I really just wanted a "first to review." I'm so addicted!!! When there's more information I'll give you an update.
For now: We knew we wanted to live in a nice place DT Knoxville, though not the UT area, but we're not yet ready to buy. We set our sites on Sterchi Lofts, but made sure not to get our hopes up too high. Turns out, the precaution wasn't necessary.
Contacting the management company the first time was a little difficult. But once my fiance got someone on the phone, it's been smooth sailing from there.
We needed a place for June. When my in-laws checked it out they were shown around two apartments and given all the specs. They thought the girl showing them around was perfectly nice. When we decided to accept, they emailed the rental contract to my fiance. We looked it over, I crossed off a few unfair provisions (god, I'm such a budding lawyer), sent it back, they didn't have any problem, accepted our deposit (review partly based on this, which is unfair, I mean, any deposit is cheaper than Boston!) and we're in. We get there in June.
We did have to pay an upfront pet fee. Which is silly, I think, for cats seeing as how there isn't any carpet in the place (or flooring of any kind...it's all concrete). Can you think of any reasons for upfront pet fees in this situation? I welcome comments. I know they're illegal in MA. Wonder if they are in TN too...
I'm also a little concerned that the apartment shown to my in-laws was open when they looked at it (end of March) and is remaining open until June for us. Makes me wonder if there are problems with the place.
That's all I got for now. I'm super excited to move in! I'll let you know more soon as I know!
UPDATE:
*sigh*
I've gotten a bunch of questions about this place from other lucky Yelpers and I've always told them the truth. My glowing review was a little, well, naive. But then, hey, sometimes you win you lose when you rent and walk into a place sight unseen! This time we kinda lost. After reading my review, I see the signs now. Next cliche, folks? Hindsight and that whole 20/20 vision thing.
It started slowly. We moved in in June. We couldn't get the heat to just plain leave us alone. Our air conditioner ran nonstop. It never got below 85 degrees in our apartment and our electricity bill ran us about 300 a month. I'm not kidding. My husband (yeppers, we finally did it!) works from home and was absolutely miserable. We thought several things trying to locate the silver lining: we live on the ninth floor and heat travels up, our beautiful view just so happens to also be a view of the afternoon sun, we're not yet used to this southern summer and, hey, this apartment is a little bigger than the last (last was a 1 bedroom plus and this was a 2 bedrooms, not really different, but the rooms were bigger and had higher ceilings) and maybe we just need to get used to the extra air conditioning.
Our poorly constructed facade slowly crumbled. Some friendly neighbors on the fifth floor in a 1 bedroom had the same electricity bill and heat problems. Turns out, another neighbor of ours and friend of theirs in a basement apartment had the same electricity bill and heat problems. A basement apartment! We were devastated when we found out the reason from an inspector we hired (more about that later): When the building was being renovated, air units were purchased for each apartment to be placed on the outside of the building. The historical society said no way and now the owner had a real problem. Solution? He placed those outdoor units in closets indoors. The problem? They now blew both cold and hot air into the units. I'm not joking. They tried to jerry it to fix the problem, but, clearly, that never happened.
Management did eventually place a window air unit in. This went into the bedroom so that we could sleep. However, there was no way to place a unit in the rest of the apartment given that the windows weren't the right type. In fact, to even place it in the bedroom they had to replace the window with a big piece of plywood. And on top of everything else, now we're paying to run the defunct air conditioning and an additional window unit.
That's a lot written about air conditioning, but then we dealt with it for a long time and I think it's important to show that I'm not just bitching, but had very real concerns that will face pretty much anybody moving into the place.
I can't write much more (word limit), but here are a few of the more substantial problems. Pigeons in the air ducts, which the maintenance man informed us is a problem sometimes, but took forever to fix. Smelly garbage chutes with some residents taking to pouring bleach down them. Very unprofessional management, college crowd (if you're not fond of that kind of thing) and defunct amenities including a broken down workout room.
All for the low, low price of living in likely the most expensive apartments in Knoxville. Important to be informed! read more