I lived in a townhouse apartment - it had a great layout and the rooms were fairly spacious.

The walls are very thin - you can hear people flushing the toilet, doing laundry, taking a shower, etc. next door or upstairs.

Parking is terrible - Don't dare come home to park around 7:30 during dinner time, you won't find an empty spot anywhere. You'll find something after work usually, but its a challenge some days.

I had a water leak in my bedroom that discolored the entire length of my ceiling. They responded to fix quickly, but never came back to paint or replace ceiling after it had dried as they said they would.

Worst of all, they jack up their rent at the end of your lease. I had heard about it from others but just experienced it myself. They're raising my rent $50/month. Now it doesn't seem like a lot I know. However. I found out at the office, that they're renting my exact same place right now (same location as mine) for $150 less than what I'm paying now. And they want to RAISE MY rent! The crazy part is that I probably already pay $300 more than a comparable apartment in Red Cliffe or Summit Sedgebrook which are within walking distance.

Ridiculous.

Needless to say, I've decided not to renew.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/01/2009
Obviously you have never rented before! It's a BUSINESS!! How do you expect them to make any kind of revenue if they keep your rent the same each year?! IF you go to any other managed community your rent will increase around the same. So, have fun moving every year! The people that "supposedly" are getting $150 less than what you are paying, their rent will most likely go up $150 at the end of their lease. Figure it out!
From: starake77	Date: 07/01/2009
Yes, I understand it??s a business... You obviously work at Birkdale Village to have generated this kind of anger from someone. If you don't work for them, you should probably take a vacation, you're way too highly strung. A couple things: First, I've lived in apartments before - MANY apartments due to moving around for my career. I have had my rent raised a few times minimally to make up for increases in costs or in cases where the complexes I lived in were high in demand and at a 100% fill rate most of the time. Birkdale is only at a 90% fill rate - not 100% - how do I know? They told me. Birkdale is already $200-$400 more than apartments within waling distance. And their apartments aren't that great. Believe me. RedCliffe is way nicer - I have friends that live there. You??re paying for location to be right next to everything. Fair enough, I understand that. However, I??m not going to pay even more for that privilege. The rent I was paying was already pushing that limit. Do you know the value of having a tenant occupying a place rather than having it empty? They currently have 4 empty units exactly like mine. When I rented from them they had about the number same vacant. Rather than playing the game of jacking up rent to make up for a discount once they have you moved in, why don??t they set the rate at something that would have all of the units consistently rented? I??m pretty sure they'd make much more money, their costs to acquire new tenants would go down and satisfaction would go up. There are few people who are going to tolerate having their rent jacked up quickly to "market rent" year after year. I don't know if you've read the paper, but there's quite a bit of unemployment and the economy has had a few problems. I know some attrition is natural, but to consistently have that many open when there aren??t a lot to start with, is somewhat odd. No? I would have more than likely stayed if the rent had been the same. So now, they??re more than likely going to have a few months of an empty apartment, the cost of having to acquire a new tenant, a new tenant that pays $150 less in rent per month (who may stay long enough to get up to my rent level now, but I doubt it) and a former tenant who will spread word about how the management team has now sense of customer service and how they??ll jack the rent up as soon as they can. How much do you think all that costs? The value would be much more than the $50 dollars a month they make in the short term from me I think. If you were a business savvy person as you claim to be, what would you do? Besides, look at the reviews of Birkdale Village on here, not exactly glowing huh? Apparently I'm not the only one. If you do work for Birkdale, instead of getting defensive, maybe you should take the time to focus on CUSTOMER SERVICE and your reviews will go up. FIGURE IT OUT!

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