Signature Investment Realty - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Ben Smith McRobie

I’ve lived at the Lippincott Court apartments in Old City for about 3 years and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the upkeep and maintenance of this location. Their transparency and ability to come to compromises with tenants.

My partner and I lived in a studio which was perfectly in our price range and we felt like we snagged a deal! As an older apartment there are bound to be some issues here and there. One day we noticed mold and maintenance thorough in removing all parts of the wall that were affected and also installed a new hot water heater to further prevent this from happening.

After 14 months we were able to negotiate a prorated lease that allowed us to move into a larger unit in the building. Signature Investments was quick and clear in communication regarding the new lease. After a year in our new apartment we were able to also negotiate a cheaper rent for a multi-year lease.

My last positive experience with Signature Investment is they understand the importance of green and sustainable infrastructure. As we move into an age with Hybrids and Electric Vehicles the appeal to live somewhere that offers EV charging is steadily rising. After bringing up my intentions or purchasing an EV, Signature Investments agreed to move forward with the installation of a charging station. It means a lot that a realty company is making change to provide sustainable amenities to their tenants.

If you can’t communicate like this with your landlord, do you have a good landlord?

S R

Please be careful before renting a unit from Signature Investment Realty. One of their buildings, Cypress Apartments, located at Filter Square, has 8 fire code violations and 4 maintenance code violations from the City of Philadelphia. Files were opened on October 19, 2022.

The building manager, Eleanor Safer, has been unhelpful. She lied about the mice problem, claiming it had never been noticed before. However, we found a previous tenant in our unit on Yelp who had experienced the same issues and had been complaining to Eleanor Safer about them for months.

Go seek help from L&I and read the Implied Warranty of Habitability in Pennsylvania if you need it.

Fun fact: You have the right to terminate the lease if the building has code violations. However, Signature may attempt to keep your deposit and last month's rent. You can hire a lawyer to help you retrieve your money.

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Update: They failed the re-investigation, and L&I is now taking them to court.

Jessie Mitchell

I lived in the Hicks st apartment building for about 8 months and I would recommend living anywhere else. In hindsight, the red flags should have been that even the most basic and essential maintenance requests (non-functional fire detector) took 10 days and my water would shut off randomly with no notice. (For what it’s worth, the maintenance people are lovely, just spread far too thin.) The front door to the building also never properly closed. I sent numerous maintenance requests about it from nearly the day I moved in and was told it was only an issue because tenants didn’t close the door properly. Even after I sent two videos showing this was not the case, the issue was not fixed. In that area, it’s a major safety concern.

For the last 4 months that I lived there, they were rewiring the whole building. One day, I came home to find all of the electricity in my apartment was out. They came and re-wired the apartment for the next few days, but replaced the baseboard heaters with window air conditioners that contained a supplemental heating component. A couple problems: the units short cycled every 3-4 minutes (made sleeping very tough), the little heat the units provided mostly just went out the window, and my electric bill went up $100 even though I was home for the holidays for 10 days of that billing cycle. My apartment almost never got above 62F after the baseboard heaters went away. I’d complain about the heat, signature investment would send an electrician to confirm the units worked, never addressing the underlying problem which is that the units were totally insufficient.

Another major issue: my shower took 25+ minutes to get warm. In the last two months I lived there, the water only got properly hot a handful of times. If you have 40 minutes to take a lukewarm shower in a freezing bathroom (no heat in the bathroom at all) every day, this might be the place for you. Otherwise, stay away. Management said they were working on a fix for about 6 weeks. When I moved out, they actually canceled the maintenance request for this because I was moving out, so they don’t seem to plan on fixing it.

Mice started coming out of my stove burners. When a friend and I pulled the stove away from the wall, we saw there was a 3 foot by 3 foot hole in the drywall. They set some traps and said they fixed the hole behind the stove, but the traps never caught anything and they kept coming up through the stove. I’m not strong enough to pull the stove out by myself so can’t verify if it was ever fixed.

The last two months I lived there, managing maintenance requests and moving around to various friends' houses in order to cope with woefully insufficient heat and hot water became a part time job. And what seemed like cheap rent was completely wiped out by the increase in the electric bill. Another tenant told me hers went up by several hundred dollars. Management was consistently rude, even regarding basic heat and hot water issues. And as a fun bit of trivia: the building has had an open fire code violation since May of 2022.

Ak T

Eleanor was a great help! Super friendly and professional. She was very attentive and responded to questions and follow-ups quickly.

Aaron Stone

Please do not rent from these people. You can find far better housing for the same price.

I live at Cypress Courts apartments and couldn't tour the unit because of covid. 6 months into my lease and all I have done is fight with management about mice, leaking pipes, poor repairs, broken windows, and now no heat. Here is a list of my experience:

1) Moved in with mice nesting in my oven - they replaced it with an inoperable oven and took weeks to fix it. Had to threaten litigation to get them moving.

