs were back a couple days later…
Unless you are only living in Santa Monica for the summer and are signing a short three month lease DO NOT MOVE HERE!
If you are reading this review and hoping that a better crowd has moved in by now, there hasn’t but your best bet would be moving into a cute apartment on one of the side streets near SMC and if you want to see if people are partying at pico you can honestly just go to the gate and wait for someone to let you in and walk around yourself… if people are partying or BBQing they will be really inviting so it won’t be a problem for you to join even if you don’t live there.

I was a tenant of this complex until I last month when I moved out. I have some feedback on the management responsiveness, pests, and location.
MANAGEMENT RESPONSIVENESS:
The onsite management was really nice and personable when I initially signed the lease. I had hoped that the full time onsite management would be more responsive than some of the smaller complexes I had lived in previously with off site or part-​time management. I was incorrect.
I had a couple other issues, but my largest management issue was with maintenance of the refrigerator that came with the unit. Originally I was really happy the unit came with a fridge because that meant I didn’t have to purchase a new unit or arrange to move one. Everything was fine until August when I noticed that my fridge was no longer staying cool. This was a big problem for me then because I had prescription antibiotics that needed to be kept refrigerated. I contacted the management and was told they would look into it.
The next day my fridge was still not working. I contacted management who told me the problem had been fixed. I said I hadn’t noticed a difference. I was told that it would just take time for the fridge to get cold again. After a couple days of waiting, it became clear to me the fridge was not going to get cool enough.
I felt like they were just putting me off even after I explained that I had a medical need for a working fridge. I took time off work to come by when the leasing office was open, in hopes that they would actually look at the fridge. Again I was told there had been an issue with the fan, but it had been fixed.
Still the temperature seemed just below room temperature as compared to a working fridge which seems cold. Products such as butter and cheese came out of the fridge soft as if they had been left on the counter for a period of time. At this point I purchased a fridge thermometer, which had the fridge temperature at 60 degrees, which is far too high for a working refrigerator.
I did not feel their response to phone calls, voice mails, or emails was adequate so I took time off work to speak to the management in hopes for a quick resolution. I showed them the fridge thermometer showing the 60 degree temperature, said that food is in the danger zone if it is above 40 degrees, and was frustratingly told that it would cool down.
After two weeks of back and forth, I was told they couldn’t fix the fridge and would be replacing it. To their credit they did replace it the next day. However at that point I had not had a working fridge in over two weeks. Ultimately I had to throw away most of the items in my fridge and freezer, purchased a fridge thermometer, and had to purchase a cooler which had to be stocked with ice. i was extremely upset that it took 2 weeks and a number of phone calls, emails, and visits to the leasing office until I had a working fridge again.
When I complained about the response time I continued to receive the run-​around. For instance I would email both the manager and the associate. The associate manager would reply back saying that would be something I would have to reach out to the manager regarding even though the manager had been on the original email. I got the impression the management was hoping I would drop the issue due to their combination of slow response time and lack of helpful information.
PESTS:
Lastly, cockroach haters be warned. I found a number of these even after my apartment was treated.
LOCATION:
The best thing going for this is its location. It is located on Pico Blvd. within walking distance of restaurants, fast food, bars, and misc. shopping such as Rite Aid and a 99 Cents Store. There is a farmer’s market at nearby Virginia Ave. Park every Saturday. It is with a short driving distance to Third Street Promenade and really most of Santa Monica. However there are a number of other housing options in the area.