Grand Pointe Apartments

So, let me begin with the positives. In the two years that I lived there, I never saw insects or vermin (the latter are probably taken care of by the army of alley cats that camp out in the parking lot.) Also, the apartments are conveniently located to a grocery store (There is a Food Lion in walking distance), a great Thai restaurant (Siam Spice), and other shopping (Columbia Mall, etc. is about) is about 10 minutes away driving. Sometimes, when there are concerts at Merriwether Post Pavillon, the music can faintly be heard (a plus in my opinion). The apartment itself (we stayed in a 1 bedroom) is good for two people and there is a tremendous amount of closet space.
Sounds decent. However, my husband and I had some awful experiences there:
— His car was broken into (they stole a watch, cds, and the GPS system) shortly after he moved there.
— Packages that we had delivered were stolen multiple times. One of our wedding presents was stolen from in front our our door. I went to the rental office to check and see if it had possibly been delivered there instead. When I explained the situation to the leasing consultant that was there, he became rude and overly defensive.
–When the rental office still accepted packages for tenants, I was often told that my deliveries (confirmed with the shipper) were not there, even when they were. Eventually, we started shipping our stuff to a family member’s home just to insure that we would get our mail.
–The rods in our walk-​in closet collapsed several times and it took maintenance weeks to respond to our requests.
–We lived in a building where you needed a key code to get in the door. Often the door was wedged open with a brick (understandable if someone was in the process of moving, but this was rarely the case). We complained to the rental office and often removed the brick (or whatever was being used to keep the door open) because it was a safety issue. This matter was never properly addressed — if it was addressed at all.
Even our moving out experience was ridiculous. The leasing manager scheduled our final walkthrough on January 18^th (MLK Day). We get to the building, contact her (as she directed us in her email) and she is nowhere to be found. We walk over to the rental office and it is closed. We call her cell, text her, email her and get no response. Finally, I call the 24 hour emergency maintenance hotline and manage to get someone on the phone. I explain the situation and he attempts to get in contact with her. He calls me back and says that we can just leave the keys in the apartment. Shortly after, I FINALLY get a text from her saying the same thing and to «take care». No apologies for the inconvenience of wasting our time and gas money for a meeting that was never going to happen. So we leave the keys in the apartment, and hear nothing from the leasing office until we are assessed an astronomical (close to $ 1000) bill to replace our carpet. Now, this is after we had already paid for professional cleaning service (a requirement) to clean the apartment. I seriously wonder if that bill would have been as high, had we had a face to face walk-​through. Reading through a few of the reviews, I see that we were not the only tenants to be bogusly bilked out of money for carpets after moving out.
My husband wrote to our leasing manager to find out why we had been assessed such an outrageous charge and have yet to hear from her. I doubt that we will, considering that he has already paid the bill. They have their money and that is all they care about.
The lack of professionalism and accountability with the staff (and the tremendous turnover in the leasing office) made living here so much worse than it needed to be. No place is perfect, but I assure you that in your search for apartments, you can do much better than Grand Pointe.

Terrible place to live. Between the apartments not being updated and other tenants leaving trash in the hallways I would stay away. Apartment staff is ok but once you are in that’s when if you have a problem they are nasty.
Also if they offer you the free rent for a couple of months remember if you end up breaking your lease down the road they will charge you for those months that were «free».
Maintenance staff was excellent though one of only things that was good here. My last advice to you if you decide to live here is take pictures of everything and have everything they tell you in writing.
They tried to charge us for replacing the entire carpets in our apartment when we moved out. Even though the carpets weren’t in the best shape when we moved in. They tried to tell us it was «Pet Odor». We took pictures and we were going to take them to court but we recently got a response from them that they dropped all the charges. $ 1000 to replace old crappy carpet.
Be careful with this place, glad we are now in a house. Good Luck

I lived here for a little over two years. Upon moving out, I was charged $ 940 for damaged carpets. The carpets are not damaged – I’m guessing that the apartment complex just wants to replace the carpets in this unit because they’re a few years old, and they don’t want to pay for it themselves.
This place is criminal. I would avoid it at all costs.

