Riverlake Properties

This place is a complete waste of time. I drove an hour to look at an apartment for them to cancel 10 minutes before my appointment and tell me that they leased the property before I could even look at the place even though I had an appointment for 4 days and they said that was the soonest I could look at it. Save yourself some time and DO NOT RENT FROM THESE SLEEZY SLUMLORDS.

Don’t expect to get your deposit back. These people will make up problems and take it out of your deposit. They feed on the Uptown area on rich out of state college kids so that they can take their deposits without complaint. Who’s going to stop them? The City… yea right!

If there were ever a chance to rate a company 0 stars, it would be for Riverlake (University) Properties.
I have lived here for one year and am shocked that they are still in business. The house is filthy– even after the MANDATORY $ 900 fee and four delayed move in days for a cleaning service. One of the toilets has had trouble flushing on maybe 7 separate occasions, and not once did maintenance appear the same day of the call (even if the call was placed at 9 am). There is no storage space in my home for dry foods, and only one of four stovetop burners works. The air conditioner does not have an off button, so who knows how much extra money utilities have costed. Termites have recently entered my bedroom from an unknown location. Rent is much too high for the quality of the home, and don’t expect your deposit to be returned. I feel bad for the next group of four to move into this house.
I can think of two small pros:
1) the maintenance workers they send are always very pleasant.
2) the office workers are pleasant when trying to help you (but don’t write down most of your concerns)

After reading the five-​star review below, I just feel it is my civic duty to write a longer review than my previous «don’t rent here» advice.
I lived in a Riverlake apartment for three years while my fiancé went to law school at Tulane. The first major issue happened when we moved in – our paperwork said Riverlake would turn on the gas for us, so I did not do that. When we arrived on move-​in day, they said they had lost our paperwork and had us sign «identical» papers that they printed out. Yeah, they were not identical. They had made several slight changes to them, including that it said we were responsible for turning on our own gas. Cut to a few months later when we get a knock on our door from the gas company saying that we have been stealing gas and that we have to pay hundreds of dollars to have the meter turned back on or something. I had a copy of our original paperwork which Riverlake basically claimed I had forged. I reported the issue to the BBB and Riverlake basically told them I was lying. We ended up paying because it became such a pain that I was just too exhausted to even talk to Riverlake anymore.
Meanwhile, in the three years we lived there, we experienced:
(1) The floorboards in the kitchen completely collapsing from mold and termites, only to be literally glued back up in the most shotty way possible.
(2) Plants growing out of our baseboards because there was so much moisture seeping through our walls.
(3) Mold growing all over the walls, which Riverlake «fixed» by painting over it.
(4) Window air conditioning units repeatedly breaking, including filling up with water that was then sprayed into the house SEVERAL times.
(5) Water leaking through the electrical sockets when it rained.
And that is just what I can think of off the top of my heads after being gone for three years. You may wonder why I stayed for three years with all of these issues? Honestly, I felt trapped. It’s a tough job market down there and I was making $ 20k at a newspaper and my fiancé was a law student. We didn’t have the money to move and Riverlake owns a lot of the property that is near the school. Living here made me hate New Orleans, which is sad because I always loved it there before.

Please heed these words. DO NOT RENT FROM RIVERLAKE. They are the true textbook definition of a slum lord. The funniest (well, not so funny) is how the employees themselves despise the company! I can not fault the rental agent for being dumb as a brick, because she is just doing as she is told and doing it for her job. It is Joan Hooper and some guy named Bob who are scam artists that Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff would be proud of. I got locked out of my house and he told me that he would only come out to let me in if I had $ 60 CASH to pay him. I wound up making my roommate drive back from work in the middle of the day because of this absurdity.
The house that I rented in New Orleans on the corner of oak and pine street was cockroach infested. And when I say infested, that is an understatement. The air conditioning barely worked. After the storm this past summer, I had to pay $ 400 out of my own pocket because they told me nothing was wrong with my unit even though it wouldn’t even power on!
I had a front yard that was covered in rocks, no side walk in front of my house, and broken pavement that was supposedly meant to be a walkway. My girlfriend would trip and fall regularly, and I had to invest more money to get cement and pave this so we would fall on our faces.
The list of my complaints go on and on, but I hope that you all can get the gist. They take advantage of un suspecting college students and they should lose their license if the City of New Orleans was able to handle anything seriously. Please do yourself the favor of not renting from them!

