My sister and I are new to Memphis and initially chose Watergrove because we were impressed by the grounds and thought we were getting a spectacular deal on a great townhouse. Wrong!!!

When we got there the first day we were informed that not only were we not getting the townhouse we toured, but that we were getting a much smaller one - at the same price! What happened was that we toured a great townhouse on Friday and called them on Monday to start the paperwork via fax from my parents home in GA. There apparently was a "misunderstanding" because when we told the woman (who admittedly was not the agent who showed us the place) we wanted the townhouse we toured on Friday, she "mistakenly" put us down for another townhouse. Because we only knew the townhouse by square footage and not the cute names they call the different floor plans we didn't catch the mistake until we actually went in on move in day to get our keys - which they wouldn't give us.

Why' Since we are both grad students our dad had to cosign our lease, and we got all the papers signed, notarized, and faxed over before we left the house. In fact just to make sure everything was okay, my sister called our leasing agent to double check that they got everything and all we had to do on move in day was cut a check and just move in. When we got there however we were told by management that we could not move in because they were missing a sheet of paper that apparently had either never been given to us by our leasing agent or just mysteriously disappeared. Since our father was in Atlanta and would not be coming up with the rest of our stuff until that Monday (our move in day was on a Saturday at 4), we begged and begged the leasing agents to allow us to move in that day but they were unyielding, even when we offered to pay for 3 months rent in advance. To top it all off because they kept us waiting for so long in the office while seeing to other clients and because of the time difference, there were no notary publics who could sign off on the form my dad needed to sign. Because of these "mishaps" my sister and I ended up driving around Memphis all night looking for a safe hotel that would allow us to bring in our poor poodle.

Back to the bait and switch though, we asked if it was at all possible for us to possibly get the townhouse we toured and they said no - that all those townhouses had already been rented out but that fortunately, we would be paying the exact same amount for our townhouse which has about 200 less square feet.

The night after we moved in, my sisters car got robbed. Not only did they break the window, they dinged the door and stole my sisters new car radio as well as her collection of Japanese air fresheners, her cd's, and of course the stuffed animal that was hanging against the rear passenger side window. When I went to the office to tell them what had happened their oh so sympathetic response was - "If they took your gate key you'll have to pay 50 dollars to get a replacement one." That was it. No sympathy, not even a "wow thats too bad." According to one of our neighbors, this kind of thing happens so often that the office staff just doesn't care.

Superficially, the townhouse we moved into seemed fine. There was a new coat of paint and a new carpet and it at least seemed clean. On closer inspection however the refrigerator had a small hole which let out cold air, the washer had a string permanently attached to it and what looked like pubic hair inside of it, and the cabinet inside the master bedroom bathroom had some kind of oily hair gunk spilled everywhere - along with more hair. It was disgusting! To top it all off both bath tub drains were so filled with gunk that every time we turned on the shower we quickly ended up standing knee deep in water and weird black particles would float out of the drain...ick!

It took months of persistent calls to maintence to get all our problems fixed (including a horrible rotting smell that just got more persistent as time went on).

Since we moved in late summer of 2004 the convenience store in the complex has been robbed, there have been numerous daylight break ins into homes, and now my sister and I just saw on the news that a couple of muggers have been targeting Watergrove residents robbing them at gunpoint as they go to or come from their cars.

The security gates are a joke and in the four months that I've lived here one or both have been broken and left broken 3 or 4 times and each time they break they remain broken for a week. Even when they are working though, people who don't belong there just piggy back onto whoever has a gate key and just follow them in.

As an added bonus, all the townhomes have a pane of glass right next to the front door for easy access to thieves who can just break the glass, reach over and unlock the front door in a matter of seconds and the parking lots are extremely dark and very poorly lit. The best thing that can be said about living here is that we have ample parking.

In conclusion, my sister and I regret having ever heard of Watergrove Townhomes and caution anybody considering moving here to think twice...or three times. For the money, there are much better places to live and after you get robbed of everything valuable that you own, it'll seem like even less of a deal. We ourselves are just counting the months until our lease is over.

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