Buyer Beware because this great deal will turn into a lemon on you. It may not spoil tomorrow, it may not spoil in a year, but it will turn bad on you. Real bad.

The Washington Heights complex is a charming collection of brick buildings plopped down in a FANTASTIC location of West Des Moines. Crime / Vandalism are nonexistant, noise is not an issue, and it is mere blocks from anywhere you'd want to go. Hy-Vee, Target, Valley West Mall, and any number of restaurants are all within walking distance.

The apartments themselves are on the older side, a fact that becomes apparent with the occasional centipede or spider finding it's way inside through a hole or crack in a window sill, or the drafts you'll feel in the winter through those same cracks. But they are HUGE and brimming with character. Our 2 bedroom unit boasts more square footage than most 3 bedroom units you'd find anywhere else. Our living room is almost obscene, it's so roomy and well lit from a large sliding glass door that leads out to a spacious balcony. The spare bedroom is larger than most other master bedrooms and the master bedroom is downright cavernous. W/D hookups in the main bath save us having to get rolls of quarters from the bank every week, and the Central Air / Forced Air Heat are so nice they should have a Deadly Sin named after them. The kitchen is a little smallish, but packed with cupboards and drawers, and the separate dining room is large enough for a china hutch, table with leaves and chairs, PLUS a spare computer desk. The large Bay Window is quite the plus, too!

With all this glowing praise, then, "Why," you ask, "does this review give the complex only 2 stars'" And the answer is simple. . .I haven't talked about the management yet.

7 or 8 months ago, (winter of '08/'09) the old managers left and BH management took over, and the gal that BH assigned to oversee this property has been nothing but problems from day one.

I could type on for hours about the myriad of hassles / issues / irritations we've had and are still having with the new management. Here are the Highlights:
-Our dryer exhaust still isn't fixed, so every time we do the laundry our dryer vents directly into the apartment. Yeah, nothing like a sweltering Iowa Summer Afternoon spent indoors with a dryer spewing 100 degree, 100% humid air into the place. 2 requests to have the exhaust pipe cleaned have been ignored.
-Not only does our dryer vent into the apartment, but our A/C has had "parts on order" for OVER 6 WEEKS NOW. SIX WEEKS!! In the summer! In Iowa! With no A/C because when we put in a service request a week BEFORE we heard that it was going to be 100 degrees soon, all we got was a sign on the door that parts needed to be ordered. As of this writing, we have a new apartment lined up, and still no word on our "parts."
-The common hallways are being renovated. By "renovated," of course what they mean is, "all the wallpaper torn down, drywall mangled, and then left that way, dusty and filthy for a month or more while we wait for. . ." Well, I don't know what they're waiting for, actually. But our hallways are an absolute embarrassment in the meantime.
-Myself and at least 20 to 25 other people in the complex were recently threatened with eviction. . .EVICTION! On the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day, everyone with a satellite dish on their balcony had a note stuffed in their doors threatening EVICTION if the dish wasn't removed or re-installed, at our expense of course, off of the balcony's support columns. New Management has imposed New Rules that now say dishes can't be bolted directly to the columns. Fair enough. Trouble is, we didn't install the stupid dish! It came with the apartment! The past tenant put it up with permission from the past management and was perfectly within the past set of rules! And talking to other residents I gather that they're all in the same boat. Um, Hello'! Ever heard of a GrandFather Clause'! So yeah, she pulls this right before a 3-day weekend, and then on Tuesday she doesn't even have the spine to come in herself and deal with the flack, she leaves some random employee to cover the office and sputter sentence fragments at people all day.

So there you have it. The buildings, the apartments, the location are second to none, but the management is a joke, and I doubt you'll be able to get through a full lease without having to deal with those people at least once. Rent with Caution.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/16/2009
I agree with your assessment of the building itself. Large, but old and in need of improvements. I cannot comment on management since I have not had any problems yet to 'test' them on. The windows are horrendous. It cost us $225 in utilities in December to keep our apartment at 64, then $175 in January since we hung a blanket covering our patio window. There was seriously a breeze coming through the window. I am curious as to why you ranked parking as 4. I have a terrible time finding a parking space near my door on a consistent basis. It's better now, but for the first 9 months of my 13 month tenancy I got a space in the same vicinity of my apartment 50% of the time.
From: Anonymous	Date: 08/27/2009
I can and will comment on Management. She is a joke just like you said. Has a rotten attitude and needs to look up the word RESPECT. She may even want to write a paper on this, so it can get sunk deep down inside that brain. I'm sorry I forgot she doesn't have one. Worst place to live..
From: Anonymous	Date: 10/30/2009
Yeah, Pretty much sums it up. Apartments are huge compared to other 2 Bedrooms, but the management is terrible. Funny how their attitude changes when they are trying to get you to sign an lease, to when they have you by the balls after you sign. Good luck having them fix anything in a timely manner. Even better luck if it's fixed correctly the first time. If you read any review with a positive experince, it's probably the managers writing them. I'm guessing they have plenty of time to write them inbetween playing solitare and sitting there looking blankly at the wall in their office. They certainly aren't spending time trying to make any improvements to the apartment complex.

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