Door Buzzer
Installation in
Park Slope

Quick answer: door buzzer installation in Park Slope runs $400 to $900 on our Brooklyn list for an audio buzzer with a new door release on a one-family brownstone or a single entrance, $700 to $1,800 for a video door station with indoor monitors or phone answering on a rowhouse split into two to four flats or a small walk-up, and from about $2,500 to past $10,000 for a full entry system serving every apartment in a larger walk-up, a co-op or a building with several doors. The price covers the door station, the answering units, the power supply, the electric strike or approved lock, the cable and the labor. It is fixed in writing after we have seen the doors, and anything that depends on a test, such as an old wire pair that might fail, a closer that has to be replaced before a release can hold the door, or a Landmarks permit for a new station on a district facade, is named before you order. Send photos of the stoop door and whatever is mounted beside it to (347) 934-8335 or on WhatsApp, and we reply with the range that fits, usually within two hours of your message during working hours.

• Looking at your photos and quoting a new system costs nothing. If an existing system has to be diagnosed in person before we can quote, that is the $250 service call booked online, and the $250 is applied toward the work.
• All work is done under New York State license #12000287431. We install low-voltage entry equipment; if a door needs a new 120-volt outlet or circuit for its power supply, a licensed electrician does that part, and you know before the job is priced.
• We work for whoever controls the door: the owner of a house or building, a co-op or condo board or its managing agent, or a shop or office tenant with the landlord's written approval.

Need Repair in Park Slope? When Some Buzzers Still Work and Others Don't, Decide What You Are Fixing Before Anyone Buys a Panel

Many Park Slope installation calls begin as a partial failure. Half the apartments can release the door and half cannot. The vestibule buttons ring but the ones on the stoop do not. One line of apartments on the top floor went quiet after a renovation. A forum thread on Brownstoner from June 2008 captured the dilemma for a housing co-op of two sixteen-apartment buildings: the exterior buzzers failed while the vestibule buzzers worked, the management company's contractors said the whole system had to go, and the owner suspected only the contacts. One commenter backed the management company and warned, "You can spend hundreds of dollars trying to accomplish this with no success." Others recommended a repair technician instead.

Both sides can be right, which is why the decision comes from testing, not from opinion. We sort every Park Slope job into one of three paths before pricing. A targeted repair, when the fault is a single part: a burned transformer, a cracked faceplate, a strike that has worked loose in an old wood frame, or a closer that no longer pulls the stoop door shut. A partial replacement, when the old cable tests sound but the door station or apartment stations have reached the end of their life. And a full replacement with new cable, when the old pairs fail, when the building has never had talk-back, or when the owner or board wants video and phone answering the old system cannot carry.

Door Buzzer Installation for Park Slope's Architecture

Six kinds of building account for almost every buzzer installation we plan in Park Slope. They differ in how many entrances people use, how cable can reach each household, who has authority to order the work and what has to be approved first, and each has one mistake that shows up when the job is rushed.

One-family brownstones: two doors, four floors and a station that should not look new

A one-family brownstone needs a small system, but it is rarely a simple one. The household wants to answer from the kitchen on the garden floor, the parlor, the bedroom floors and sometimes the top-floor office, so the system needs four or five indoor stations, not one chime. The house usually has two street doors: the parlor door at the top of the stoop, which guests use, and the garden door under the stoop, which deliveries and the family use. Each needs its own call button, and the household needs to know which door is ringing.

The mistake is choosing the station before checking the front. On a landmarked house, the Commission reviews anything new on the facade, and a bulky panel on the brownstone beside an original parlor door is the kind of thing that slows an application down. We look at where an old bell button sat, where a station can be set into the areaway or the door surround with the least effect, and where its cable can enter without a visible run, then choose a station that fits that spot. The price includes the indoor stations, both door stations, a fail-secure strike for each door and a battery-backed supply in the cellar.

Rowhouses split into flats: one stoop, several households and an owner downstairs

The commonest Park Slope job is a rowhouse divided into two to four apartments, often with the owner on the garden and parlor floors and tenants above. The owner usually wants each button to ring only its own flat, each flat to be able to talk and release the street door, and a way for the owner's floor to see who rings the tenants without being able to listen in on them. The cable route is the hard part: these houses have no common riser, so cable reaches the upper floors through closets, old bell-wire chases or the stair hall.