The previous reviews made me a little apprehensive at first, but after being well taken care of by Erikka, my wife and I were at ease. We were sold on the apartment after seeing the layout before we even got a chance to see the apartment. After finally seeing the apartment, the space was just what we needed. One bedroom w/​den. The neighborhood thus far is quite. Great location in-​between Hwy 29, Broken Land Pkwy, and Hwy 175 makes for a easy commute. I will agree they could use an extra dumpster or two, and the speed bumps are more like mountains, however it still doesn’t take away from the comfort of calling Grand Pointe home. The on sight gym and multiple running trails are going to make for good Spring training. I’m not even a full month in, but looking forward to my time here.

Despite the other bad reviews, my experience at Grand Pointe wasn’t terrible. Yes, they need more dumpsters outside for trash and recycling, but the service I received from the staff was always courteous. I had a few maintenance issues here and there, but they were always handled within 48 hours. My neighbors were long term tenants and discussed with me how the neighborhood had changed over a 15-​to-​20 year period. It’s a relatively inexpensive place to live in Columbia, and a diverse community. I didn’t mind living there for a couple of years until I bought property.
I liked that it was so close to major routes to DC and Baltimore.

This place was great, cool place to live when I first moved in but around November of last year, it went down hill very fast. Between the change of staff (who I loved) to the maintenance crew (who was the best at the time), the local gangs, the drug dealing, the crime, the homeless person that was living in the building, the mice, the constant fire alarms going off, no security and you know what broke the straw on the camel’s back? When I had a crack-​head trying to kick down my door.
Too bad. I’ll miss that view from my balcony. No more snow for me.

Yes, this is the least expensive place to live in Columbia (and there’s a reason for it.) The floor plans are spacious (but outdated) and IF you can forget the exterior of your own apartment, MAYBE you will be okay… but you probably won’t.
More likely, you will be greeted with dumpsters full of trash littering the property, lies from management, and pests, including bed bugs and mice, infesting your «spacious» living space. This is by no means an exaggeration, and I would never take the time to write this if there wasn’t valid reason for caution or concern.
I moved in a little over a year ago and was greeted by a multitude of small repairs that were addressed in a relatively small amount of time.
Then, the bed bugs started to attack. The previous management took care of this in a less than an acceptable amount of time, but the maintenance manager did end up taking care of the issue and went above and beyond (he no longer works here unfortunately.)
Cut to the last 3 months, and the complex has taken a significant dive. The entire staff has turned and has been replaced by unprofessional, incompetent individuals who do nothing to help. Instead of helping, they themselves apparently are the victim– even though we have to live in this slum.
I have had mice in my apartment for more than 3 months. The solution was 2 snap traps and ignoring any further request for service. There was a hole behind my stove (at least a hole of 6in x 6in) that mice were entering my apartment. It took me going down to the office to complain, with photos, before I was able to get anyone to help me despite placing service requests. I was promised help by the property manager, Meredith (on a Tuesday), to fix the hole before pest management was to come out (they visit every Friday) but took more than a week for the repair (following Tuesday) and pest management never visited. I’m still waiting and cleaning up mouse droppings daily. It smells disgusting. I still have mice in my kitchen nesting under my sink.
On top of maintenance issues, I am now dealing with more ineptitude. My roommate has decided to stay in the community, and will be moving into a one bedroom apartment. They placed a $ 700 «transfer fee» on our account. This should never have happened since he is signing a new and separate lease. I have been told 3 times, and my roommate the same amount that this charge would be removed from our account (3 weeks ago.) They are now assessing a late charge on top of this false charge. I was told by the property manager that «upper management» would be taking care of this. It still hasn’t. Big surprise.
My lease is due in about a month and I’m thankful. I had initially planned on staying here for more time than my original lease but would never even consider it at this point.