I lived here for about 3.5 years, and I saw many of the problems that other reviewers have mentioned. Some were not as bad for me as for others, some were expected (perhaps I just have low standards), but overall, I was happy here.

Reasonably safe location. It's between Riverside and Oltorf, which aren't great roads, but it's out of the way enough that it doesn't attract a really dangerous crowd. At least, I was never worried for my safety when walking from the bus stop every night. It's also near the grocery store, as well as two of the least expensive gas stations in Austin. On the other hand, there were two occasions when the dryers in the laundry room were vandalized (coin slots torn out). It wasn't such a bad thing, because the old dryers didn't work very well anyway, but it was a bit of an irritant. My car only suffered one break in while I was there. Apparently several cars were hit on the same night. The only other event was that on the night before I moved out, I had been unable to sell my bad, so I left it by the dumpster around midnight. When I left at 5:00 the next morning, I noticed it was already gone. I'm glad it found a home, but I kind of wonder who was wandering the parking lot during those hours.

I generally found the people in the office helpful and accommodating. There was one woman there who was problematic because I couldn't get her to answer my questions, but I hadn't seen her before, so perhaps she was just new. Most repair requests were fixed promptly. The only one that wasn't was the leak in the ceiling of the apartment. I sent requests about that for a year or two before it was taken care of (there was a long delay between requests because I couldn't tell if it was fixed or not unless it rained hard, which doesn't happen very often in Austin). Most of the times I requested the repair, I would come back to find a note explaining that there was a leak in my ceiling, and that they would contact their roof repair company to deal with it. It was eventually fixed when several people in the building complained of leaks on the same day. A year or two ago they were having a lot of problems with the water and had to shut it off frequently. Once there was even water spouting up from the street, but most of these problems appear to be solved. Sometimes the hot water has a slimy feel to it, and I have to take a cold shower if I want to come out clean.

The dog feces lying around the complex is definitely a problem, as well as the barking dogs on back porches. The management once sent out a threatening note about it, and it stopped happening for a while, but it didn't take long before people stopped cleaning up after their dogs again. The problem is that from many locations, you can either walk across the grass to get to the bus stop or add five minutes to your walk, so you end up stepping in it then.

I didn't hear too much noise in my part of the complex, though I found that I could clearly hear my neighbors when they decided to sit on the porch and talk. I imagine it would be much worse if you were stuck with partying neighbors.

The seals on the door and windows aren't very good, but they recently added a programmable thermostat, so I was able to keep my power bills in the $40-$50 range.

In the end, I was fined $50 (after deducting my deposit) for cleaning brown stains on the apartment. I'm not sure whether those were real or not (or how much they were caused by the dog feces), but it wasn't too bad.

I've listed a lot of negatives, but you don't really notice the good things until they are absent. For $550/month, it's a pretty decent 1/1. Most of my friends living in the Far West area were paying over $600. It's certainly better than Longhorn Station, which is where I lived for my first year in Austin. And now that I'm living in Atlanta, I appreciate it even more.

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