Stonefire Berkeley

I recent visited a friend who lives at Stonefire. The building had extraordinary views, close to some great places, and the amenities were amazing! The front lobby was beautiful, clean and had friendly staff. Definitely a great place to consider moving to!

Elaine was very helpful during my apartment search. She was patient and kind throughout the process, assisted me every step of the way, and went above and beyond to welcome me into the Stonefire community. I truly appreciate how she made my application process so much simpler and easier!

The arrival of Cesar and his team quickly improved the service level throughout the apartment. I had some issues with my previous Unit and I didn't have time to wait for it to be fixed. Cesar helped me switch to a new Unit very quickly and did all the checks before I moved in. He can take into account the different needs of each person, for example he knows that I care about the cleanliness of the apartment, so he does extra cleaning to make sure everything is in order. Cesar's work so far has been phenomenal!

Despite everything Josh Choi said was generally correct, he is the one who break the rule. You did not pay for your parking which should be 180 a month and thus, did not have a parking spot. However, you still sneaked in and let your car blocking my way to the lift. The reason you have a sticker on is because you are blocking my parking spot. And as you said, the stonefire management is doing terrible because they did not get your car towed for over two or three days!
*I would kindly suggest you to pay your parking fee please and don’t renew your lease with stonefire.

Borrowing my friends account to come and warn everyone: DO NOT COME! WHAT A SCAM! The leasing office is incapable of getting anything done. No matter how many times we’ve tried to communicate with them, the office is still as careless and slow as you can imagine. During my stay here, no complaint, request, or demand was responded in a promptly manner. Whatever they promised, they never delivered. Luxury apartments? Really? More like a scam. Do not waste your money and stay away from Stonefire Berkeley!

Super horrible. DO NOT ever lease an apartment here in Stonefire.i first came in this apartment with high hopes expecting good service and amenities because i believe this apartment is relatively more expensive than other apartments in berkeley as they're 'luxurious'. Unfortunately, the price u pay isn't what u get.the parking garage has been open 24/7 for 5 months now, i've reached out and addressed this issue to the leasing office multiple times and the only thing they keep saying is that they're working on it, which seems pretty stupid because how difficult would it be to fix a garage door that it takes MONTHS and MONTHS? The garage door open 24/7 caused my car to get vandalized a few times, with car tires getting punctured and even getting followed by a person one night in the parking garage.other than that, i've had multiple issues as well, i've lost so many packages, trash gets piled up in apartment hallways, and i've reached out a LOT OF times by texting and calling them, but they never respond.super disappointing.

Though you negotiate with the best attitude for months, they deliver no results and would not fix what needs to be fixed. They also don’t give you what they promised to give. Many residents I know are so disappointed by this apartment and some of my friends have in fact moved out already.

First and foremost, do not lease a unit with Stonefire Berkeley. There is also a new complex called The Standard at Berkeley and do not lease a unit there either. I will make this transparent yet brutally honest review as short, concise, and clear cut as possible.

-Security guard is sleeping on the couch in the lobby while the parking garage is open because it’s broken
-I had no air conditioning heating AND cooling for 10 months straight
-The ratio of tenants to available parking is flabbergastingly shocking as there are people like me who have been on the waiting list for 10 months now
-A staff member said I violated their parking rule so the staff member goes ahead and puts a cheaply made sticker on my window that I can’t take off unless I spend couple hours picking at it, but removing it will more than likely damage my window (image attached)
-In addition to the point before, the staff member verbally admitted to vandalizing my car because the staff member almost word for word said to my face, “I wouldn’t have vandalized your car if you didn’t violate our parking rule”
-I had no functioning lights in my kitchen, living room, and bathroom for about 7 months
-When I got the keys to my unit, there was trash and broken closet doors and broken cardboard boxes and debris and one broken chair in the living room
-Stonefire advertises their retail shops on the first floor but there is not a single retail shop within this complex whatsoever
-They show 0 effort in accommodation, consideration, respect, and customer satisfaction
-Their corporation Landmark Properties does not answer their phone and I left over voicemails to multiple people regarding my issues and I still have not received any response back from the people I left voicemails to except one person
-The amenities this complex has to offer is not as convincing compared to almost every other complex around Berkeley, CA
-Trash service is sometimes backed up so you have trash just piled up in the hallways
-At one point in time, we had no service technician at all for couple months maybe
-The parking garage gate is still open to this day because I was the one who manually opened it at 2AM with the chains on the side of the gate because I was locked out of my own property

0 stars if I could. Lived here from 2018-2020, trash room was closed ⅓ of the time and when we left they took $900+ of our security deposit for "carpet cleaning". Awful management that preys on 18 yo students who don't know any better, avoid at all costs.

