Canvas Townhomes Columbia — Attraction in Columbia Township

Do know first and foremost that over 90% of the 5 star reviews are written by residents who are doing so for the chance to win prizes from the leasing office. What they don't inform potential residents of is the blatant disconnect between the staff and residents. I have nothing but issues with not only reaching staff in the community but also getting responses and answers when I do reach them. For example, upon move in, my roommates and I had a laundry list of small things wrong with the apartment. From broken blinds and missing window screens to faulty appliances, peeling linoleum and carpet staples sticking up through the floor, we were less than impressed with our apartment upon move in. We put in maintenance requests for the more serious of our issues - assuming we were likely being a little picky regarding some of them - and rather than getting fixed, we received a notification about two weeks later saying our issue had been fixed however not only was the issues not resolved, maintenance never actually showed up to even look into it. To further make issues worse, in my four months of living here, I have received none of the informational emails sent by our leasing office and rather learned about anything they wanted to inform residents of through my roommates which has caused a number of issues. The first of which being when the community had a situation with a "prowler" within the first week of move in. This feels like something ALL residents should have been aware of and I hate to think that there are other residents who aren't receiving these emails but don't have roommates who are passing the information along. The next I did not receive was regarding lease renewals opening up, which I only learned about due to my roommates informing me. This email included a link you had to fill out in order to renew your lease, a link I still to this day have not received. After this I went by the leasing office in person 3 separate times to get added to this mailing list and given the information for lease renewal. Each time I was told I would get added to the list and that the issue was handled but still continued to receive no emails. Due to this, I was not able to apply for a renewal lease in a timely manner and by the time I was able to renew my lease, my rent had been increased and I was now required to put down a over $1000 security deposit, the reasoning for which was not explained to me. Upon calling to explain that being punished with higher rent for taking a month to renew my lease was problematic given it was their fault I could not access the required documents for renewal, they told me that due to their "tier system" there was nothing further they could do to help me and everything was now up to me to determine what I wanted to do moving forward. The "tier system" they use to determine rent prices is a scam. There is not logical reasoning to why only a select number of applicants can be given lower rental rates just because they signed their leases sooner than other applicants. This system is often used as an excuse for why the apartment complex "cannot help out any further" with whatever issue you have brought to their attention. While I initially thought the rent prices at Canvas Townhomes Columbia were reasonable, they rise quickly and provide residents with outdated units and are unwilling to work with residents to solve issues both in-unit and within their leasing office team. I am beyond disappointed with my experience with the Canvas Townhomes team and the sheer lack of assistance and understanding they provide for residents. They have severely tied my hands when it comes to lease renewal for the upcoming year. At this point, I feel they are preying on ignorant college students who are struggling to get by and making it seem like they have no other options than whatever they put in front of you. If you do not have parents or guardians who are willing to assist you in someway through the rental process, do NOT sign with Canvas Townhomes regardless of how nice it may seem. It is absolutely...

I moved in of August of 2021 with some of my friends, it was nice for the most part but there were a lot of cons, which is why I am leaving two stars. My basement room flooded about 3 weeks after we moved in because our original washer/dryer decided to give out, so maintainence came to replace it with a new stacked unit and hooked it up wrong, causing it to flood my room. At first, management only wanted to compensate me $150-$250 for all the damage it caused to the room as well as my own personal items, it wasn't until my father reached out to them that they decided to comp me for a month of rent. Management did not once express genuinely how sorry they were, and seemed to me to be more annoyed than anything and were very quick to deflect the issue on their maintenance team. The head maintenance guy, Clint I believe, was wonderful during this. He was beyond sorry for what happened and even went out of his way to bring me cookies to express how bad he felt which was very kind of him. Another con, was when we moved in to the upgraded unit, some of the appliances that were included in the updated units were not updated in ours. Our stove, and cabinets in our personal bathrooms were updated months after we moved in. Most of our appliances worked mid at best, hot water was scarce in our unit, pressure to our showers were awful, and our sink sprayer had a micro crack in it when we moved in and got awful pressure plus it wouldn't turn off. Oh, and I fell through a board in our backporch because our deck was in such bad shape it was literally falling apart and rotted in the area, I smacked my head against the backdoor door frame and they didn't get anyone out to fix it for months. Internet was spotty most times and there were multiple times in late 2022 were the internet would be out for hours and hours at a time which was not helpful for us in my unit who worked from home, and when asked what they were doing about it, we were asked why we didnt have back up internet when theirs didn't work and was also asked if we could just go to work in person when it was giving us issues, which was not possible as the office was in another state. Maintence would come for work orders and not tell us, had specific notes for them to contact us as we had pets and a security system we would need to disarm. They set off our system multiple times and would just leave after doing so instead of letting us know. I had to tell the security company and police many times not to come because it was set off by accident and we couldn't stop the alarm before it alerted them. Moving in was a literal nightmare and moving out was the same way. Me and my friends all switched rooms to what better suited us and informed them multiple times that we did, which they were fine with, yet we were all charged for each others rooms. The trash that they charged us for in the common areas after we moved out was not split between the four of us, and they charged us for two "missing chairs" that THEIR maintenance team removed from our unit when we first moved in because some of us brought our own. Unfortunately, we have no proof of their team removing them, because they did it after we filled out their move in forms. I have tried reaching out to them for general questions about the move out process (as well as how to dispute the chair stuff since there is no proof and we have to write out disputes) and have not heard anything back from them even after leaving messages. We have all decided to just pay the move out charges in full to get it over with and be completely done and rid of Canvas as we are just tired of the poor communication/management etc. And genuinely, I enjoyed living at Canvas despite what some people may think reading this review, I just wish that all of these issues were handled differently. I would just recommend that ANYONE planning to live here or anyone who currently does, to get everything they tell you in writing/email communication and also take pictures of EVERY little thing when you move in so you have the proof to dispute when...

