University View — Attraction in College Park

Just want to update this to acknowledge their response: the elevator is still broken, your listed office hours are 10-6 but in reality leasing staff (i.e., the people I actually need to talk to) are only present 10-5 if I'm lucky, I've shown up at 4:30 and had 90% of the staff just not been there. I don't care if the security team is there if they can't give me my parking pass. To any prospective tenants, note the way they ignored most of my issues (like pricing and safety), this is the kind of service you should expect if you decide to live here. The rooms themselves are quite nice but the management staff responds to everything with a general air of apathy that ranges from immensely frustrating to downright dangerous at times. First of all, one of the apartment elevators has been broken for the last 10 months; there's been a sign on it the whole time telling us to "be patient, because elevator service has its ups and downs", which was maybe funny for the first day, but after a few months when you're late for class for the 3rd time that week because the elevators are overloaded it becomes almost insulting, and at this point I'm pretty sure management has simply decided it's not worth it to ever repair the elevator. A paper sign is a lot cheaper than an actual repair, I just fear how deadlocked it's going to get during move in. Another issue is that it is next to impossible to actually get in contact with management. Listed office hours are 10am-6pm but in reality almost all of the staff leave well before 5 (there's no note of this on the apartment website), meaning that there is no way to go to the office if you work a full-time job. Additionally, the phone line to the office always sends to to an AI chatbot that is pretty much never helpful, and while the chatbot does say that it tries to redirect you to a person if you ask for that, I've had it say that there are no people available even though I then went down to the office and saw someone there. Another problem with the chatbot is that it says that it can record a message for you that will go to management staff, and either it doesn't actually have the capability to do this, or the management staff simply ignores messages, both of which are pretty bad. Where this becomes dangerous is when it's 9pm and there is water leaking into your apartment from god knows where, and the only contact you can get for management is a chatbot that feeds you the same office hour information. Luckily nothing actually got damaged from that, but it honestly gets worse. The scanner that opens the garage door broke a few months ago, and rather than fix it, management has simply locked the door open at all times. None of the doors on the inside of the garage have locks on them, meaning that now literally anyone can get into the apartment at any hour of any day without needing a UView ID. This is where my complaints go from frustration to a legitimate safety concern. We get alerts fairly regularly from campus about violence and crime in the area, and the fact that UView has not fixed this problem despite the obvious safety risk it poses really does make me feel unsafe in my apartment. Honestly the main reason that I'm putting up this review is just in hopes that they fix this issue, it's been going on long enough that I don't see them fixing it unless there's actual pressure put on them. And if there's a legitimate reason that it has not been fixed, please respond with it because I'm not leaving this just to stir up controversy, I'm just a concerned resident. Additionally the management is incredibly greedy, not only did they up rent by almost $200 for the coming year, but they switched from paying utilities by usage to a flat rate that is almost double what I was paying for utilities over the past year, meaning unless they were undercharging me last year, or utility costs went up by a factor of 150%, the only reason for this is to get even more money out of...

