The Commodore — Attraction in Arlington

I live at this place. This is a very new and nice apartment. However, the leasing office staff are rude and unprofessional. They make me feel like I am living in their place, as if they are the owners. I don’t feel like this is my home. They always threaten me with a "lease violation.

They don’t even greet me when I come to the leasing office or when they see me around.

Another big issue is that they are not allowing my 12-year-old to use my key to access the elevator to get home after school. They said it is a "lease violation." When I asked to purchase an extra key for him, they said they can't give one because he is a minor. So, I gave my key to him. But Tate, the property manager, came to me and said that my son can't use my key. I have to be there when my son comes home to let him use the elevator.

Another issue I had was with the property manager, who replied to my email after I said I couldn’t afford their party room, which costs $100 for one hour and $500 deposit. He wrote: "Ok, well, please let me know if anything changes. If you do not go through our reservation process and pay the fees, you will be unable to host an event in any of our common areas. If this is not followed, we will send a lease violation."

I had said I couldn’t afford the fee and did not want to use any other area. He just assumed and wrote a letter like this, which made me feel bad. I wrote how I was feeling, but the manager never replied.

One more thing was when my kids were playing with snow in the barbecue area. The manager came to us and said, "Your kids can’t be here. It is a lease violation."

The last and most recent issue was with the pool policy. We have a family of 3 children and 2 adults. The leasing office gave us 4 wristbands: 2 for our family and 2 for guests. When my daughter brought her 2 friends, their moms came with them. They told me I couldn’t have more than 2 guests (I didn’t know parents would be counted as guests even though they were just watching their children).

After they told me I couldn’t bring 2 adults and 2 kids, I only brought the 2 kids, not the parents. However, one of the leasing office staff came over to me and said, "You can’t have 6 kids in the pool." I said, "I don’t have 6 kids. I have 2 kids who are guests (my kids' friends) and my own 3 kids." The guy said they were not wearing their wristbands. I said, "I gave it to them. I think they are wearing them." But he insisted they were not wearing them, so I said, "They are kids. They must have taken them off." He kept saying, "It is your responsibility," etc. But when I went to the pool and checked on them, they were actually wearing the wristbands the whole time.

That guy didn’t even check their wristbands and came to me saying all those things. And he said, "You can only have 4 people around the pool." I said, "How is that possible? I have 3 kids. I won’t send my 2 kids home because you gave me 2 guest wristbands and 2 for my family." And I said, "This is the stupidest policy I have ever heard in my life. It doesn’t make sense to me."

That same guy told me, "Do you want Tate (the property manager) to write you a lease violation?"

I was speechless. After he left, I saw many people around us were not wearing any wristbands. But he only came to me, which made me feel...

A completely honest review

The good The building inside is pretty, it has a very unique vintage french look unlike anything you'll find in the area. Units are sold as luxurious and aren't too bad but it isn't 100% luxurious (however I've come to the conclusion that's 99% of all rentals). The pool is nice haven't gotten to use it yet, and the roof has great views. Any maintenance problem I've had it seemed to have been resolved pretty quick as well. The concierges have been nothing but great haven't had a bad experience with any of them, they are all super helpful and friendly. The gym is large and has a lot of great amenities as well!

The bad Most of the finishings inside the units are built pretty shoddy. My towel rack fell off the wall because it was barely screwed in the wall, the doors are made of paper mache, walls between units are pretty thin I can hear normal level conversations of my neighbor (thank god I have a quiet neighbor god forbid your neighbor likes to blast music). So if you do get a loud neighbor your lease will be awful. The private work rooms in the building require a concierge or leasing agent to open, and if you decide to leave the work space to use the restroom you need to ask them again to let you in, incredibly inconvenient so they're never in use.

The leasing agents here are pretty awful, I haven't had any good experiences with them to be honest, they don't seem to care about you when you move in, and if you ask basic questions in person they'll act like you're offending them. If you try emailing them you'll get a response in 5-10 business days and that's if you follow up with them. Overall I try to avoid leasing agents here they seem like hostile actors. One told me he'd threaten to charge me a fee because I sat in a rental room that I was told was free to use when not rented out because he saw me on the camera. It was told to me it was free to use when not in use upon moving in.

Overall Yes I like my unit, my apartment, could it have been built better yes but will you experience this everywhere else that is supposedly luxury, yes. If you don't have quiet neighbors I would not move in but how can you know until you move in. And if you hate dealing with hostile agents maybe it's...

Edit: changed rating from 5 to 3 stars. Loud fridge in small apartment makes the apartment almost unusable.

Sorry i had to lower the ratings. Almost half of the time, the fridge in my apartment makes loud noises including ringing, high frequency beeps and motor sounds. If I don’t have any other sound on, these noises would sound like they’re from every wall. I could even hear them in the bathroom. This issue is more prominent in smaller apartments. I’m in a junior 1-bedroom and it already drives me nuts can’t imagine being in a 300 sqft studio with this fridge lol.

I really like the apartment and this building, but I can’t really use the apartment without purchasing a new fridge myself or constantly having music / tv on. This forces me to try to stay outside before I find a solution. The fridge noise level seems such a minor detail in the grand scheme of things until it makes the entire otherwise nice apartment almost unusable :(

I haven’t been told I’m a sensitive person. So you should probably check the fridge even if you don’t think you’re sensitive when touring. (It doesn’t make noise all the time though probably just 1/2 of the time. And when I toured the fridge was not turned on yet. ).

Original:

Staff is professional, answers emails quickly, and gives accurate information. No time wasted in my move-in process. Wish the tech onboarding part is more seamless (updater, butterfly, luxer, etc.).

Some suggestions for future residents: Make sure to book a tour with one of the leasing agents. I only had a self-guided tour and I still don't know how to access the roof after moving in, for example. The updater app used by this building to facilitate the move doesn't seem to be integrated fully. Some user-facing buttons lead to 404s, making the emails from the app essentially spams. Maybe don't sign up with the app if you don't like useless emails. Ensure to check all appliances before using them after moving in... I started a load of laundry before finding out that the washer / dryer are not installed correctly so stuff has been sitting there wet...