Two traps catch owners here. The first is reusing old bell wire because it still rings a chime. Wire that was fine for a bell often has a cracked conductor that fails when a door station, a monitor and a strike pull more current through it. We meter every pair. The second is legal: a building with three or more apartments is a multiple dwelling under state law, so the owner takes on maintenance duties for the system once it is in. We size the job so it lasts, with a supply and strike that will still be in production when a part needs replacing.

Small brownstone condos: a board of neighbors and nobody on call

Buildings like 153 Lincoln Place, an 1887 rowhouse that became a ten-unit condo in 2009, are run by the owners themselves. There is no super to let a technician into the cellar, no managing agent to hold the wiring drawings, and no one whose job it is to change a resident's name on the directory when an apartment sells. A system that needs a monthly login, a service contract and a property manager to run it will end up neglected.

For these buildings we design for the board that exists: one owner named as contact, the supply in a locked box every owner can reach, and the wiring record left in two places. Where the board wants phone answering, we choose a system whose directory can be edited without a paid subscription, or we price the subscription on its own line so every owner sees it before the vote.

Side-street walk-ups: a vestibule, a stabilized rent roll and pairs older than anyone in the building

The walk-ups between the avenues, many built around the turn of the twentieth century, usually have a pair of outer doors, a small vestibule with the mailboxes and a locked inner door, with the bell board on the wall between them. Many hold rent-stabilized apartments. The owner wants talk-back or video at the street, a station in every apartment and a release that holds the inner door, and the tenants want what the 390 15th Street reviewer asked for: to see who is outside.

Before anything is ordered in a building like this, two things are checked. The riser pairs are metered floor by floor, because a two-wire video system can often run over pairs that test sound, which keeps the walls closed. And the owner confirms whether the building's rent-stabilized apartments mean the change goes to DHCR first. We describe that process in its own section below, because it changes the order of the job.

Prewar and postwar elevator co-ops: a lobby, a board vote and stations that must fill old holes

Park Slope's elevator buildings, from prewar co-ops on Prospect Park West to postwar buildings near the park, have a lobby door, often a service or side door, an elevator, a super and a board. A system for fifty or more apartments needs a directory or code panel at the lobby, a station at each other entrance, apartment stations or phone answering, and frequently a desk or super's station. The board compares several bids, so our quote lists every door, every station, the cable plan and the power arrangement in a form that can be laid against anyone else's.

Older apartment stations here are often larger than today's, set into the wall. A new, smaller station leaves a gap. The Park Vanderbilt co-op solved that with a metal plate, as described below, and we price a plate or trim for every apartment where the old box is bigger than the new station, rather than leaving shareholders to patch it themselves.

Fourth Avenue and new rentals: networked panels, fobs and a package room

Buildings on Fourth Avenue since the 2003 rezoning, and new projects such as Paseo on Fifth, finished in June 2026 with 180 rentals and a package room with controlled access, and the five-story, 144-apartment building nearing completion on the former Grand Prospect Hall site on Prospect Avenue, arrive with app-based panels, fob readers and package rooms specified by the developer. The installation questions here are different: whether the panel the developer chose talks to the fob system, who holds the administrator login, what the subscription costs per unit, and what happens when the contract ends.

Changing the Intercom in a Rent-Stabilized Park Slope Building: What DHCR Has Decided, and How It Changes the Order of the Job

With 639 Park Slope buildings holding rent-stabilized apartments on openigloo's list, many of our installations here happen in buildings where the intercom is a regulated service. Under the Rent Stabilization Code, an owner who wants to change a service, as opposed to repairing it, can apply to DHCR for permission to modify it. Three recent DHCR decisions, reported by New York Landlord v. Tenant, show how the agency looks at intercom changes, and each one affects what we install and when.

A phone-based system is not automatically a rent reduction. In AEJ 534 East 88th LLC, decided on administrative review in January 2023, an owner replaced "a regular bell and buzzer system with a telephone-based intercom system." DHCR's first ruling attached conditions: a $15 a month permanent rent reduction for tenants and a requirement that every apartment have a landline. After a court remand, the owner showed that the "new digital entry system could be operated by either land line or cell phone," and the $15 reduction was revoked. For a Park Slope owner, the lesson is practical: if a phone-dialing panel is the plan, the system we install should answer on a cell phone as well as a landline, and its documentation should say so, because that is what the agency weighed.