Be Aware; Read the lease VERY Carefully!
We had a bad experience when moving in and out of the apartment.
Moving in– the apartment was not ready the day we were told. In addition, when we moved in, it was dirty, needed to be painted, and had leftover furniture on the porch. Moving out– we had stayed the entire term of our 12 month lease.
Unlike most apartments, when the lease renews, its for another 12 months. NOT month to month! If you move out when your lease ends, you have to give a 90 day notice.
Basically, you have to know exactly when you’re moving out or they keep your deposit. I gave it a 2 star because maintenance comes within the day or next day of your call– their only saving grace.

We scheduled to see an apartment today at 11am w/​Sheryl. She did not show up for about ten minutes and we made a call. The woman who answered said that we were never written down in the schedule, that Sheryl had taken the day off, and that no one was available to assist us. My wife and I had taken the day off of work for this apartment and are very upset, as we are going off on our honeymoon for the next week and the property may very well be gone. I told them of my disappointment and asked them to call me when any other properties become available, but I hesitate to work with them again if they cannot show the personal and corporate responsibility expected of a real estate agency.
If Riverlake is able to impress us further (negatively or positively), I will be sure to follow up this review.

Read your Riverlake lease fully! Failure to give 90 days notice of lease termination results in AUTOMATIC year-​long lease renewal. Their long, unforgiving fingers reach into the law system of New Orleans and have the power to schedule an eviction hearing within less than 10 days. Unlivable hurricane damage to my apartment took 4 weeks to fix. The month spent out of the house I had to pay for two places, and even after payment, Riverlake followed through with their eviction court procedure. In court, their claim was thrown out the window because of our 3-​week old receipt of payment, and the judge took it upon herself to scold their representative for foul play. They bring people to court whether they are going to win or lose because it states in the lease that the tenants are 100% liable for any fees Riverlake must pay in the justice court system. This means if you are ever planning on taking them to court, you are going to pay for their lawyer. Riverlake took my safety deposit and could not provide a statement for the reason. This is a case of innocent people working for a heinous company set up to break and bend the relatively loose laws of New Orleans.

I have always had a great experience with Riverlake. They get a lot of flak because they deal with a lot of college kids, who make very difficult tenants. If you approach them and their property respectfully, they make very good landlords! I’ve dealt with independent «slum lords» before who never fix anything, and Riverlake is a huge step up. Housing in New Orleans is just not easy because of all the problems that come with the old houses, whether they belong to Riverlake or not. From all my experiences, Riverlake has been the best so far. Be nice and responsible and you will not have problems!

Scam artists that prey on people too poor to hire a lawyer and fight them. I don’t understand how these people are still in business. New Orleans takes a very lax attitude to the slum lords that are most of the landlords in this city.

Absolute slumlords. Riverlake «loses» maintenance orders, doesn’t return phone calls, and lets rental units decay. The subcontractors are unprofessional and can take WEEKS to fix plumbing problems, etc.
Do not make the mistake of signing a lease with this company. There are numerous other rental companies in town, and you would have a better experience with any of them.

don’t expect anything to be repaired when you ask, that’s all I can say

You cannot get through to anyone but secretaries if you have a problem. I was without electricty for four days, calling constantly, and they didnt transfer me to a manage. I had to say I wouldn’t pay rent unless I had electricity to even get an electrician there– to a secretary who apologized and said she would be madder than I was. Finally Bob the maintance guy called, was very rude but sent an electrician to me. He tried to fix it, electricty returned, and went out the next day when I plugged in an appliance. It has now been 2 more days, I have put in 3 work orders and spoken to 4 people and it is not fixed.

Scheming, dishonest, manipulative, and downright rude. I have never dealt with a company of this poor of form. We had to hire a lawyer 2 weeks into our lease because riverlake had already broken so many terms. They should absolutely lose their BBB accreditation and Joan Hooper should be in jail for fraud and extortion.

I do not rent from Riverlake but I almost did. Luckily we talked to some current tenants and from what we gathered, Riverlake properties are terrible. One group called their house «the shanty». I read reviews online saying they really hosed a bunched of tenants after the hurricane and they prey on out of town students who don’t know their reputation. If you want a place that’s cheap and a bed to pass out on then look no further but if you are bothered by sketchy landlords, black mold, and losing your rent deposit then you should look elsewhere.
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