Eduard House by Larsen Apartments

Gonna miss my friend who lives here until midmarch :(

Hi there! It’s going to be a big review. But if you consider staying at Larsen Apartments (hereinafter LA) you really should read it through. A year ago, I moved in LA to their Private Plus room. We signed a contract for 1 year. Here are the prices as of September 2019: 468 EUR/month (utilities included), 399 EUR deposit, 200 EUR contract fee. This year, they raised prices to 528 EUR/month (for a 20 square meters cell). I decided not to renew my contract and moved out. I was expecting to get my deposit back without any problems… But I’ll get back to it below. Upon moving in, you had to agree to a list of rules. Unfortunately, a lot of tenants didn’t follow them. So think of this building as a modern student dorm: looks nice, but it’s noisy, smoky, and drunk. If your room window is above the main entrance (mine was), don’t open it. Otherwise, you’ll get a lot of noise and cigarette smoke coming up from people partying outside. Even if it’s 3 AM. Don't be fooled by those nice renders on LA website. The biggest room is rather small. Every room is furnished with the cheapest IKEA products (bed sheets, towels, kitchenware, TV, Internet, etc. would cost extra). The washing machine was the most expensive thing there – it had a dryer! The kitchen had no microwave oven — only a tiny stove countertop without a bake oven. Now, I’d like to dedicate a whole paragraph to the fridge. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Only 2 sides of the freezer had cooling elements. Other 3 were plastic and didn’t produce frost. Besides, the fridge was installed under the stove countertop. So the freezer was absolutely useless – nothing stayed frozen in there. I should also mention a tiny sink and a huge wall-hanging cabinet above it in the bathroom. Because of that design, you had to brush your teeth and shave bending over the toilet. Also, I had some issues with privacy. Rooms open with a card or via a mobile app. Despite what LA say in the contract, the staff can enter your room without your permission or prior notice. Once, they warned everyone about the upcoming fire inspection. So I stayed home to receive them, but no one came. It turned out that the fire inspection visited my apartment when I was away. I also remember one time I was taking a shower, and some maintenance guy just barged into my room looking for a vacuum cleaner. Now, here’s the main reason I rated LA this low. When you move out, you have to clean your apartment. But LA will charge you extra 50 EUR of your deposit for the “final” cleaning. Okay, that was in the contract, I was ready for that. Also, LA will want you to leave the apartment before they inspect it. But I insisted on being there to avoid any mutual doubts. Finally, two cleaning ladies came. They didn’t like the spot on the wall by the window that was caused by some leak from upstairs, and the stains Cillit left on their bathroom faucet. LA wanted to charge me 72 EUR of my deposit to replace the faucet that barely costs 10 EUR. I should emphasize: they wanted to charge me for the stains on the perfectly working faucet (see the pics below). A thing that should be attributed to normal wear and tear after 1 year of service. I wasted a lot of time in the email communication with LA people. I tried to come up with different solutions: buying that faucet and replacing it myself; giving them a polish for chrome and aluminum coatings. My offers were rejected, while LA kept haggling with me about the extra sum they wanted to charge me. So I had to file an official complaint with the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority of Estonia. And, magically, I got my deposit back only 3 weeks after I had moved out. However, LA still charged me extra 10 EUR for the time they spent polishing the faucet. If you managed to read up to this point, you must have realized what an unpleasant experience it had been for me. If you want to protect yourself from that, I would recommend you thinking thrice before staying at LA.

First, I must say : I didn't live in the Larsen Apartment... I'm writing this comment because I wanted to book a Shared Plus room there but I changed my minde when I saw the contract. 1) The room was 10euros more expensive than what was written on the website (without any explanation). 2) Be careful because when I've decided to book the room, I discovered that I should have paid a fee of 200euros (which is a lot !) in addition to a deposit of 428euros. 3) At the end of the rental, you have to clean the apartment AND to pay 50euros for an extra cleaning after you left. If you haven't clean it well, you must pay (again) 50euros. 4) If like me, you wanted your boyfriend/girlfriend to come visit you, he/she will not be authorize to sleep in the apartment. The guests must leave before 11PM. I'm not saying that this is a bad accomodation (this was my first choice !), just that it is expensive and the rules are pretty strict. My advice : read carefully the contract before booking a room :)

Very nice

Overall, Larsen Apartments is a good choice if you move to Tallinn within a short time period, when you don’t want to put a lot of effort in searching a flat or simply if you just don’t have the time and motivation to compare the overall rental prices in the city. Also, be aware that the pictures Larsen Apartment is making marketing and PR with aren’t always what they seem like and what you end up with. 😉 In general, I personally think that the prices of every housing option Larsen offers are way too high, compared to other flats and apartments with a more central location. Nevertheless, I was first-time occupancy, therefore the room and the inventory was perfectly clean and new, as well as the study area in the 8th floor and the lobby. There was no inventory when we moved in and because the packages Larsen offered were totally overpriced IKEA stuff we had no other choice than buying it all by ourselves. Another disappointing fact was that the roof top, with which Larsen made a lot of PR, was actually only finished when the first of us already moved out again. Furthermore, the building itself and in particular the windows, aren’t sealed properly, even though it is a completely new building. Especially in the winter months this is becoming a big issue, also due to the fact that the heating system works with a systematic approach and turns itself off after the target temperature of 23 degrees is reached.