I usually don’t write reviews but I think I want the owners of HALO and its future tenants to know what my experience has been with this building. A few months ago, my husband and I came across a listing on Streeteasy for a junior 2 bedroom/2 bath for $3,650 at the Halo. We made an appointment in April with their office and met with a broker the Halo works with from Fiddler Realty. The broker was extremely nice at first, gave us a proper tour of the building and worked with us on our application. We submitted our application with a requested move-in date for June 15, paid the security deposit and all application fees. The broker told us that the building was not fully open so by the time our application got approved, there was a possibility that the move-in date would change to either July 1/July 15/August 1 depending on an available move-in slot.
Over the next few weeks, we went back and forth on the application as they have very strict requirements. Finally on June 7th, the broker told us that our application was approved but we would have to pay a minimum of five months of advance rent in addition to the security deposit as one of us had a late payment in one of our accounts back in 2012. LOL! Since we really wanted that apartment, we asked the broker to give us a few more days as $20K was a pretty large amount to pay upfront. We also requested him to change our lease/move-in date to July 15 they notified us about our approved application only 10-12 days before our requested move in date. He said he would check with the management and let us know. A few days went by and then we texted him again to get the status and to let him know that we would way pay the 5 months of rent given that the lease date was moved to July 15. He wrote back to us on June 15 (our original move-in date request) and said that our lease had already started that day. We, of course, fell from the sky as there was no lease signed. The only thing we signed and submitted was our application form and we were told that the lease would be signed between the two parties once we agreed upon everything.
We immediately called him to understand the situation. His explanation was that he requested the Management to change the move-in date but the Management denied it. Not only did he fail to notify us that the Management denied our request to change our move-in date, he kept insisting that the lease had already started that day, even though we did not sign a lease. He was extremely rude and unprofessional and was even laughing about how it was our mistake. After sending him several screenshots of our past conversation, he finally admitted that he made a mistake in communicating. He then asked us to wait while he checked with the Management. After a week, WE messaged him AGAIN and he said that the Management would not change the lease (note: we NEVER signed anything the lease) and we would have to pay half of that month’s rent in order to keep the apartment. Even though the broker made the mistake, they said we would have to pay for that month even if we didn’t stay in that apartment. I requested him multiple to connect me to the Management directly, but he refused to do so.
Since they were so unprofessional and unethical, we finally decided to withdraw our application.
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