Beware before you rent here!

Pros: It was a mostly quiet complex and felt fairly safe to walk around. It is in close proximity to a park, trails, corner store, and Walmart. You could walk or bike to these parts. There is also a bus stop across the street. My boyfriend and I subleased all 3 bedrooms in a townhome, so we had the space to ourselves. No bugs inside besides some spiders and moths, lots of moths. Our balcony faced the woods, so that was lovely for us. Maintenance was fairly quick at repairing things after we put in requests.

Cons: It might just be because we subleased, but there was no type of check in from the apartments' side. The former resident also subleased, so the place was not in very good condition. They inherited some broken doors, holes in walls, black marks all over the place, missing lightbulbs, furniture from the complex that was beat up, scratched, and torn, and there was command strip adhesive all over the walls. They even left clothes behind in drawers that we had to throw away, didn't vacuum the carpet, the toilets were disgusting, and there were windows with no blinds on them or poles and wood holding them closed. I saw the previous tenant deep cleaning the main floor when we met with him, and I was assuming that the complex would check on the apartment before we moved in, so I didn't pay much attention to those issues. However, we ended up inheriting everything that was wrong with the place. I foresaw us being charged for every damage, so since before we moved in, I took pictures of as many damages as I could and put in at least 12 maintenance requests as proof that we couldn't have caused these issues. However, after we moved in, nothing had been fixed. We went to the office, and somehow all of the requests were gone. We put in new requests one at a time throughout the 5 months we stayed, hoping things would be fixed before we move out. Some things got fixed, others didn't. We would put in a request, no one would show up to our townhome, and then we would receive an email that the request had been completed. Nope. Some things never got fixed the whole time we were there. I put in requests, the maintenance guy would show up while I was there, and I would talk to him. I even showed him the door that was broken, he told me they would need to get a whole new door, but I would not be charged because they know I requested it to be fixed. I asked if the windows could be fixed, and maintenance admited that they put the poles on the windows because the apartments had been broken into a while back. They didn't get repaired before I moved out. In fact, construction was doing remodeling outside the whole time we lived there, and they replaced the windows that were fine while the broken ones remained broken. I asked maintenance and the front office people at least 3 times, while they came into our place to do inspections, if we would be charged for the damages from previous tenants. They said we would not be charged if we put in maintenance requests as proof and got the previous tenants to admit to leaving damages. Now, why would the previous tenants admit to that? Also, we did not have contact info from the tenants at that time. However, I put in the requests and was doing all I could, so it should be fine, right? Nope. When we moved out, we went to the front office to turn in our keys and asked one more time about the damages. We were told we would be charged and inherit the problems left by previous tenants. They said to email them pictures with time stamps as proof that we didn't cause the damages. Thankfully, I still had some pictures saved, although not every single scratch was accounted for. They still tried to charge us hundreds of dollars to do repairs on the complex. We fought hard and thankfully got the charges dropped, but honestly, I was so frustrated. It's constantly just people trying to suck up as much money from others as possible and doing the bare minimum. How can people be like that??

I would not really recommend this place, but there are...