Edit after response: they don't even deny that they defrauded us out of our deposit lolll

The most expensive place I’ve ever lived and the worst leasing experience I’ve ever had. I paid ~$3000 a month for a studio during the pandemic, but didn’t receive the service I deserve.

The most upsetting experience happened a week after I purchased my car. I requested a parking space from the office, which was occupied by another car for the entire weekend. I called the office a few times but no one responded at all. I had to park my car somewhere else. On Monday, the other car finally left the space, so I parked my car there ever since. One time, I was calling someone in my car, one staff knocked at my window and yelled at me, asking me to leave the parking space in a very rude way. I wanted to prove him this is my parking space by showing him the emails with the leasing office, but he didn’t care to look at all. He just kept yelling and threatened to tow my car. I asked him to go to the office and talk to the front desk, but he refused to, and just drove away after yelling at me for 10 mins.

I called the housing office and asked for an apology, and they told me that was their maintenance guy, who has nothing to do with parking. I never got an apology from the staff, even when I came up to him, he still insisted that he only “overreacted”.

Not worth the money at all. Avoid if you can.

Lease was extremely binding and my roommates and I reached out multiple to times to try to cancel the lease, and management did not answer a single one of our calls. Cost to terminate a lease is an entire 6 month's worth of rent, and event though my roommates and I cancelled the lease for the pandemic, they still charged us a whole year's worth of rent at the end of the year without any communication whatsoever to us. Did not make any effort whatsoever to re-let the apartment in our lease, and we never stepped a single foot in the apartment once. Horrible place, terrible management, please look elsewhere if you want an apartment in Berkeley.

Awful company seeking to exploit young college students. My roommates and I attempted to terminate our lease when news of the pandemic arose, but the inexplicably binding contract forced us to either pay 6 months of rent (extremely high compared to other housing options in the area) or pay off monthly rent while the company tried to re-let the apartment. We repeatedly called to ask to negotiate but no updates or transparency was ever given. No attempt to re-let was made (never updated on the re-letting process) and an ENTIRE YEAR'S worth of rent was placed upon us even though we never set a single step into the building the entire year.

Non-existent sense of empathy from the greedy management, and displayed callous disregard for
residents during a pandemic. Do not live here even if it's your last choice for housing.

Rude and unresponsive staff besides Dwight. Victoria never responds to our urgent emails and Sam could be a little more polite. Trash room is never open so our trash is constantly overflowing. Also they won’t take out certain trash so we have to dump it elsewhere by ourselves.

Horribly expensive and the breaking fee of the lease is abusive, you have to pay six month of its crazy rent! Ya’ll know now is the pandemic time which my family suffers a lot from the financial loss, yet I have to pay the high rent without being able to break it! And guess what, I can’t even find anyone to transfer my rent! Why? Because the price is high and everyone else is also experiencing the same financial suffering. I asked lots of my friends and their break fee at other apartment are all way cheaper. Definitely not worth the price. Listen to my genuine advice, don’t live here unless they lower the rent

Management changed and did not inform the other of promised leasing agreements, ended up just sending us a move-out check list when we were in the middle of finding replacement roommates with every intention of resigning the lease. Lived there for two years and they don't care, left us out to dry.

Terrible management, maintenance, and everything you could think of. Super unhelpful and rather hostile staff. Lobby is often poorly maintained and reeks of garbage.

Great apartment with nice amenities in an excellent location, deserving of great reviews if it weren't for other things. Everything else, especially management, is of sub par standards and makes living here not worth the ridiculously high cost which only keeps going up.

The following examples give only a picture of why not to live at Stonefire:
The package system in place is just awful; you can only pick up packages when the front-desk staff is there. There are frequently reoccurring issues with the general maintenance of the entire apartment complex, that serve as persistent nuisance to all residents. I've also had numerous experiences with the maintenance staff being very derogatory, all unprovoked. Lastly, the management staff is non-transparent and unprofessional.

Best apartment I've lived in so far! The location to campus, night life, etc, is prime for young adults/professionals, and everyone who enjoys being involved in their community. Stonefire is the nicest apartment complex in downtown Berkeley, and the front desk staff is so friendly! It was nice to see that their management staff is very hands on, and they all greeted me with a smile!