These apartments are spacious and very affordable compared to other apartments in Austin. They are within walking distance of Shu Shu's (tasty Asian restaurant), a gas station, Trudy's, numerous other great restaurants, Wal-Mart and a Fresh Plus. There's nearly any type of business you can think of very close by. Shoal Creek is extremely close, which has excellent bike lanes, and it's almost worth living here for that.
One of the best attributes are the large amounts of storage space - we really appreciated the walk-in closets and the really deep cabinet space. Also, the pool is 8 feet deep or so, which was nice. We used the outdoor grill a lot, too.
The appliances were all old, and we had a pretty loud AC unit, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Everything was kinda cheap, but it worked.
No major pest problems.
About 10-15 min from downtown with no traffic, and about 30-45 min in rush hour.
As for the bad, when I lived here we had annoyances with maintenance - one being that it took, I don't know, 5 or 6 visits from them to fix the AC once. Also a glass light fixture fell on my husband's head while he was using the bathroom.
In our second unit, we lived in one of the largest spaces, but it was right next door to the maintenance room. It was presented as a perk since we wouldn't have neighbors on one side. However, we worked from home so we heard constant noise during the day. Even at night we'd hear loud banging and awkward cursing (hopefully by now they have better staff - this was around 2010).
Burnet is not a fun road to drive on. It's hard to turn left to get to 183, which is generally your primary route while living here. I usually drove down the back roads to the light by Taco Cabana to turn left when i didn't want to stress. Also, when going the other direction, the lanes are so narrow, the speed limit is slow and there aren't dedicated turn lanes, so you often get held up behind people trying to turn left.
The main problem I had with this place was how it didn't really feel like a home. We lived on both the 3rd floor with a view of the street and the 1st floor with a view of the complex, and both felt a little confined and sad. We never wanted to open our blinds to let any sun in when living on the 1st floor, because neighbors would walk by and just stare in like you're in a zoo exhibit. It didn't seem like many people there were all that happy. I definitely could have been happier. You're surrounded by concrete and businesses.
Also they painted it gray while we were there, which I thought made it look like a prison. They also painted the doors, but just painted them while they were shut so there is an awkward crackly border around the front edge of the old paint color.
Overall, it is a spacious, affordable and convenient place to get by for a year or two, especially if you ride your bike a lot down Shoal Creek the whole time you're there instead of spending time inside. However, it definitely feels like transition housing. read more