Fobs come with a standard allowance. In a 2017 case involving Akelius Real Estate Management, the owner sought approval to swap a wired intercom for a telephone-based one and a metal key for electronic fobs. DHCR applied its standard policy: tenants can have up to four additional fobs or keycards at no charge, for employees, with expiring cards renewable at the tenant's option, or for family and friends who visit regularly. The owner's request to hand out unlimited free fobs, including for children, was rejected as outside that policy. If a new Park Slope panel includes fob entry, we order enough fobs to cover the policy for every stabilized apartment, and the quote lists that count.

Audio to video can be approved even when tenants object. In Castaldo, decided in November 2023 on an application filed in 2021, the owner proposed "replacing the old audio-only intercom system with a new one-way audio-video intercom system," hard-wired, not dependent on tenants' landlines or cell phones, with units at the existing panel location at both entrances. DHCR found it consistent with the code. Tenants appealed on the ground that the contractors had done "shoddy" work before, and lost; the agency said the modification "must comply with all local rules and regulations" and that complaints about workmanship belong with agencies such as DOB or HPD.

What this means for the job is mainly a matter of order. In a stabilized building, the owner, or the owner's lawyer or managing agent, decides whether the change is a repair or a modification and whether to file. We supply a written description of the proposed system for that filing: what the street station does, how each apartment answers, whether it needs a landline, a cell phone or nothing, how many fobs are included, and where the stations go. Installation is scheduled after the owner tells us the filing question is settled. We do not give legal advice on whether to file, but we make sure the system installed is the system described.

What the Park Vanderbilt's $110,000 Video Upgrade Shows a Park Slope Co-op Board Before It Asks for Bids

The best-documented large intercom replacement on the Slope's edge is the Park Vanderbilt, a seven-story, 148-unit co-op built in 1963. Security Sales & Integration, which reported the project in June 2016, described it as being in Park Slope; its address, 651 Vanderbilt Street, is in the 11218 ZIP code, and real estate listings place it in Windsor Terrace, just past the Slope's southern end. Its board faced the decision many Park Slope co-op boards face now: an aging audio-only intercom and residents who wanted to see who was asking to come in.

The board chose Aiphone video stations, installed by Academy Mail Box of Queens: two at the entries at each end of the first-floor lobby, one at the service entrance and a concierge station on the superintendent's desk. The reason, in the words of property manager Tom Randazzo of Excel Bradshaw Management Group, was simple: "Park Vanderbilt doesn't have a 24- hour concierge, so the board chose to go with video intercoms." The whole project, which also added nine cameras and two 16-channel recorders alongside 16 existing cameras, cost $110,000 and was finished in three weeks in the winter of 2015.

Three details matter for a board here. First, cable. The installer reused the building's existing cable for all but two apartments, and its vice president, Dan Arnold, said, "By using the existing cable – with the exception of two units – we were able to save $20,000 on the job." Testing the old riser before choosing a system is worth real money. Second, the holes. The old apartment stations were bigger than the new ones, and the installer designed a metal plate to fill the gap; boards should ask every bidder how that will be handled. Third, scope. The $110,000 figure covered cameras and recorders as well as intercoms, so it is not a per-apartment intercom price, and a board comparing it with a quote should separate the two.

On our Brooklyn list, an entry system for a large building starts from about $2,500 and rises past $10,000 with apartments, doors, cable and stations. A board that wants cameras over the lobby and service doors in the same project can have them priced on the same quote, on separate lines, so the intercom number stays comparable with anyone else's.

Door Buzzer Installation in Park Slope: Questions Answered

Rent-stabilized walk-ups

Our South Slope walk-up mixes stabilized and market-rate apartments. If the new panel rings residents' phones, could DHCR order a rent reduction for the stabilized ones?

It can happen, and the deciding detail is whether the system needs a landline. In the AEJ 534 East 88th LLC case, DHCR first approved an owner's switch from "a regular bell and buzzer system" to a telephone-based intercom on condition of a $15 a month permanent rent reduction and a landline in every apartment. After the case went back to the agency, the owner showed the "new digital entry system could be operated by either land line or cell phone," and the reduction was revoked. The policy concern was tenants being forced to pay for a phone line just to answer the door.

