I lived at Birchview for 2 years, mainly because moving is such a pain, so I stuck it out for another year. First of all, its not as good of a deal as it seems. The rent is cheap and the rooms are spacious, but keep in mind, there is no laundry, no central air and only one shower in the 2 bedroom apartments. And the worst part is that your heating bill is going to be insane. So just consider other places that have higher rents but either have gas heating or include your utilities.

The heat is a real pain. You can't set a temp, so the heat is either on or off. Your options are coming home to an 85 degree apartment and dealing with the bill, or coming home to a 55 degree apartment at the end of the day. I finally got a space heater and that helped a little. The 30 year old air conditioner in the living room is going to do absolutely nothing for you in the summer, so you might as well turn that off and save some money.

No locks on windows and our sliding glass door and screen door were both broken when we moved in. Consider moving into a 2nd floor apartment because they have no requirement for putting down rugs. I was unlucky enough to live under an older man who was up walking around often during the night. After several days of waking up at 4 in the morning, I realized I would have to wear ear plugs every night to get a decent night's sleep.

The parking is fine, the only problem is that there are no lines to park between and the people living here are too lazy to park near other cars instead of directly in front of their door. So if you come home later in the night, there will be a ton of open space, just no spaces large enough to fit your car into!

The last major gripe I have is with the lack of communication between the rental office and the business office. I was in Peru last summer and was unavailable to sign a renewal lease. I informed the rental office of this and they said it would be fine as long as my roommate signs in time, which she did. Guess what' I get back to states and sign the lease but in a few weeks we get a letter saying that they are increasing our monthly rent because we did not sign the renewal lease in time. So I walk over to rental office and talk to that moron who works there, Maria and she assures me that she will take care of it and that I can throw out the letter and send in our usual rent check. This happens two more times. We were getting statements saying we owed them money and I kept bringing it back to the rental office. Finally I decided to call the business office myself and I spoke to a very nice lady who assured me that she would fix it in the computer. Guess what' That took several months and at least 5 phone calls because this secretary or whatever she was could not figure out how to fix it but would "get someone who could as soon as possible". Yeah. So by December, 6 months into our lease, I finally stopped getting statements asking for money.

The bottom line: living here was a mistake and I should have been smarter in my apartment hunting. I could have lived a lot more comfortably for about the same amount of money. Don't be awestruck by the rent because you will end up paying a lot more than that per month!

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/27/2009
I agree with some things you said: - parking - yep, people definitely take two spots ... probably to not get they doors dinged high heat bills - yep, it's all electric heating and with all the big windows and sliding doors (which are probably not energy efficient) then the bills in the winter are high, but the other 9 months are usually under $80/mo, - bad communication between front and back offices - yes. - old AC units - yes, they will replace it once it breaks and the new one they put in is pretty good and can turn your apartment into an ice box I don't agree with: - Heating controls - What do you mean you can't control it? There's an individual thermostat in every room. - Locks on Windows - Did they take yours off? All windows in my apartment absolutely have locks, they would be opening themselves up to a lawsuit if they didn't and you should have demanded they fix/install.

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