The Carmin — Attraction in Tempe

I've lived at The Carmin for 3 years now, and I'm not staying any longer. If you are considering living here, I recommend reading my review, since there a lots of good and bad parts about living at the Carmin.

First I must mention the price. No secret that this place is extremely expensive in terms of rent. However, you will save money on other amenities. Living at the Carmin, the only utility you need to pay for is the electricity, and even that is pretty cheap since air conditioning is more efficient in high rise apartments. Water and Wifi are free, and if you hook up to the ethernet, you can get lighting fast Internet speeds. Most maintenance is also free at The Carmin, and the regular maintenance team is really great at responding to requests quickly and efficiently. But the rent is still very high, and really all you are paying for is the location. Being this close to ASU Tempe Campus is a big deal, and you can get to Campus very quickly, especially with the streetcar stop right outside the building. But location is all you get in terms of quality. The interior quality is very cheap and very poor. You'll notice as you walk through the hallways that it feels very industrial, rather than residential.

Here's a deal breaker: if you own a car, or need to use one for your job, don't bother with The Carmin. I'm not kidding. The parking garage is tiny, especially compared to the number of units. A single parking pass can run you about $200 a month now, and thats if you can even get one. There's usually a waiting list thats a hundred people long because there aren't nearly enough spots. However, the building has great connection to public transit, so its great for non-car owners.

The website lists a bunch of amenities that you get access to as a resident, and some of them are pretty nice, but I never see things like the tanning beds or the podcast rooms actually being used. The rooftop pool is a nice spot to hang out, and the sports deck on the 10th floor is pretty cool, but often you are locked out of them for some inexplicable reason. They have been promising a Pickleball court on the sports deck for years now, but it still hasn't been finished.

Hands down, the best amenity they give you is 24/7 access to the gym. The greatest praise I can give to The Carmin is it's residential gym and fitness center. No other apartment I've visited can compare to the sheer number of options that you get at the Fitness Center. Obviously, it still doesn't compare to the options that a commercial gym or the ASU gym can provide you, but when compared to other apartment gyms, The Carmin blows all of them away.

If you chose to live at The Carmin, be prepared for lots of noise, ESPECIALLY if you live in one of the inside units (The building is built like a rectangle, with units facing both inside and outside). Sound will bounce off the walls, amplifying noise from the ground, I've been able to listen to people's conversations on the ground from the 12th floor. And unfortunately, losers with loud cars love to rev their engines in the middle of the night. I've been woken up in the middle of my sleep by these people at least 5 times that I can remember. There's also the coffee shop on the first floor, Honey 2 a Bee, that is very popular with the local community. The shop is open until 3am on most nights, and gets extremely busy late into the night. One time I woke up at 2am because dozens of people at that shop were chanting in unison for some reason. Point is, get ready for noise.

So TLDR: The best parts about living at The Carmin are its location next to ASU, free utilities, residential gym, and the regular maintenance team. I don't really have much else I can praise this building for. If you are supporting yourself, don't bother, this place is WAY too expensive. If you do have the money, and can afford the steep rent, I encourage you to consider your options wisely. The Carmin has a lot of ups and downs, so I would consider other nearby options before signing...

Please Please PLEASE read if you're considering moving here.

