Crystal Square Apartments — Attraction in Washington

For starters let me say that Darlene in the leasing office is amazing. My wife flew out to Arlington for a Conference and Darlene worked around my wife's schedule to provide her a walk through of Crystal Square amenities and the apartment. Darlene, the property manager (Anne) and the maintenance team have all been great. We had an internet issues upon moving in and Anne worked it out quickly, a couple maintenance issues that were handled the same day by the maintenance team. Overall, a great experience with the Crystal Square team! About the apartment, my Family lives in a renovated three bedroom apartment. The appliances are all stainless steel and match, the floors (outside the bedrooms) are all laminate hardwoods and the bedrooms have carpet. Bathrooms are a little small but, there is great closet space and a nice open floor plan feeling. People complain about the AC / Heat being too loud from the wall vents...I have to agree but, then again I have to say that the AC and Heat both work great and it is wonderful to walk into a nice cool apartment after being in 90 degree heat in the summer. Construction is also a complaint in many reviews, it is going on but it really isn't a big issue...some days are louder than others if you are home teleworking. However, it isn't something that is going to end your day and make things miserable. The gym is nice, a few treadmills, ellipticals, stair climber and rower. There is a Smith Rack, a cable crossover, a decent set of dumbbells and kettlebells. The outside patio is nice with a firepit and three gas grills. I haven't had a chance to use the pool due to COVID but, it is big and looks like it will be a lot of fun once it opens. There is a rooftop area too, haven't been there since it is under construction but, I heard it will have a grill and some seating areas and the views are amazing. The parking garage is decent, cost $100 for one car and another $175 for our second. The door is key FOB to get into the building and you have four elevators to take. My family is not a pet family, this complex has A LOT of dogs...they aren't loud and are really irrelevant to us but, you can smell them occasionally in the elevators. There is a small dog park if that is something you would use. The location is amazing! The complex is a .2 mile walk to the Boeing Fields (turf fields for use with playgrounds and running areas) and it is right across from the Crystal City Waterpark (a large fountain that has beer gardens and other events on the weekends) and the building is also directly across from the Mt Vernon trail that offers 18 miles of paved trails to run, walk and bike all over the place...3 miles to the National Mall and 4 miles to Old Town Alexandria by trail. There are parks along the trail and tons of people out exercising and enjoying being outside. We are about 1 mile from Reagan International Airport, I have not heard a plane from my apartment in the 6 weeks I've lived here...the airport noise is not an issue. Plenty of restaurants to walk to within 1/2 mile or less, beer hall, wine shop and Costco (7 minute walk). Bought bikes when we arrived and with the exception of travelling to work you can really do everything you need around here by walking or riding you bike. There is an underground shopping mall called Crystal City Shops...haven't really explored it that much due to COVID but, there are some nice shops and places to eat and leads directly to the metro so you don't have to go outside at all. The building is adjacent to the city bus line and you can catch any bus you need and the Pentagon Shuttle picks you up across the street at the Crystal City Waterpark. I would recommend Crystal Square to anybody looking to move into the Crystal City area. If you happen to work at the Pentagon it takes four minutes to drive there! My family is happy here and we are glad we made the move here. The school district for elementary is Hoffman-Boston and takes about 12 minutes to drive there, 2 miles away and it is on the way to I-395 in the event you...

Part 1 I move out of here a month ago. This was the worst apartment I have ever lived in. Here are the 10 reasons why:

1. Green mold in the apartment. About a month before I was about to move out, I discovered a lot of green mold in the Livingroom on a fabric container that I place next to their AC unit. Our apartment was usually pretty dry and clean. So I'm sure it was not us. I don't know how long it has grow on there and how long we were breathing in the spores. When I was cleaning on the last day, in one of the kitchen pantry that we put dry goods like paper plates and cups, I saw mold grow on the side.
2. Cockroaches. I saw at least three different cockroaches in the apartment while I was living there. Two in the master bedroom and one died one in the hall. There were a shit ton of cockroaches in the pool access area and the underground mall. Underground mall was connected with the building.
3. Leasing office doesn't care about your problem. The only time you can reach them and get treated seriously is by leaving a google review. Please see below for the no garage access for a whole month, had countless of fights on the phone with the garage people just to get out of garage every morning. The only time they took me serious is right after I wrote a google review, not after we communicated with them countless times trying to get an access. They had all the good reviews because they had a event that if you write a five star review you get to enter their raffle to get a month free rent in March, but I never heard them announcing the winner's name. So I don't know if it's real or not.
4. Enter my apartment without my permission. I mentioned there was a cockroach issue in my previous review, they replied with a long paragraph and mentioned they will send people over without mentioning dates. I obliviously don't have notification with google review. They never notified my partner. We never put in a work order They think replying to a google review is a 24 hours notice. They had someone come in to my apartment when I was at work and freaked my dog out. My dog acted strange for a whole month. They promised they will call and get a permission before enter. However, we had another work out put out to fix the paint in the bathroom in December. They couldn't fix it when we were there. And then We went traveling in Spain. All of a sudden, I got a dog cam notification that someone was at my apartment. Again, no Notification Prior to Enter. I have it on video that they entered and spend two days in the apartment.