2) Moved in with mice holes all over my kitchen cabinets. They "fixed" them with loads of spray foam and plywood.

3) Moved in with a kitchen window that doesn't shut at the top. Still hasn't been fixed.

4) Pipe inside bathroom wall was leaking. Professional plumbers wouldn't take the job because it was too large of a fix. Signature's maintenance "fixed" it with spray foam and a trash bag. They only started moving on this once I contacted License and Inspections for a code inspection.

5) Cockroaches and mice are everywhere.

I've argued with Eleanor, the building manager, over these things and she continually blames me and says maintenance is too busy...

James Matney

Can’t speak to the entire agency, but Eleanor Safer was a great agent. Incredibly helpful and friendly, willing to devote time to clients to assist them in the process of securing a lease.

Cora Wolfinger

I lived in a Fitler Sq. apartment and had problems but I want to provide an honest and objective perspective for people looking to rent from signature investment.

To begin with, the keys I were provided my move in day did not work for the front door. I tried to explain to the manager that they did not work and they did not believe me and gas light me that the keys did in fact work. Finally, by chance the manager was at the building and I was able to show her that they were not working and that was the only reason I was able to get a new copy. The building's front door also did not close properly until about a couple months ago which showed that the building could have easily been entered by random people. The security cameras I do not believe are functional but just for show. A previous tenant in the building before moving said her bike was stolen from the hallway and asked for the footage and they never gave it to her.

Early in the fall, there was a leak that was in my apartment bathroom ceiling. I understand that the building is old and there were always going to be problems with it. However, my issue was that maintenance did come to fix the pipes but then told me I could not use the shower or toilet for a couple of days with an indefinite timeline when it would be fixed. Luckily, I was in school and could use those bathrooms but the landlord didn't even offer me an alternative place to use the bathroom or shower in the meantime. Then once they fixed the pipes in the bathroom, they were supposed to plaster the walls again but I guess the person who started the project went on vacation and no one came to finish the walls until I emailed asking for them to finish almost two months later.

Throughout the year, there was a tenant in the building who smoked cigarettes. I notified the manager about the smoke as I could smell it in my unit. In our lease it explicitly said this was a non smoking building. Again, they gas lit me and said they "checked out" the unit and couldn't smell it. I started to record the date and time every time they did smoke. It was not until I guess another tenant complained that they believed there was someone smoking. I don't think the fee for smoking was ever issued (this could be wrong). Nevertheless, it seems like the deterrence to smoke was never really enforced and because of the old ventilation system of the building, it would travel everywhere. On the subject of ventilation, there were no vents in my bathroom at all or a hood vent for the stove.

Finally, my building ended up having a fire and evicting everyone because the building was inhabitable. The main landlord called me the next morning and didn't even ask if I was doing ok but immediately went on to say they are not liable and it was an accident.

Some positives however, were that the maintenance people were very nice and fixed most of the problems. The manager I can say was very responsive to emails. The area of the apartment was amazing. The building was getting some upgrades to the walls with new paint before the fire. My unit specifically was up to date on appliances and had high ceilings with a lot of natural sunlight.

So all in all, like many realtor's, there are problems. I guess if the apartment you are looking for is what you really want and you can deal with the mediocre help from management then it may be a good fit. However, if the problems like above (and those were the only selected problems I wrote about) seem annoying to deal with, I would recommend to stay away. They don't really care about the tenants but what realtor really does.

Shawn Foley

I lived in a Signature Investment Realty property for three years. Upon move in I realized that my windows would not open and filed a maintenance request. It took a full TWO YEARS for the windows to be replaced. The new windows were covered in caulk and tape and never properly installed.

My landlords and maintenance violated the lease multiple times by entering my apartment without notice or permission. I'd only know they were in there when they left messes around the apartment.

When the apartment became infested with mice maintenance gave me a pile of glue traps and said that should fix it. They would not cover any of the holes in the walls until I threatened to break my lease and move out.

The building fire alarm broke in February, and went off throughout the building. It took over an hour to have someone sent to the apartment to fix the alarm. The emergency (hand pulled) alarm broke and had to be duct taped close to prevent the alarm from sounding. It remained like this for three months until May, despite at least three different tenants lodging complaints numerous times. I had to call and report them to the fire department before the alarm was finally replaced.

After moving out my landlord did not return my security deposit. It took a full two months and three different conversations to finally get my deposit sent to me.

Signature Investment Realty has been the most unprofessional, lazy, disgusting experience that I have had with an apartment. I highly recommend that anyone in the Philadelphia area avoid this realtor.