Looks are deceiving. While the apartments may look nice and the building full of amenities there sure as hell are way too many issues for the price point. First off the lobby for View 1 has been undergoing construction for over 4 months leaving the residents to use the back entrance and having 3 old, slow elevators serving 16 floors of people and it's a massive pain. While the View 2 is newer, it still has it's issues. First off there are no lights in the bedrooms, which nobody knew about until move in day, leaving me in the dark until I could go to target and spend an extra $100 just to have lighting in my room. Also, the walls are ridiculously thin. I understand that there may be some sound from neighboring rooms coming in but the fact that I can clearly hear every word said in my kitchen by my roommates is not okay. They feel extremely cheaply built and almost feel like a cheap pressure wall you would put up to divide a room. The wifi is horrible. It goes down all the time leaving me either to have no internet or to use my phone as a personal hot spot. This should not be happening with rent this high. The drying machine in our apartment is barely functional and has been since we moved in. It takes almost 4 hours to completely dry one load of laundry, making it extremely difficult to do any laundry. Also, management has generally not been easy to deal with. Getting a lease signed last year was like pulling teeth. Then move in day was the biggest mess I had ever seen to the point where my father and I had to take control just to get a basic sense of what was going on because nobody working it was remotely sure what to do. After waiting three hours I finally got my keys (when we specifically chose the earliest time slot to beat the crowds). During the process everyone was moved from line to line to line to line. Management is sometimes alright with packages but sometimes are a complete mess. Somedays when I get a package delivered I get notified fairly fast. Other days it can take severally days for them to let me know that a package has been delivered. Also, once when I went to take a shower, my lock malfunctioned and locked itself and since the managing office was closed, I was told there was nothing that could be done as I sat in my roommate's clothes without any of my possessions. I then fought with maintenance for over 5 hours on the phone to get help but they continued to insist that it was my fault. The only reason I got help was by having one of the leasing agents who lives in the building finally coming to help because I was extremely persistent. The looks, multiple amenities, and location of this building might seem great but they are just a gilding. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY. Live else where. So excited for the day my lease ends and I never have to step foot in the building again. Edit Now the lobby of the View II building is under construction. There are open walls everywhere, plywood everywhere, plastic sheets everywhere. This is unacceptable. You know for a fact that most students leave in late May and won't return until late August. That is more than enough time to do what looks to be a relatively easy renovation. It's two weeks since I wrote the original review and the wifi has continue to go out. I cannot stress this enough DO...

Here is my honest review. The location is great if you go to UMD because the campus is literally right across the street, but UView in general has a lot of issues.

1)Only two—or sometimes just one—out of the three elevators in the lobby that everyone uses actually works. I have never seen the rightmost elevator working during my time here. I live on the 16th floor and have to leave extra early for my classes just because of the elevator.

2. I’ve submitted multiple work orders for various bathroom issues, but they won’t start working on them until you submit two or three of the same report—and even then, they don’t "fully" fix the problem. We also submitted a work order for a YELLOW spot with peeling paint right where you need to stand to take a shower in the tub, but they’ve done nothing about it. Honestly at this point, I feel like it's an issue with the apartment & management itself, not really maintenance.

3. When my roommate and I first checked out UView, we wanted to get a 2x2 because their website said they still had some rooms available. But when we came for the tour, the guy told us that all the 2x2 units were full and that they only had 4x2s left. Then he went on to say that my roommate and I could have the entire 4x2 to ourselves because they were at less than half capacity and probably wouldn’t have many more people sign up for the 4x2s.

When we emailed the office to confirm what he said, they told us they were actually at full capacity for the 2x2s and almost full capacity for the 4x2s, and that we would definitely have other roommates—they just don't update their website.

Also, when we asked the tour guide about insurance on the room, he said it would be at most $5, but I currently pay $15. The only thing he got right about the apartment was our base rent. Don’t trust what those tour guides tell you.

4. The windows are so bad that you can literally hear every conversation happening outside. I live on the side facing campus, and I can clearly hear scooters going over the bridge and people talking on the ground floor—all night long.

5. At first, my roommates and I thought we were cleaning wrong, but there’s just so much dust everywhere. We’ll vacuum and wipe down the floors, and literally the next day there’s already dust back on the tables and floor—probably because the filters aren’t changed as often as they should be.

6. Not to mention, the whole floor smells like weed. My roommates and I are non-smokers and have to be so conscious of how our room smells because the odor comes in every time we open or close the door.

7. I’ve already had missing packages and food orders, and they will do NOTHING about it. They just tell you to file a missing report with the place you ordered from or tell you to keep looking. They literally have security and cameras all over the mailroom, lobby, floors, and elevators, but they won’t take any action—they basically just put all the blame on you.

After losing a few packages, I tried picking them up right after getting the delivery notification, but the guy at the mailroom just told me to come back later after he finished putting all the packages away. So there’s really no point in trying to get your package as soon...