Character limit, to be continue in another account

For parking issue, they finally give us a keycard. And Krista give us 100 dollars reimbursement for that month of parking. Changing this to one star after living here for seven months. The reasons being cockroach problem. We first started seeing it outside in the pool area (it was a lot of them). And then it’s a dead one in our place after coming back from vacation. Now I’m seeing young cockroach flying around in the bathroom. everything, specifically the laundry unit, kept breaking (called maintenance 17 times and none are small issues)! We had to call maintenance at least 2-3 times a month to get something fixed. The positive side is they do come and fix it pretty quick. The negative side is they kept breaking repetitively. We did rent an older unit so the laundry unit takes about 3.5 hours for each small load, and it end up being more inconvenient than we originally anticipated. One of the worst one was water leaking from upstairs. Garage deleted our keycard access. It’s been a month now. We had to call them every time we need to get out. It has been very inconvenient. It’s more annoying now because they start asking us questions like our names and why haven’t we got the new card. UPDATE: It's a fight every time we need to get out of the garage. And today they finally decided to not let us out. We had to pay 23 dollars to get out. I send the receipt to the leasing office, will wait patiently for the...

Part 2 5) Things kept not working, we put in almost 30 work orders the whole year. And it wasn't small things. There were a bunch of leak from the upstairs bathroom right above our tub. They were in and out for months on end. The maintenance respond quickly but are kind of useless and unprofessional. A lot of times they had to either call a contractor and just out tape and gum on it and tell you the place is just crabby and old. The knock a giant hole on the wall Christmas morning, right next to where I sleep. Apparently, they said something about leaking, but it wasn't leaking after they knocked a whole. We put in the order to fix the ceiling paint. They dig a half meter long whole on top to see if it's leaking. It wasn't leaking, just paint chipped. 6) Refuse to give us our deposit back. Charged us 150 standard cleaning fee as move out process and charged us 150 and told us we scraped the bathtub. It wasn't my bare feet damaging those bathtub. It was the contractors. We had several contractors kept bringing the tools and ladders and they had to place those in the tub in order to fix the leak above. Also lots of wood and stones falling in to the bathtub when they were digging holes (they dig up at least 3 holes on top of that tub in the span of months). Even 20 days before we were about to move out, they were trying to fix it. We were on the phone with their assistant manager, he admit it was probably due to contractors, but we didn't call in work order to get it fixed. So we are responsible for the damage we didn't cost. Unless we provide evidence that it was the contractors like photos and videos. Of course I'm not going videotape them when they are working. I reached out to their manager twice, no reply. They also told us whatever left of that deposit will be send out in 45 days. 7) European unit washer and dryer. It's an extremely inefficient unit. It takes 4 hours for each load. Each load you can put about 4-6 pieces of summer clothes. If you put more than that, it will not dry. Yes, it will not dry. We do about 4 loads every week, that unit runs about 16 hours every week. Extremely noisy. 8) Building is so old, it's lacking some necessary features. Such as no bathroom fan, they had air way that look like they have a fan, but they don't. It's connected with the other apartment, so sometimes you can hear people's conversation when you are in the bathroom. That's probably where the cockroaches came from. AC and heater are the same unit and controlled by leasing office, so they decide when you switch. There will be some days that are very hot or cold. 9) They are doing Airbnb business in the building. There are so much tourist footprint in the bilding. Anytime you get downstairs, you see a tourist. They just stare at you. 10) Moving in and out is hard. They added a height limit in the garage where the loading dock is. So you can't drive your uhaul in there. You can try the front door which is pretty far from the service elevator. When we were moving out, they refused to unlock the automatic door in the front. Their reason for leaving the door closed was so that their lobby stays warm. So we were forced to manually open the double door (much smaller than the automatic door). It made move out much harder.

I hated living here so much that I basically spend the whole December in Spain and at family house. And I moved out four days earlier than I supposed to. I do not recommend...