Academic Properties

Incompetent does not even begin to describe the majority of the staff at API. The buildings are falling apart and nobody cares. The short of this is: under no circumstances should you rent from this company. As a subsidiary of Drexel, there is money gouging, neglect, no accountability, and plenty of playing ignorant.
I started my lease in 2013– I was a sophomore at Drexel who was waitlisted for university housing. I signed the lease via email completely blindly since I lived out of the state. API couldn’t provide pictures or square footage. I was desperate, so I proceeded anyway. My lease started on a Friday, and I sent a friend to pick up the keys. API is not very good about hounding tenants who are moving to cancel their utilities, so I had to badger people in the office to do so to sign up for mine. No big deal– not completely their fault.
I arrive in my apartment on my move-​in day. High ceilings, bars on the windows (first floor), one of which had bars that could accommodate a large A/​C unit. The apartment is very old, but it didn’t seem like an issue at the time. I thought I’d done pretty well, despite the admittedly high price tag. Again, desperate.
My first few months went very smoothly. Nothing really broke; people in the building were quiet. I had no reason to contact anyone from API. Hell started breaking loose roughly a year in when my ceiling in my living room sprang a leak– a BIG leak. API «fixed» it. It kept getting worse until the literal day I moved out. Mold began to fester. I begged and pleaded for someone to fix it. No dice. Property manager said he «didn’t know» it hadn’t been resolved, and he offered to PAINT OVER IT. Note that the leak hadn’t even been fixed. The property manager is rude, unhelpful, and will never be held accountable for anything. I have never seen anyone give so few shits about their job like this guy. Every issue I had from here on out resulted in butting heads, excuses, untimely repairs, and other bullshit.
On top of this roof leak, I slipped and fell on some stairs around the back of the place. No handrail. Hurt my tailbone. This is a city code violation, which I relayed to the property manager. He argued with me. I sent photos and cited laws. I threatened to send the bill. He finally relented and put in a rail. It only took two months.
Later, still, my shower and sink stopped draining. Someone upstairs was dumping stuff down the sinks, which had no disposals or anything. I relay this information to the property manager. No one comes for a month. I keep calling. No one addresses it. My bathroom floor is beginning to rot from sitting water. Finally, a maintenance person knocks on my door and says water is leaking into the basement from my house. Definitely a fluke, as he informs me that the water damage is, in fact, the problem. This issue gets «fixed» and is somehow a problem again a month later. I tell them I will stop paying rent. They don’t care. My father, now really pissed off about my unlivable apartment, threatens to book me a hotel and make API foot the bill. Only then do they fix it for real.
In the last 2 weeks of my lease, I went without hot water for 5 days. Same pattern– the problem was «fixed» twice, and the property manager was so offended and appalled when I tried to hold him accountable for not maintaining his property. I told him to ensure the problem didn’t return, and he said they don’t do that. Isn’t that what maintenance means? Again with the threat of a hotel. Only then does it really get fixed.
tl;dr: The apartments are falling apart. When something breaks, getting it fixed is a battle. If it’s too much work to fix, your «parent» or «lawyer» has to threaten action, otherwise they will sit on their ass and play the blame game with colleagues. All the while the tenant is powerless to do anything. Avoid this company at all costs.

Summary of cons: These are extremely old apartments, and with that, you have many problems. API seemed to make repairs when possible, but the real solution is to raze this place down soon.
Cons (in detail):
— Very old, old smell. I had to plug it in, plug it in.
— Some fixtures were falling apart (i.e. the kitchen sink was starting to detach from the wall.)
— Water pipes are worn, allowing me to hear jack hammer-​like noises when I was using my bathroom sink’s faucet.
— The walls and ceilings are thin. In the kitchen, I can hear my upstairs neighbor clomping around. My roommate could hear people running up and down the stairs from her bedroom, which may have been because we lived next to the stairs.
— HOLES IN THE WALLS. I have no idea if people had punched holes in my closet and along the stairwell, but the holes were mainly in corners and areas where the woodwork was being connected to the wall. Once every few months, I would witness RODENTS scuttling through these holes.
— Rodents. Bring on the sticky pads. Or avoid living on the first floor.
Pros:
— Management was very responsive, as I would continue to hound them. If I needed something done, I would call twice to make sure my work-​order was in. The problem wasn’t the repairmen; the problem was the people logging in the issues for you.
— $ 1200/​mo for a spacious 2 bed/​1 bath… but I heard the rent has gone up…
For the price and proximity to Drexel/​Penn, I was fine with the situation. And after a year, I decided that it was time to move on.

I had a similar experience. API purchased my building from my landlord a couple of months into my lease. The squirrels in the walls and closets were a major issue which took months for API to correct. Initial calls elicited almost zero action from API. Eventually, numerous letters prompted some action, albeit insufficient, from them but the squirrels continued to co-​inhabit our residence. The rodents managed to enter my closet and damage my personal property. API eventually paid for the destruction of property and eradicated the squirrels but it took legal action on my part to get API to take the required strides to make the residence tolerable and eliminate the problem.
Anyway, even for smaller issues such as a door coming off it’s hinges API takes quite a while to respond to maintenance requests and does not really seem to care about the problems their tenants encounter in their properties. I would avoid this company at all costs. They try to present themselves as a reputable property management and apartment rental company but they seemed grossly incompetent and ill-​equipped in all my dealings with them.
Good luck if you do happen to end up renting from them. This should be easy to avoid as there are plenty other properties in University City.

Relatively reliable service, but not very friendly.
I had an apartment with them for over a year. They didn’t exactly go out of their way to improve customer service, and their availability and helpfulness is rather low. If something is broken they did fix it within a reasonable time frame, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that every time the toilet clogged (which was often) it was my fault, and it was a huge inconvenience for them to send a plumber over. They were similarly unhelpful with the lease termination process, meaning that I ended up paying for an empty apartment for two months. The price isn’t too bad I suppose, although they’re rising.
Warning to students: They require notice 90 days before the lease ends! I thought I was being smart by making my lease just long enough to coincide with me returning to co-​op, but the 90-​day requirement means that I had to decide whether to resign the lease even before I started the co-​op search!
Warning to non-​students: Don’t bother. They’re only accepting Drexel students now, thanks to rapidly expanding size of the Freshman class.