I have lived in the Potomac building at River House for 8 years and love it. I have never had a rodent problem, my AC has never leaked and my maintenance requests were always taken care of. The building is old, but that has some advantages like solid walls where you can t hear your neighbors and my studio is the size of most one bedroom units in the newer buildings. The buildings also have more green space than any other community in the area by far.

With that said I was VERY unhappy about all the changes this year and almost moved. I had neglected to report some things wrong in my apartment and requested they take care of it if I stayed and they did. My only complaint is some of those things were not done to my satisfaction the first time, but the property manager personally made sure it was eventually taken care of. In her defense, she walked into a mess and I am seeing things improve every day.

Look up the most expensive and newest building in the area and you will see the exact same complaints. Reality is most people only take the time to complain and not the other way around. Change is rarely smooth, but I am hopeful that River House will come back to being home .

Bottom line, I am happy I stayed. If you are looking for an apartment, at least stop by and judge for yourself.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 10/01/2008
Sounds like management to me. Actually, there aren't nearly as many negative post in such a short period of time if you look at ratings for other buildings. Riverhouse's rating have been very bad for the last year. The last few positive comments I'm sure are written by management. Trust me, there are far nicer and newer buildings in the area for the same rents that Riverhouse (Varnado/Charles Smith) is charging. It's third party managed by Kettler, but the owners are still the same dirty rotten scoundrels.
From: Anonymous	Date: 10/06/2008
"my AC has never leaked" Obviously no one can say "every unit has a leaky AC" - but *many* posters with the same problem indicate that leaky ACs are not anecdotal, and are in fact a widespread problem. "solid walls where you cant hear your neighbors" If they are quiet, anyway. We heard our neighbors on the living room side watch TV all the time, and on the bedroom side heard the neighbors next door talk about when they were getting up the next morning, heard their alarm, etc. YMMV, but the walls are not in fact impermeable. "my studio is the size of one bedroom units in the newer buildings" Absolutely. The space in the river house is significantly larger than in newer buildings. Space lack of other livable conditions does not a good deal make, however. "the buildings also have more green space" Again, this is true and is quite nice. See comment above, however. "my only complaint is that some of those things were not done to my satisfaction the first time" This seems par for the course, esp with the new maintenance staff. Everyone is human and makes mistakes, but it is not OK to accept that shoddy work, and only clear persistence on tenants' part to make things right, is the norm here. "in her defense, she walked into a mess" This puzzles me. I lived in the RH for 7 years, and in that time occupancy was at its max, there were many long term residents, people were treated well, etc. Since the takeover, rents have gone up, vacancies have shot through the roof, long term residents are leaving in droves, and services have diminished. So its confusing what mess you are referring to, esp. since the only mess I saw was the one created by the new management.
From: Anonymous	Date: 10/24/2008
If you are stupid enough to eat a 40% increase in rent in one year, you deserve to live in the River House. Enjoy.
From: jkrk1234	Date: 01/19/2009
Glad you have had a good experience in Potomac... mine was miserable, just like most of the rest of the people on here. I lived at River House for nine years, and for seven years I was thrilled with the experience. Then it became hell. My air conditioning at Potomac started to leak... the same one the rodents started coming out of. I was on the phone one morning with the general counsel of one of the largest banks in Europe when I had a visitor. It was all I could do not to scream... needless to say, I lost whatever we were talking about and had to recover... NOT acceptable living conditions. There were so many leaks that never got fixed, the parquet floor under the rugs got all moldy as did the bottoms of my furniture. I threw out around two-grand worth of stuff when I moved out because it was just disgusting. Oh! And instead of pulling the carpet, repairing the leak, and replacing the carpet, they just cut a huge gash in the middle of the living room, used industrial fans to blow rusty, moldy water all over the furniture that was not ruined already, and then left me to trip over the hole. Enjoy your apartment at River House. I'm loving my larger apartment at another location for same money, including tandem parking spaces, secure storage bin, washer/dryer, balcony, den, and $75 in metered utilities instead of $200 apportioned!

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