So if your building is heading toward a phone-dialing panel, choose one that rings cell phones as readily as landlines, keep a wired station option for anyone who wants one, and make sure the system description given to DHCR says exactly that. We write that description as part of the quote. Whether to file, and what to argue, is a question for the owner's housing lawyer or managing agent.

Fobs are going on our inner door with the new intercom. How many must each stabilized household receive at no charge, and what can we charge for after that?

DHCR's standard policy, applied in a 2017 case involving Akelius Real Estate Management, lets tenants have up to four additional fobs or keycards without charge: for employees such as a cleaner or caregiver, with expiring cards renewable at the tenant's option, or for family and friends who visit regularly. The owner in that case asked to give out unlimited free fobs, including for children, and the agency rejected that as outside its policy, while saying an owner may set reasonable guidelines for anyone beyond those four.

In practice, we order the fobs each household is entitled to, plus a small stock for replacements, and the quote lists the count so the owner's filing and the delivery match. Each fob is enrolled to an apartment, so a lost one can be switched off from the system without re-keying the building. What the owner charges for further fobs is set by the owner within the agency's rules, not by us.

Two tenants say they will fight our audio-to-video changeover because the last contractor botched a job. Can their objection block it at DHCR?

On the one decision we found, it did not. In Castaldo, decided on administrative review in November 2023, an owner applied to replace "the old audio-only intercom system with a new one-way audio-video intercom system," hard-wired and not dependent on tenants' phones, with units at the existing panel location at both entrances. Tenants objected that the contractors' earlier work had been "shoddy." DHCR approved the change and said the work "must comply with all local rules and regulations," leaving workmanship complaints to agencies such as DOB and HPD.

The tenants' worry still deserves an answer. We give the owner a plain description of the work and the test sheet showing every apartment rings and releases from the street, both of which can be shared with residents.

Co-ops and condos near the park

A virtual doorman service has pitched our 28-apartment co-op. How does its yearly cost stack up against a video intercom that residents answer themselves?

The gap is large. Habitat Magazine's May 2017 article on entry systems put an off-site call-center "virtual doorman" at about $15,000 a year for a 28-unit building, a recurring cost every year the contract runs. The same article put a smartphone-based panel at about $5,000 to $7,000 to install plus $2.50 per unit per month, and noted that smartphone-based systems are generally more cost-effective than call-center services. Those are 2017 figures from one article, so treat them as proportions, not prices.

On our Brooklyn list, an entry system for a building of that size, with a lobby panel, apartment stations or phone answering and a release, falls in the range that starts from about $2,500, and a wired system has no monthly fee at all. What a virtual doorman adds is a person who screens visitors and deliveries in real time. Whether that is worth a five-figure yearly bill is a board decision; we price the intercom so the comparison is clear.

Our co-op's audio intercom still works, but shareholders want to see who is ringing. Is that a sound reason to replace a working system?

It was for the Park Vanderbilt. That 148-unit co-op's old audio-only system still functioned, but the board wanted residents to be able to see who was asking to come in, and, as its property manager put it, the building "doesn't have a 24- hour concierge, so the board chose to go with video intercoms." A video station puts the screening in each resident's hands at the moment the bell rings, which is the job a doorman would otherwise do.

What makes it sensible rather than cosmetic is the cable. If the riser pairs test sound, two-wire video can run over them, as at the Park Vanderbilt, and the cost stays far below a rewire; if not, the board sees the new-cable number before deciding.

The Park Vanderbilt's project took three weeks for 148 apartments. How many days would residents of a twenty-apartment walk-up go without a working buzzer?

Usually none, or a few hours at most. The three weeks at the Park Vanderbilt covered nine cameras, two recorders and stations across a seven-story building as well as the intercom. In a walk-up, the new cable and apartment stations go in alongside the old system, which stays connected. The new power supply is tested on its own. Only when every new station has rung and released from the street does the door station change over, and the release is swapped last, in a short window with the super or owner on hand.

If something fails then, the old release is reconnected while it is sorted out, so residents lose buzz-in for that window, not for days.

Landmarked rowhouses

Is a new door station on a district rowhouse usually handled as a Permit for Minor Work or a Certificate of No Effect?