Honestly it's not bad but I think rent is way too over priced for what actually is. Literally the first night of moving in, some random students were banging on all the doors in the hallway at 2AM waking up my nervous dog. Staff is super helpful and nice! It does sound like they love their job and do everything they can to help their residents. There are many events too, however, unfortunately I couldn't attend mostly all of them due to work and classes (since they are mostly during the week). But if you want to live where they give out a lot of free stuff, this is the place. My biggest concern was that I signed on summer 2023 for a 2023-2024 lease. I was added to the waitlist to have a garage parking spot at the place where I live. When August came along, I called to see how far ahead I was and I was barley added on the waitlist. I guess the person that said that they were going to add me didn't. Took until January 2024 to get a $140 parking space. Also, you CAN pay to park, but if you forget to pay for more time or leave your car overnight and didn't come down to pay at 5AM, ZipTow will tow your car in a heartbeat. So if you have an expensive car and would like parking right away, I suggest to look elsewhere. The pay to park lot also gets very full during the first few months. It's a student apartment, so I understand the noise, however there have been multiple instances where I had to call security because students/people kept knocking on my door and other resident's doors and screaming at their top of their lungs or fighting in the hallways. I would call security waiting for them to come and they would never show up. THEN they hired new security, which he is super cool and nice, but now enforces pool rules when it's already summer and a lot of residents aren't even here. The rooftop pool is great but please know that you are ONLY allowed 2 visitors per resident. So if you were want to invite friends, good luck. They also have A LOT of rules, which I understand that its for safety precautions, but if you want to avoid security bothering you, I suggest you be there during the day instead at night. Another thing they don't tell you is that even though there is security there in case you get locked out, they charge you $50 to open your own apartment. And then they will send emails/texts to pay your balance as soon as possible. I working and pay for my own rent and all of my expenses. Sometimes I would wait for the 3rd day of the month to pay rent so I can get paid first, yet they are very quick to text you that you need to pay rent. There has also been many times that the police will come because they were called in. There STILL isn't a pickleball court and they've mentioned this last year in summer 2023, and I've seen change in management so many times throughout the 10 months I've been here. I think overall student apartments are overpriced, but if you want to live close to campus where you just need to take the light rail, then maybe this is the place for you. The floor to ceiling windows are great, but the shades that come with the apartment aren't the best. No matter how hard I try to keep my apartment clean, I always have problems with gnats in the summer time (May-September) and not once has management sent exterminators for this. Also, if you plan on bringing a dog, I HIGHLY recommend that you look for student apartments with dog parks. This whole area is concrete and you would still have to walk to get to any near by grass. I had to buy my dog booties since the concrete doesn't cool down by night during summer.

Other than all this, The Carmin does make an effort to help residents feel at home by creating a lot of cool events. Just some factors I think future residents need...

The Rise was the worst of all the rental experiences in Tempe while my 3 boys attended ASU. We rented 5 leases across the street at The District with zero issues as well as a house and another apartment. The Rise has many issues including water and internet outages. My son's apartment common area was professionally cleaned on move out (which we never did at The District and were never charged a penny), and the Rise still billed nearly $1200 to the unit. Apparently, most residents were billed these similar fees. They find ways to charge to make extra money, like calling a few drops on the carpet a stain and billing $100 when it comes out with regular carpet cleaning, to $30 to rinse a trace of dry vim off the clean shower (although their photo doesn’t match my son’s photo he took after cleaning) to repainting a whole room when one wall has a small touch up required. I could never get the same answer twice on the actual deficiencies or price breakdowns to match. I disputed the move out charges the day the email was received and it took 2 months to get any agreement of compensation and over 5 months to get half my deposit back. They count on people not bothering and make it as difficult as possible...and corporate staff are rude on top of it.

Do yourself a favor and convince or demand your student to live anywhere but here. Here's the email below from The Rise on the move out charges, and most students received comparable charges. Note that we had the common area of the apartment professionally cleaned upon move out. The apartment was left in overall VERY GOOD condition, except two tenant's bathrooms which were not cleaned and a few marks on some bedroom walls. That should have cost less than $100 plus touch up painting. If The Rise's vendors are billing them these charges, they're getting ripped off and the tenant is paying the price. It’s also likely the photos they take are mixed up or zoomed in certain light with poor reflection as my son’s shower photo didn't match their photo of his clean shower. I had him take photos after he spent over 2 hours cleaning his bathroom.

In my opinion, the employees from the Rise responding to athe bad reviews is for show to act like they care or will make things right. Likely nothing will ever be done by The Rise or by Corporate, especially after move out. Be aware, according to my son and other residents, they offer incentives for reviews so you can’t trust high reviews you read. Also, if they compensate any residents for issues that apply to many or all residents, such as water outages for several days at a time, they have them sign a non-disclosure statement so that other residents won’t know they’ve been compensated... when really they should be compensating everyone. Hope this helps your decision and saves you future aggravation.

Dear Sandra,

I received a note from the staff that you requested we review the move out charges on your account to confirm they are accurate. I have reviewed the charges on the ledger and in comparison with the vendor invoices for what we paid to turn the apartment.

We were billed as follows:

Full Paint 4x4 = $800.00 Full Cleaning = $325.00 Full Carpet Cleaning =$60.00

Total charges to Rise on Apache...