I am writing this review because I have had enough with the apartment management. This will be a very long review and I advise anyone who lives here or plans on living here to take the time and carefully read this. The apartments are owned by a company called AIMCO. This is by far the worse, money-addicted and uncooperative company I have ever leased from and I learned my lesson. For everything I state there is prove so all of what is to come is absolutely true and actually happened even though it will be hard to believe at points.

I really want to try to be as objective as I can so there are also a few nice things about these apartments. The way the apartments are shaped is really nice and they build the complex in a way so that almost every unit can catch a view of the gulf. They have a really small fitness center and the courtyard with the pool is in ok condition. Given the poor apartment quality on Galveston island this is one of the nicer communities if it only wasn't for the management...

However, let me get to the not so nice parts. First the apartments were built in 1986. So they are kind of old and I soon came to realize that. I moved in about two years ago and it started out rather bad. The fridge in our unit was so dirty and a brown nasty smelling liquid would leak from the connections into the fridge. When I complained about it they came into my apartment and slapped some silicone around the leaking parts and claimed that the fridge was fine. The very same day it started to leak again. I could not put any food in there without contaminating it. I had the opportunity to have the brown liquid checked out from professionals and it was full of bacteria but still they would not exchange the fridge because they thought I was making it up. However at this time a nice lady from the office (not the manager) confessed to me that she had questions about the fridge as well but the staff was advised by the company not to buy a new one. Finally after constant complaining for 1 month they did exchange. But you are fooled if you thought they got rid of the fridge. No, they were exchanging it to another unit where people just had moved out. Good luck with this threat of health to the next resident. This was the first of my unbelievable experiences with them.

The next problem was that the AC/Heater did not work properly. It just would not heat at all so I called it in for repair. The answer I got from the maintenance personal was that I will have to turn the switch to heat in order for the heater to work. What a great advice! Isn't this ridiculous' Obviously the heater was broke and after a couple of circuit surges caused by the AC/heater unit and a winter that we spent keeping us warm with blankets they exchanged the unit in spring when it was getting warm again and again only because of constant complaining about the malfunction. All this for a rent of approx. $1000/month.
Oh and of course the dish washer did not work but I guess by now you all know how this story went so I am not detailing it. Credit to them that after half a year where we were not able to use the dish washer and tons of visits to the office they exchanged the unit.

You are also paying rent for a gated community that is not gated because the electric gates frequently break down and it takes weeks sometimes for them to be fixed. Meanwhile the gates are left open resulting in several car break ins.

Much worse for us was that whenever there was a heavy thunderstorm or rain our walls facing the ocean would leak heavily in the bedroom so that I was literally waking up at night because water would sprinkle in my face. This first occurred two month after we moved in in 2006. It is now 2008 and the problem has not been fixed, even though after a couple of paint slap ons they finally had a contractor look at the problem. However the leakiness of the walls still persists and I think it is because those walls need complete remodeling due to their age but of course AIMCO will never spent that money. They only take from you. As an effect of the constant wetness in the walls mold started to grow, which was identified by the maintenance staff as "black dots" we did not need to worry about but they would paint over it if we wanted them to. I want to make sure that here as well I took a sample of those "black dots" and it was clearly identified as mold, which is a major health concern. But not enough another effect of this was that the wood in the ceiling got soaked by rain water and started to cave in. This was right atop of our bed and was a major threat to our lives. When I showed this to the maintenance guy he claimed that this was a shadow and that we had a problem with our eye sight. Can you believe it' As a result I threatened the management to hire a professional architect to make an assessment of the damage at my expanses and I would bill them later if they find anything of major concern. Guess what, the same week they fixed what they claimed was a shadow before. This tells you a lot about how this management functions. There have been numerous other cases but I don t want to expand this further than it needs to because by now you probably get what is going on here.

Oh, and apart from my unit. Whenever you consider having a nice BBQ in the evening at the courtyard area just don t be surprised to meet some rats and a couple of roaches here and there. It s all inclusive with your high rent.