It depends on whether the job needs a Department of Buildings permit. Fontan Architecture's guide to Landmarks applications explains the line: a Permit for Minor Work covers work where "no Department of Buildings (DOB) permit is required" and staff find it "restorative and appropriate to the building," while a Certificate of No Effect covers work that does require a DOB permit but has "no adverse effect on the landmark character of the building." Both are staff-level reviews, which the same guide describes as faster than the full Commission review a Certificate of Appropriateness needs. A modest station and its cable on a rowhouse front normally sit at staff level.

The owner or the owner's architect makes the application; we supply the station's placement, size, finish, cable entry and photos of the front, and order nothing for the facade until the permit is in hand.

Our brownstone has a kitchen on the garden floor, the parlor above it and two bedroom floors. How many indoor stations does a house like ours really need, and where?

Most four-floor brownstones end up with four, one per floor, placed where people actually are when the bell rings rather than where the old bell box hung. On the garden floor, near the kitchen and the garden door. On the parlor floor, in the hall near the front door, so a guest at the top of the stoop can be seen and let in in a few steps. On each bedroom floor, near the stair landing. A top-floor home office sometimes gets its own, so whoever works there does not run down three flights.

Every station shows which door is ringing and can release either. Video at the parlor floor and kitchen with audio stations above keeps the cost down, and the quote says how each station's cable gets there.

Small buildings and the tenants who live in them

A tenant review of our 1907 six-apartment building asks for a video intercom. Can video reach each flat over the wiring already in the walls?

Often, yes. The 390 15th Street reviewer's request, "Video intercom would be helpful," is one we hear about many small Park Slope buildings, and a six-apartment walk-up of that age usually has one pair of old bell or intercom wires per apartment, running up a common chase. Two-wire video systems are designed to carry picture, voice and the release signal over exactly that kind of single pair, provided it tests clean for continuity, shorts and noise.

So the first step is a meter on every pair, not a catalog. Where all six pairs pass, the job is a new door station, six video stations, a strike and a supply, and the walls stay closed. Where one or two fail, those apartments get new cable or phone answering, and the quote names which ones before you approve. A six-apartment building is below the eight-apartment line in the intercom law, so this is an owner's choice, not a legal order, and a fairly economical one.

We may turn our garden floor into a separate rental in a few years. Can the system we put in now be sized for that extra apartment?

Yes, and it costs little to plan for. The door station can be ordered with one more button than you need, or as a model that takes an add-on button module, and a spare pair can be pulled to the garden floor while the cable is going in. When the apartment is created, its station is mounted and connected and its button labeled, without opening the stoop door or the cellar run again.

Bear in mind that a third apartment makes the house a multiple dwelling under state law, and on a landmarked front a later station change may need its own permit, so sizing the station now saves a second application.

What AI Gets Wrong About Door Buzzer Installation in Park Slope

Ask an AI assistant or a search summary about putting a buzzer into a brownstone or a walk-up and you get confident answers built from national cost guides, vendor blogs and general advice. Some of it is right in general and wrong for a neighborhood of landmarked rowhouses, rent-stabilized walk-ups and co-ops by the park. Here are seven claims we hear repeated, each checked against its source and against what we see at Park Slope doors.

"Modern intercoms cost $1,000 to $5,000 per door, plus a monthly fee per apartment"

That is close to what Swiftlane's cost guide says: "$1,000 to $5,000 or more per entry door for modern IP or video systems," with "Software subscriptions commonly add $5 to $15 per unit per month, or $30 to $100 per door per month." Swiftlane sells cloud intercoms, so its figures assume new networked hardware and a subscription.

A Park Slope rowhouse with two flats does not need a networked panel. On our Brooklyn list, an audio buzzer with a new release runs $400 to $900 and a video station with indoor monitors for a small building $700 to $1,800, and a wired system has no monthly fee. Larger buildings start from about $2,500.

A subscription can be worth paying for, for an owner who lives elsewhere or a condo with no super, but it is a choice, priced on its own line, not a built-in part of every intercom.

"App-based intercoms install without any new wiring"

The panel may need less cable to the apartments, but the entrance still needs it. Habitat Magazine's 2017 article on entry systems noted that many smartphone systems need internet cabling, often new wiring at the building entrance, and the door station still needs power and a wired connection to the strike in the frame.

