Don't get the $400k appartment. Save yourself $9,000 and get apt 40 - Eclipse Towers. It has a much better view......
http://gtaforums.com/topic/617422-list-of-apartments/
Apart from having to create 4 - 5 characters before I was able to progress through the tutorials I have been unaffected by the cloud servers and all the online problems.
However $500k is most welcome seeing as I am struggling to make any money.
I've got about $30k in the bank and the $31k 2 car garage, and still rocking my Futo, which annoyingly wasn't the car that I got the free Simeon mods for.