Square on Fifth Apartments — Attraction in Atlanta

Where do I start.

The management at this apartment building does not care for your wellbeing. Considering this is marketed and pushed as student housing, it is a true comment on the character of the management to treat broke university students in such a horrible fashion.

Residents have lost power spontaneously at any hour across 2-3 months. We have also had water outages back to back weeks, and not just for a couple hours, but for multiple days. Their solution was to simply hand out water bottles. While I understand that sometimes things can go awry, such as a pipe burst, the real problem was with management communication. There are several emails that detail that they are contacting vendors and the issue will be resolved within 3-4 hours, only for them to not follow up, for the water to be out, and for a new email to surface the next day saying once again it will be back in 3-4 hours. They just hand out false promises, and the "sincere apologies" they deliver us is meaningless as they do nothing to make it right with the residents.

This is not the only issue, the internet is very weak (to the point where I had to find a solution myself). If you tell management they tell you to contact the vendor, but when you contact the vendor they tell you to contact management. The amenities such as rooftop pool and a gym are also questionable, as just recently you could not access these amenities for more or less a week. Why? Seemingly a power outage prevents you from entering, and no effort was made to resolve it in a timely manner. It is important to note that the amenities are factored into the high price point of leasing a room, but there is absolutely no compensation. In fact, compensation is completely out of the question. I have seen multiple reviews where people were told they have to wait a few days to enter the room because of issues (such as mold) and despite it being their move in data, they have to pay for a hotel out of their own pocket. Once again, it is simply shameless exploitation of desperate college students.

My breaking point was a recent power and internet outage lasting almost a day. We are students who require internet to complete homework, quizzes, exams, etc., and yet we are being deprived of these necessities that were marketed as exemplary on their website. I have had to travel to campus a total of 12 times to get basic necessities such as water, a shower, and bathrooms.

Furthermore, any 5 star review you see in recent times is fake. They incentivize residents to leave a 5 star review and selectively respond to them. The only saving grace from this building is that there are 1-2 individuals on staff that truly care about the students and what they are being put through.

This building is borderline inhabitable, and for its price, you are better off at any one of the other buildings in Midtown. I seriously hope someone reads this review and knows better not to sign a lease here. SQ5 used to have a reputation as one of the top tier student housing complexes, but is now just a ploy to scam students who are miles and miles from home.

EDIT: The Internet outage since October 16 is still impacting residents 3 days later, and likely until Monday. One update was sent by management saying that they are aware and working with vendors, and will update us with more information. There is no wifi or wired connection at all and no update has been given. This is aside from the fact that the internet usually provided is terrible anyways. This is a common trend of management stringing tenants along, playing damage control as opposed to providing the services factored into leasing prices. All in all, do not lease here and maybe changes...

4.5/5 if I could. I lived here for 4 years and while not always perfect, this is the best overall student apartment experience you can get near GT.

The Rooms: Pictures you see online are pretty representative of what they’re like. Finishes like trim, baseboards, cabinets, carpet, etc are of “Luxury-student” quality. The rooms are significantly better than most of the other “student-focused” apartments, but are not comparable to traditional luxury apartments. Walls BETWEEN units are absolute barricades, you will simply not hear your neighbors if my experience is anything to go by. The walls WITHIN units (between bedrooms) are somewhat thin with just drywall separating them. In addition, many bedrooms share a metal window frame (hard to explain). In these rooms you can easily hear if a roommate is talking, but not enough to interpret what they’re saying. Overall, the sound isolation is perfectly acceptable if a frame isn’t shared. If you know your roommates, none of this should really be an issue.

The Building: SQ5 is a fraction the capacity of other student housing which means amenity areas are comparatively smaller, but also much calmer and less crowded. Common areas are rarely crowded and management does not tolerate rowdy groups. The top-floor lounge provides a good weekday study space. Membership to Tech Square Social club (formerly The Garage) is BY FAR the most underrated and underutilized perk of being an SQ5 resident. It is where 80% of my studying took place. Front desk security is hit or miss. Somehow even through three management companies and four years they cannot find someone who will actually be present all night. It was always disappointing coming back at 1-2am with nobody in sight. Staff: I have nothing but good things to say about the full-time staff at SQ5, especially Zack and Mike. They make this place what it is. They are always helpful, greeted me by name, and appear to care about solving property problems. Maintenance has always been prompt and equally as friendly.