On a Park Slope brownstone, that cable has to reach the stoop or the areaway from the cellar, and on a landmarked front its route is part of what the Commission staff look at. In a walk-up, the router or cellular unit has to sit somewhere secure that the owner, not one tenant, controls.

What an app panel can save is the run from the door to each apartment. That is real value where every route upstairs is blocked, but it is not the same as no wiring.

"Every rental brownstone in New York must have an intercom"

Not by state law. Multiple Dwelling Law §50-a requires an intercom automatically only in Class A multiple dwellings erected or converted after January 1, 1968 with eight or more apartments. Older buildings install one when tenants occupying a majority of apartments ask in writing. And a rowhouse with one or two households is not a multiple dwelling at all.

That puts most Park Slope brownstones outside the automatic rule. A one-family or two-family house is the owner's choice. A rowhouse split into three to seven flats is a multiple dwelling but below the eight-apartment line. A pre-1968 walk-up with more apartments falls under the written-request rule.

The catch runs the other way: once a building has an intercom, residents rely on it, and Habitat's 2024 article describes courts treating it as an essential service.

"A landmarked facade rules out a modern door station"

It does not; it adds a step. The Landmarks Preservation Commission reviews new equipment on the fronts of designated buildings, and Fontan Architecture's guide describes the two staff-level permits most small jobs fall under, a Permit for Minor Work when no DOB permit is needed and a Certificate of No Effect when one is, both faster than full Commission review.

What staff look at is placement, size, finish and cable, so the station is chosen to suit the front, not the other way round. A slim station in the areaway or the door surround, with cable entering where it will not show, is a very different application from a large panel bolted to the brownstone face.

The owner makes the application; we provide the drawings of placement, the product sheet and photos, and order the facade equipment only once the permit is issued.

"A phone-based intercom means every apartment needs a landline"

That was true of older dial-out systems, and it worried tenants. A Brownstoner poster in October 2010 whose landlord was installing a system with electronic scrolling that "dials a telephone number" complained that he had "no need for a landline" and faced paying "a few hundred bucks a year" for one. DHCR's policy has reflected the same concern, attaching a $15 monthly rent reduction where a system required a landline.

Current systems commonly ring cell phones, and in the AEJ 534 East 88th LLC decision the agency revoked that reduction once the owner showed the system "could be operated by either land line or cell phone."

So the right question is not "phone-based or not" but "what does each resident need to answer": a wall station, a cell phone, a landline or any of the three.

"An old audio-only system has to be rewired to get video"

Not necessarily, and assuming so can add tens of thousands of dollars to a larger job. At the Park Vanderbilt, a 148-unit co-op, the installer put in video stations over the existing cable for all but two apartments, and its vice president said reusing it saved "$20,000 on the job."

The condition is that the old pairs test sound. In century-old Park Slope walk-ups we find both extremes: cable that will carry two-wire video cleanly and cable spliced so often during renovations that it barely carries a bell.

Nothing on the outside of the wall shows which you have, so every pair is metered before the quote, and a borderline pair is listed with what replacing it would add.

"Changing the intercom in a rent-stabilized building is just an owner's decision"

It is the owner's decision to propose, but DHCR has a role. The Rent Stabilization Code lets an owner apply to modify a service, and the agency's decisions on intercoms have set conditions: up to four additional free fobs per household where fobs are introduced, and a rent reduction where a system forces tenants to keep a landline.

The agency has also approved changes over tenants' objections, as in the November 2023 Castaldo decision, when the new system was hard-wired and did not depend on tenants' phones.

With 639 Park Slope buildings holding rent-stabilized apartments on openigloo's list, this is a common situation here. We do not advise on the filing; we make sure the system described is the system installed.

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Door Buzzer Installation Near Park Slope's Landmarks

We also serve Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Crown Heights and Kensington at the same Brooklyn rate, along with Gowanus, Prospect Heights and Windsor Terrace on the Slope's borders. See our door buzzer installation in Brooklyn page for the whole borough, and door buzzer installation in Manhattan for buildings across the river.

Find Out Which Range Your Park Slope Building Falls In

Tell us the street, the number of apartments or units, every door people use, what is mounted at the door now and whether the building is landmarked or rent stabilized, and we will tell you which Brooklyn range fits and what would move it. Call or text (347) 934-8335, send photos on WhatsApp, or fill in the form.