Residence on Lamar

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for The Ponde Apartments and The Shores Apartments in Arlington. The Residence On Lamar is physically just the proverbial «lipstick on a pig» for the property, which makes for superficial improvements — but that’s about it. As far as management staff, they are awful. I lived there about 2 years, and it was awesome at first — then the place was bought out by some investors who never communicate with management… who, in turn, never communicate with the tenants about upcoming work, when it’s happening, and so on. Surprises at every turn:
— I had 14 hours to move my car so they could re-​pave or they’d tow it at my expense (as a business traveler, THANKFULLY I was home!)
— Laundry facility had just a few machines working, ever.
— The office hours changed so that I literally HAD TO take off work to talk to management
— Management taped notes onto my door, despite my repeated asking them to not do that because I may be out of town, and it’d show all the criminals in The Carriage House next door that I was gone.
— Painted the building and sprayed paint all over some of my things
— Painted the front door while I was at home, was about to go to work when I opened the door and WOOHOO, wet paint!
— New light fixtures slapped up, they took all the $ 80 worth of LED and CFL lights I had installed (because maintenance wouldn’t replace them!) with the old fixtures; new fixtures didn’t even cover the unpainted locations on the building.
— Mail boxes were broken into SEVERAL TIMES around Christmas 2014, thieves stealing gift cards, etc because they could so easily — and management was so unresponsive/​irresponsible that I went ahead and put CFLs in the fixtures to replace the LONG-​burned-​out bulbs and posted up the USPS signs that say it’s a federal offense — FELONY — to break into the mailboxes (after I did that, the thefts stopped).
Speaking of surprises, without prior notice while I was on a business trip in the summer of 2015, their construction crew came in and replaced the awful old circa-​1975 aluminum single-​pane windows with new ones. The crew left a Slurpee cup on my coffee table, left a mess of my apartment, shoved all my furniture around (but didn’t put it back), threw my curtains onto my bed, then put back up the old circa-​1983 vertical blinds in the wrong windows and some were bent and dragging on the sill and wouldn’t close or move without binding… And when they were «done,» they left my balcony door WIDE OPEN in the summer heat and mosquitoes coming and going — and left my front door UNLOCKED!!! Thank God I had already moved my firearm collection out of the apartment, and that nobody had stolen my TV! As of about 6 weeks after, they still hadn’t put up the exterior trim around the windows; there were huge gaps everywhere.
Trying to deal with the management has been ALWAYS a hassle. The right hand never knows what the left hand is doing, and one person will say your lease is paid up, while another will say you owe, while another says you’ve overpaid and they owe you. Their accounting system must be a nightmare — or these people simply can’t do basic arithmetic. I was told July 30 that I was paid up through the end of my lease (Sep 30) and they’d owe me about $ 450 (pending the water and trash portions). Come end of Aug, when I was moving out, they said I owed them! So I paid enough to cover everything COMPLETELY. At the end of Sep, I turned in my key, and I verified I was all square and they owed me my security deposit, and the guy said that was, indeed, the case and verified my forwarding address so they could send me my check. Two weeks later, they sent me two pieces of paper, one of which says I owe them $ 124.70 (minus my security deposit, I owe $ 24.70) and the other says I owe $ 125.06. My experience has shown that they will try to say I owe both — even though they told me in July that they owed me and in August that I owed them, and in Sep that we were even.
All this, after the whole time I was there, TWO YEARS, that they NEVER addressed the items on my move-​in punch list, even after several reminders throughout my time there. Once I signed that lease, they had me right where they wanted me, and had no intention of doing their part of the tenant-​landlord covenant. All the fellow tenants I spoke to felt the same way, that management treated us NOT as neighbors or customers, but as SUBJECTS. Read that lease CAREFULLY — it’s the rulebook by which YOU MUST LIVE; but know your Tenants’ Rights — they are treating people very poorly here.

Horrible management! Totally unresponsive to us. They voided or contract and told us we had to move due to foundation issues, then delayed the move even though everything was in boxes for over a month because the new apartment wasn’t ready. We finally move in and it still has issues. The toilet tank was cracked and leaking which led to high water bills. It took a month to get that fixed. Then a month later they tell us they’re going to upgrade our windows. The guys don’t come out for two weeks. When they do, they say it’ll take 3 – 4 hours and it takes six. During all this time the apartment complex decides they’ll no longer hold packages in the office and we end up losing half of our wedding gifts! Stay away!!!