Beautiful building, infuriating exit experience — beware
Update — May 8, 2026
Adding to my earlier review since the deposit situation has now resolved itself into something even worse than what I originally described.
When I posted my first review, I was already past the 30-day mark with no refund in sight. Since then, I've followed up multiple times and finally gotten a clear answer from management — and the answer is that they have no intention of getting this resolved quickly.
The latest from their team: my $2,000 retainer will be included in the May 14 payment run, with a "value date" of June 1, 2026 — and I should then allow another 5–7 banking days for the funds to actually post to my account. By the time the money is real, they will have held it for 60-plus days past my move-out date, well past their own stated 30-day policy and over a month after they sent me written confirmation that the refund was being processed.
When I pushed back on this and asked for the refund to be expedited via wire transfer outside their standard payment cycle — which any company actually trying to make a customer whole would do — the response was a polite "thank you for your patience." No expedited option offered. No acknowledgment that this is well outside their own policy. No accountability.
A few things this experience has clarified:
The 30-day refund window in their paperwork is essentially aspirational. The "debit memo" they send confirming your refund is meaningless in terms of when you'll actually see the money. And the escalation path inside this company is a black box — front desk staff are pleasant but powerless, and the people who can actually authorize anything are nearly impossible to reach and unwilling to act with any urgency when you do.
For anyone reading this while deciding whether to lease here: please assume that if there is any retainer, deposit, or refundable fee involved, you will not see it back on the timeline they describe. Plan your finances accordingly. Better yet, plan around leasing somewhere else entirely. Santa Monica has no shortage of office options that don't sit on tenant money for two months as a matter of standard practice.
I'll update again once the funds actually clear.
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I just wrapped up a one-year private office lease at Spaces Water Garden in Santa Monica, and I want to save the next person some grief.
Yes, the location is beautiful. That's the nicest thing I can say. The common complaint about paper-thin walls? Completely accurate. I spent most of the year wearing headphones just to get through a workday.
But the real reasons I'm writing this review are what happened around renewal and move-out.
The renewal "offer" was a joke. When my lease came up, they came back with a 42% increase. Forty-two percent. I don't know what market they think they're operating in, but I declined immediately.
The security deposit situation is a mess. Their own paperwork can't even agree on the timeline — some places say the deposit will be returned "within 30 days," others say "at 30 days." I received a debit memo confirming my refund. The money has still not shown up. Trying to reach anyone above the building level is nearly impossible. I'm currently waiting on the city manager to even respond to me. The front desk staff are pleasant, but they're message-takers — they have no real authority to resolve anything that matters.
And then there's the "restoration fee." I was charged over $600 to "restore" my office to its pre-lease state. Per their House Rules, this covers normal cleaning, deactivating access badges and parking passes, deactivating phone lines, and getting the office ready for the next tenant. Fine — I missed that clause when I signed, that's on me. But let's be real about what they're charging for: my office was the size of a walk-in closet, and it was never once vacuumed the entire year I was there. Six hundred dollars to deactivate a keycard and clean a tiny space they couldn't be bothered to maintain while I was paying rent. It's absurd.
If you're shopping for an office space, please go in with your eyes wide open. Ask about the renewal increase history. Read every word of the House Rules. Assume getting your deposit back will be a fight. The pretty lobby is not worth this.
May 3, 2026
Unprompted review