But I saved the best for last. This story needs to be told. As hurricane Ike approached Galveston there was a mandatory evacuation issued so everybody needed to leave to get to safer grounds. We all know what happened next. The hurricane hit the island and devastated large parts of Galveston. The apartments withstood the storm but had damage to the fencing and the roof. In the aftermath there was/is no power, no water and no sewer working and residents of Galveston were not allowed back on the island for approx 14 days after the storm. Since these are clearly uninhabitable conditions we wanted to end our lease and ask for a refund of the already paid rent for the time we were unable to live in the apartment. Since, regarding to Texas law, anyone was eligible to cancel the lease if unlivable conditions occur and persist. It was even announced on TV that if you are affected by the shutdown of Galveston Island you can cancel your lease and start to find a place to live again somewhere else. I mean we did not have a place to stay after the storm and all the FEMA hotels were overbooked. We called the main AIMCO company in Denver every day to help us out with the situation and give us a number or address to send the termination letter to so we could finally start to look for a new place. Of course they could not provide that. Infect they could not give us anything that would help us with our situation and asked us to contact the local office in Galveston but of course the phone and fax lines were out of service due to the storm nor was anyone at the office since Galveston was on lock down. As if they did not know this. Even when the island was opened back up to the public word was not to stay if not absolutely necessary due to the questionable water situation and the unlivable infrastructure on the island. Anyway by that time the apartment had restored water but it is again important to note that water quality was more than questionable and advice from the city was given out to boil water before use and not to shower with it. Kind of difficult to boil your water if you have only electric stoves and no power.. You could not even buy water because most stores were/are still closed. Not to mention the mold that had built up due to the constant wetness. Never the less AIMCO considered this absolutely livable so they called everyone to come back and live in the units again while they will do the necessary repairs while you are there. Great place to stay if the complete carpet has to be replaced and the sheet rocks are taken down and replaced. By the way during AIMCO s effort to repair the damages, which is of course a very good thing, they just went ahead and left all the apartment doors wide open so the maintenance staff could work more conveniently. Ok this is true but remember most of the residents belongings were still in the units and the apartment doors were open all day long free for anyone to walk in and take what they want. This way my Comcast cable box disappeared, another neighbor was missing jewelry and another could not find his DVD collection embracing roughly 100 DVDs. The management of course claimed to have no liability. Scandalous, especially because the management did neither inform me that when they would enter the units nor when the repair works would start. This way I would have been able to salvage some of my furniture, which was piled up upside down in the middle of the room by the repair people. It was a mess. There was about 1 inch of sheet rock and scratches everywhere on every single piece of furniture, clothing, TV, PC. . Yeah, and of course no info to the residents that the doors were kept open all the time. But the worse of it is that the management under the suggestion from AIMCO was neither willing to let us out of the lease nor willing to give us or anybody a refund or concession for the rent paid while uninhabitable conditions persisted and still persist up to date. Literally speaking residents have to put up with the conditions by feeding the lion with their money. Concessions' Refunds' Words that AIMCO has long banned from its vocabulary. Even in these times, where everyone helps out everyone AIMCO stands strong in letting the residents bleed for their wealth. Oh yeah the reason they gave me for not refunding was that the hurricane was not AIMCOs fault and the mandatory evacuation was given out by the city of Galveston and not AIMCO. So I figure if it was for AIMCO everyone could have stayed and eventually died in the storm. They would probably find a way of making you pay even after you are gone. I mean it is not AIMCOs fault that you are dead, right' Of course the storm is not the company s fault but neither is it the fault of the residents so why should they pay' Even a 50:50 ruling would have been fine by me but AIMCO needs all the money it can get. Well I have given that case to a lawyer since the management will not talk to me anymore. I know of at least one other resident who is doing the same.
In my case it is even more ridiculous. We gave them our 60 day notice to end our lease because of all the other stuff that was going on with our apartment two weeks before the storm so basically we are only asking them to let us out of the lease 4 weeks earlier so we can finally have a place to live again. Ok we are out of there anyway and I am glad about that fact and sorry for anyone who has to stay with them. The question is just do we get our money back because at the moment, due to their behavior, we will pay rent to them and our new place we will be moving to in October. I hope there is some kind of justice in this country because what AIMCO is doing is wrong and they need to be put in their place by someone. This story needed to be told and I will send it to radio, TV stations and newspapers in Houston. I hope it will be read and heard. Something needs to be done!!



So miraculously when Galveston was reopening they were able to contact me since now they thought there was no need or legal ground of canceling the lease. So clearly their tactic was to hold of all residents willing to end the lease on legal terms due to the uninhabitable conditions resulting from the Galveston Island lockdown but waste no time to call every resident to insist on livable conditions after the lockdown was released. In summary: No one you could address your letters to could be reached during lockdown nor did they reach you but after the lockdown all of the sudden they were able to remember your phone number and called each and every resident to inform them that they could not take any actions against AIMCO to get out of the lease or receive any concession during the uninhabitable conditions caused by the hurricane. Stinks a little, doesn t it'

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 06/07/2009
Believe it or not, this is a minor story. The apartments are terrible and the staff even worse. To top it off, they've changed owners and it's gotten WORSE! No one would have thought it possible, but it its!

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