TL:DR - 5/5 if you don't mind noise, 3/5 otherwise Coming up on a year of living here and things were good for the...
TL:DR - 5/5 if you don't mind noise, 3/5 otherwise
Coming up on a year of living here and things were good for the most part but will not be renewing my lease. The main things I've noticed over the past year -
Pros
- The front office is filled with some of the most amazing people I've dealt with when it comes to an apartment team, they are incredibly helpful and are generally just cool people, from Stephanie during the leasing and move in process, Tyler and Richard whenever I had to drop by the office for anything, and Jason whenever I had more specific questions regarding the apartment. Rest assured that they are great people personally, not just putting on a face until you sign the lease and then forgetting about you after.
- The maintenance team is also absolutely top notch, emergency requests are handled within a couple hours and the longest I've ever had to wait for a non emergency was 24 hours. Also are incredibly helpful and offered advice outside of what my needs were, even with enhancements to the unit I was doing myself like installing a new shower head
- Amazing location within Fairfax, close to pretty much everything you need and in a wonderful neighborhood, never felt dangerous whatsoever even well past midnight
- Lord the huge garden style tub is amazing, at first I thought it was unnecessarily large and gaudy but no longer am I ok with the dinky normal sized tubs anymore, I am now enlightened
- They take extra steps to make sure trash and recycling is clean and tidy which is really appreciated, especially since some absolutely *wonderful* neighbors think it's a good idea to throw their trash on the ground in the trash room instead of down the chute or their recycling on the floor next to the bin
- The community manager, Jason, is absolutely wonderful and is definitely one of the best, he is very responsive to issues and emails and is also very involved with the community
Cons
- Noise. I thought I'd take the leap after reading some other reviews mention it but no, it was (and is) definitely a problem. I have brought it up with the office and they have done their best to resolve the issues, however it comes down to both the build of the building itself as well as the neighbors themselves so there's only so much that the office can do.
All I will say is that noise travels in all directions, and you will definitely be picking up noises in all directions, as the building isn't built with concrete and the walls and ceiling are, as others have said, paper thin. I can follow along with conversations that my neighbors have in their living room on the other side of the wall in my bedroom as well as the ones below me, hear the running and thumping of my upstairs neighbor (among other things like exactly what part of their floor/my ceiling is being vacuumed, when they turn their sink disposal on, etc.), and can listen to the lyrics of the songs they put on when they shower. It feels less like an apartment with individual units but more like a single big house with rooms, there seems to have been little to no regard towards sound insulation when constructing the building and you can hear it. It's pretty bad considering my last apartment was filled with college kids and I still consider the noise issue to be worse here. There have been more instances than I can count of loud music with pounding bass pouring into my bedroom at midnight from some random unit in the apartment that definitely isn't my direct neighbor.
Again, this isn't to the fault of the office team since it's outside of their control, however it is a thing that has led to insane stress and annoyance while I was here. If you don't really mind hearing the life of your neighbors then disregard this and go for it because this place is honestly amazing otherwise, but for everyone else I'd say it is an extreme dice roll as it all comes down to all the neighbors you have. If you're sensitive to noise or think you'll be irritated due to noise issues with neighbors, I highly suggest looking elsewhere as your stress levels will definitely increase as mine have.