Cortland Midtown East — Attraction in Raleigh

My name is James. I moved to Cortland Midtown last year when the covid thing began. I have always rented houses, so I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about apartment living. However, I can safely say I would (and do) recommend this place to anyone looking to move to the Raleigh area. I simply love it here, from the welcoming staff ( gotta love Paige, she’s everything) as well as the friendly maintenance crews and timely responses regarding service requests and overall location convenience. The units are tastefully designed, with super fun floor plans and really nice stainless appliances and excellent lighting throughout. I use the gym almost everyday and actually canceled my former memberships, I mean it kinda doesn’t get any better than walking to the gym, crushing it and literally walking a few feet away to the outdoor showers before diving into the pool (seriously though, don’t actually dive)

I honestly feel spoiled living here and thats saying alot. I cannot overstate the convenience of living here. They even use a unique mail service app (Parcel Pending) that conveniently sends you a text to inform you about the hoard of online purchases and impulse buys made during your second bottle of wine have been delivered to the mailroom which also serves as a gentle reminder as to why your bank accounts feeling slightly parched this week. Win-win.

The Atria pool is incredible, and meticulously serviced. The pictures don’t even do it justice. It’s truly the heart of Cortland. Which brings me to my final point: the residents. I haven't met a single resident that I didn’t get along with here, and I’ve actually built some solid connections during my stay as well. Some of which I’m sure will be life long. Summer Saturdays are a blast, there’s almost a tribe kind of vibe at the Atria Pool and everyone has been welcoming and accommodating in terms of sharing space regarding amenities ( including the grills and poolside fireplace ) And for the price of a Truly, you’ll likely never be outside arms reach of a new found friend during the summer months.

Overall, very clean, family and pet friendly environment that’s centrally located to well… everything. Excellent space for hosting friends or family. Thoughtful amenities such as the game room, offices and even a MOVIE THEATRE. If you get a chance, also take a quick walk down to PourWorks , it’s sort of the unofficial neighborhood wine bar parked right next to Manor Nail Spa, grab your favorite bottle and a peddi and come back home to enjoy a little time by the poolside fireplace. It’s the perfect lowkey evening. p.s also a great simple date tip: (thank me later)

I highly recommend the lifestyle and experience here at Cortland Midtown East. I’ve recommended them to all of my friends and I personally won’t choose to leave until I buy which judging by the current looks of things regarding the market - might be awhile. In the mean time however, I’m certainly not complaining. Life is good here...

If you get really lucky and never need customer service, this isn't a bad place to live. It's nice looking, very nice pool (although its extremely loud and crowded during summer weekends), great gym, and on the 2nd floor I experienced minimal pest control issues for NC.

Unfortunately if you do need customer service, for major or minor issues, you're going to have a negative experience. Even if you have a simple question, it's very difficult to get assistance. The office answers their phone about 10% of the time. They routinely do not return voicemails. Often if you do get someone on the phone, they will tell you "I don't know the answer to that, let me check with corporate and call you back", but then they never call you back. It tends to be a 2 week process with many follow up calls and emails to get simple questions answered.

If you have a major issue you're really going to have a bad time. My upstairs neighbors broke their toilet off the wall and flooded my bathroom after hours. The call center that you are connected to if you call emergency maintenance is offsite, there is no local number you can call for assistance. It took hours for the one on-call member of maintenance to show up, and we received no contact from him before he arrived. Emergency maintenance should have been able to immediately tell the tenants how to turn off their water over the phone, instead water was allowed to pour through 3 floors of apartments for hours. I received no assistance cleaning up the standing water in my apartment. There were significant delays in them providing me with a fan and dehumidifier. The dehumidifier they eventually provided smelled badly and I had respiratory problems while it was in my apartment. I believe it contained mold. Maintenance staff and the property manager lied to my face repeatedly and spoke to me disrespectfully. The entire experience was handled poorly at every turn, especially by the property manager.

When I moved out, they falsified my move-out paperwork. The final statement I received had "bought home" listed as my move out reason. I did not buy a home, I am renting elsewhere to get away from Cortland's terrible management. On the move out paperwork that I filled out, I listed my move out reason as "15% year over year rent increase, mandatory valet trash fee, poor handling of water damage caused by upstairs unit". I believe they removed my reason in order to not allow corporate to see the negative feedback.

Edit to acknowledge management response - Of course you blame the technician and ignore everything else. Management is the...

Charlyn Gamble is most likely a fake review.

I've lived at Vue64 since the buildings went up over a year ago and there is a distinct difference between the previous mgmt and Cortland. You'll notice many of the 5 star reviews here are from longer than 4 months ago (Around when Cortland took over.)

Now, Cortland isn't doing an all together horrible job, but it's working for some and not others. I'll point out what's working horribly since Cortland has been around beginning of 2018:

1.) This guy in #3206 KEEPS SMOKING all the time... He's been reported several times and JUST. KEEPS. GOING... Others do as well. It is a 100% NON-SMOKING property!!!

2.) Parking is great in the surrounding back areas, but if you live anywhere close to the office entrance good luck. There is no assigned parking, so if you get home later in the day you will have to walk at least 1000 feet to get to your place, or park across at The Avenues. If you have to unload anything it will be inconvenient.

3.) Cortland's Staff Customer Service is great, friendly, etc. But the new policies are wretched. Sunday afternoon, only 1 staffer = many times when the office is locked with a cute sign saying "Will back in 30 minutes". This is representative of many new policies which basically cater to maximizing profit at the expense of the resident.

4.) Speaking of that... Many new residents are... How can I say? Immature, Partying types, Loud... Now that the doors are wide open they're getting anyone they can in their. Now I understand that discrimination is illegal and wrong, but the property used to be so quiet and peaceful. Mature, responsible residents were respectful of the community, of picking up after their pets, not smoking, not being loud, etc. It IS different now, especially the closer you get to the office building.

Granted, the property is beautiful, the amenities are nice (when the fobs are working), the pool upgrades are ok but some are kind of stupid looking (bright orange against earthy colors?). I'm not sure why people are in favor of that here. I guess that's what the kids like these days.

I'm looking elsewhere. It's just really difficult to find 100% smoke free apartment communities that check all the other marks.

If you don't mind the smoking, don't ever need to speak to anyone in the office, like to have parties every other night, don't mind stepping on dog poo, are younger than 30, don't need amenities, and don't mind paying premium rent prices for all of that, then go for...