The last place I lived in before I moved to San Antonio was Atascocita, Texas, an unincorporated suburb northeast of Houston. At the urging of many friends at my second job, I moved there because the scenery, convenience, and location were great and totally different from what I saw normally at work, while making up for what I lacked at my last apartment north of Houston.
It took a good 4 months of looking around, even going all the way to Huffman before I settled for where I eventually stayed at. It’s like any other tale where you’re talked up a good game and once you sign the lease you’re no longer important.
I walked into a place that was pretty generic and nondescript, other than it was bigger and had a few more amenities (at the expense of some others) than my previous apartment. A number of missing handles, chips on the counter tops, my broken front door lock, broken toilet, and a bunch of other things broken before I even unlocked the door. It was rushed and the more I lived there the more I realized that the last tenant was probably among the many of the other unhappy tenants who expressed their woes online. The hair that clogged up the pipes of my tub and the amount of non-forwarded-yet-seemingly-urgent mail said enough.
The place was eventually becoming more and more unaffordable as you’re kicked in with a few surprises with your lease. If you’re in Texas, your local apartment hopefully got their lease via their local Apartment Association part of the Texas Apartment Association. It is a fair lease agreement that protects tenants from the problems people encounter at such apartments like Verandah. The Verandah does not use a TAA lease and instead has their own where it’s very evident that they nickel and dime as much as possible.
When they tell you your rent, they neglect the mandatory-yet-not-included $20 monthly charge for some arbitrary “public use” or “community fee” for their pool and mediocre cabana. While not a big deal, it’s almost obvious that it’s a devious method of getting more out of their residents and getting away with it. That charge could easily be included, but without including that extra $20, they can lease to people who might be out-of-income-range to afford an apartment there with the added $20.
Why would that even matter? Because there’s really no way to avoid a bill when you move out. You have to get the carpet steam cleaned where you have the choice to or they can do it for you at the expense of your security deposit, but the cost to steam clean is conveniently close to the security deposit. Also, you’ll be charged asinine fees like $1 for “holes” in the wall. In other words, if you like to be unique by hanging pictures and paintings, you’d better be ready to pay the price for hanging them. These charges come from the mysterious corporate office that likes to ignore policy when it comes to approving a prospective tenant but follow it to the letter with any other situation. I’ve tried finding out who their corporate office is, but I never got anything certain.
And that’s just the beginning.
After searching online for reviews on this place, I started noticing replies to positive and negative reviews alike. For all negative reviews, the reply was at the same maturity level of a 7th grade boys locker room. For positive reviews, the replies agreed with the praise. And this went on for several reviews for that year for multiple sites. It turned out that it was a relative of the property manager making these replies which eventually stopped when the property manager herself made a response.
The manager response/review lasted for awhile, then it mysteriously disappeared when I stopped paying attention to it. Alongside that, when you previously searched the name of the property, the Apartment Ratings website showed up first with the totally unflattering reviews. Now they’re mysteriously not on the Google search results nowhere to be found. (Update: Not anymore.)
I didn’t have reason to care until I called to make sure I was clear and had no loose ends with this property. Turns out that they say I still owe for something I paid. The first call went like this:
I call and ask if I’m okay. Person 1 says she’ll check and call me back. She calls me back telling me this bad news and to call back with a confirmation number or some proof of payment. This took a few minutes, but I had everything cleared.
So call number three Person 2 answers and I ask for Person 1. Person 2, rather than letting me speak to her, totally ignores my request to give out my account number and confirmation number proving I paid it, and instead tells me the “best” thing to do is dispute the debt and show proof I cleared my bill. Then I can wait until Monday where I can wait for the magic call to the mysterious corporate office to fix it (why I haven’t just been directed to this office is beyond me). While I will do this, why do I need to go through this song and dance of proving I paid what I owed them? If I really had the money, I probably would’ve been living a little better with an extra wad of money lying around. This place is too much of a headache and if this is representative of all apartments in Atascocita, then stay away from it. This is a terrible place to be at its worst, and mediocre at its best.
Now for the “I’m an idiot” disclosure: I did check all pre-2008 reviews before I moved. But many older complaints centered around some pervert, so I took the risk being that it was the second apartment I lived in on my own and I really wanted that illustrious suburban lifestyle. But even if you think some of these problems are due to my laziness or frustration, this place isn’t worth it. There are surely better places to live, and this isn’t one of it.
Tags: apartment review, atascocita apartments, humble apartments, leasing, verandah at lake pointe
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