Various things to be aware of: Internet - Since a thunderstorm a few years ago took our some telecom equipment, the internet has been horrendous at certain times of the day. The issue is massive packet loss (80%+) during the evenings. The office was aware and we got the impression it was corporate management who refused to pay for the quoted network upgrade (which, to this day I think they were being ripped off on). In August of 2022 they completed a complete overhaul which seems to have resolved things, minus some issues right after installation. Common area shutdown - in 2021(?) someone threw a party which ended up out-of hand and damaging some furniture. They closed the common area for an extended period of time as they tried to figure out what happened, then only opened it during the day. Many people saw this as unfair collective punishment. It took too long for this to resolve, when 99% of residents had nothing to do with it.

Elevators- When all three are working, there is JUST enough capacity to be acceptable, albeit slow. Every other month, one of them breaks for a day or two and adds 5minutes to getting out. As of Aug. 2022, one of them was “very broken”, and had been out of service for weeks. At some point, these elevators are going to have to be replaced with something faster/more reliable.

Overall, I would certainly recommend living here. Especially if you know your roommates, and especially from what I’ve seen at other student housing...

I've been living in SQ5 since August 2022. At that time, I could confidently say it was one of the best off-campus student housing options and recommend it to everyone. Unfortunately, with repeated changes to lease policies that "come from higher up" and multiple buildings opening with higher quality, I no longer think SQ5 is the best option.

When I lived here from school year 22-23, all utilities were covered. On this year's lease (23-24), electricity is no longer covered, and we weren't told of this when resigning. It wasn't that big of a deal though, so I just sucked it up. For the 24-25 leasing year though, their policies are getting even worse.

First, they no longer accept subleasing, only relets. Most residents aren't here for the summer, and find someone else to take over the remainder of their lease. This wouldn’t really matter if I didn’t want to come back, but let’s say I renew my lease for 24-25. In order to guarantee I get to return to the same room (the whole point of renewing), the tenant reletting from me over the summer then has to relet the room BACK to me (doubling the relet fee), since I’m now considered a “new applicant.” So instead of the $400 x 1 I paid last year, I’d now be paying $500 x 2. On top of that, they’ve increased the relet fee on the 24-25 lease to one full month of rent, around $1500. This increase is absolutely insane when no other student housing is charging this much, and seems to be designed to extract the maximum possible amount of money, since even with this high of a fee not subleasing at all would still result in a larger loss.

The 24-25 lease also does not cover water or sewage in addition to the uncovered electricity. I understand that most buildings don’t cover utilities, but their rent is also lower to compensate.

There was another nonsensical policy that when reletting, the new tenant would sign a new lease at “current market rate” instead of the rate of the lease they are taking over, but thankfully, they at least fixed this. It shows that they are at least open to feedback, but will only cave if there is enough pushback.

Overall, I’m unhappy with the direction SQ5 is going in. I still think the location is the best possible, and the bedrooms are huge, but everything I’ve outlined above combined with what other residents are saying in these reviews leads to a building and management that no longer have the residents’ best interests in mind.

UPDATE: I spoke with Tosan. She at least seemed to understand where I am coming from and genuinely interested in trying to resolve some of the grievances. Most of the lease policies come from upper management as expected and thus are not under her control, but I appreciate that she is taking and delivering the feedback.

UPDATE 5/15: Tosan took our concerns into consideration and genuinely seems to be trying to get BHOM upper management to rollback some of the policies, and she also offered me a one time relet fee concession. Unfortunately, we seem to have regressed, because I have been trying to get in contact with her to discuss the above for 72 hours now (calling multiple times each day to try to catch her when she was in the office and sending multiple emails) to no avail. I understand that she is extremely busy but being unable to find 5-10 minutes across 24 working hours when it's very urgent (I need the answer so I can move forward with reletting) is...