Decatur Highlands — Local services in Decatur

I lived here for 2 years. The apartment is pretty good itself even though its awfully OVERRATED. However, if you are thinking about living here in long term, DON'T!!!

I know this review is long but I hope you read this if you are considering this apartment.

Their service is horrible. My first maintenance request was about master bedroom's light. I was not at home and the maintenance guy step on my bed with his shoes on(i can clearly see the foot print on my white sheet). After that, I never gave permission to enter my apartment without me being there but always just get in to my apartment whenever they want. I asked them not to but they said since this apartment is still their property, they can come in to my apartment whenever they want (apparently no privacy). So instead, I ask them to call me before coming to my apartment(the office people said they guarantee that they will call) so I can come back from wherever I am at but they did not call me, not even once for entire 2 years. NO APOLOGY, keep saying i will let the maintenance guy know next time.

Moreover, I no hot water once on Friday so I called on Saturday morning to fix it. They mentioned that since it is an emergency situation, they will definitely send someone over before 7pm (I called at 10:30am). I called again at 4:30pm not asking when are the person coming but just asking if someone will ever come today (so if not, i can go grab dinner). The person said he will call me back before he leaves. Of course he did not call me and nobody showed up. I gave up and took a shower in my friend's house because the office person said that maintenance people are off on Sunday. On Sunday morning, when i was still sleeping somebody came to fix it. Good thing that they actually fixed it but he did something wrong. Soon my apt was full of burning smell (the office said if I dont see actual fire, I should not call 911) so my roommate went to the office for help and since the only person there was so busy, I went there again after an hour. The only person there was the one who supposed to call me the day before. I asked why did you not call me and he said oh I asked my colleague to call you and she said she did it. NO APOLOGY AGAIN. I was in hurry to fix this and he just keeps interfere my explanation so his voice and my voice went up together. He suddenly said "Since you are yelling at me I don't want to talk to you anymore. This conversation is ended Thanks Bye"(he literally said this). He yelled at me too LOL. I went back to my apt hided in my closet where is least affected by the smell. Since I had really bad asthma, I was having a tough time (for at least an hour) so my roommate ran to the office again and asked for help again, he said he is too busy to tour future residents. As a result, I was in my closet for more than 2 hours and the maintenance guy said that one part of our hot water heater burned.

Even though this apartment is a total piece of sh?t, because its the closest and cheapest(comparably) apartment around this area, I was trying to make a new contract again in different apt(since my roommate is leaving) they said since I am the returning resident, they will waive my application fee. They said I had to pay online to complete application and they said they will refund it after they check my application on their system. However, because of that emergency situation, I decided not to live here anymore so I asked to cancel my application. The property manager said he is so sorry that he will refund what i have paid and investigate what happened and email me. And guess what?? He DID NOT do any of those!! He did not email me, he did not cancel my application, instead he processed it. And said since the application has been processed, I cannot refund your fee. WHATTTT? All he said is "I don't remember what I said to you". Guess you need to record every word that he says.

To sum up, I DO NOT recommend this apartment if you want to keep your inner peace. And the office people are seriously poorly managed and...

On September 9th, 2014 there were three break ins in one single morning.

The pedestrian gate is always open and the card system (to get in the complex or leave the complex) has not worked since we moved in, so basically anyone can come in from the street just by pulling the door. The car gates didn't work for a week and they didn't fix the problem until the afternoon after the break ins. By the way, Highland's manager (Tanis Tamar) was completely aware about this situation because he even sent an e-mail to the tennants.

Highland's staff doesn't take security inside the complex seriously and they don’t take any measures to prevent theft or burglaries inside the complex. Management just leaves the gates wide open which is absurd as the smartest thing to do -while the gates are not woking properly- is to place a gatekeeper to open and close the gates to the tennants only, but not leaving the gates wide open 24/7 making the safety of the complex (even) more vulnerable.

The thieves, of course, felt completely sure that no one will look at them as they are aware there's no security at the complex (at all). I've never heard before of 3 break ins in a single morning in the same complex. I am sure that there must be some kind of complicity with their maintenance staff, so be careful if you plan to rent here because this place is not safe.

Just take a took a look inside the apartments and check the doors and locks. We proved that their locks barely go into the door's wood frame but if they were properly installed locks they should go into the structure of the wall. There is negligence in the way Highland installed the locks in the apartments, because they are of really poor quality. We didn't even have a chain lock on our door. Obviously, the thieves knew about this kind of locks, because to kick in three doors as easily as they did could only mean that they were completely aware of this issue.

I would like to let you know that everyone living in Highland Lake is at huge risk with this poor quality locks and I find female students particularly vulnerable to this. I think all Emory University students should be notified of this and students looking for an apartment should never consider Highland Lake as an option. E.g. our three front neighbors are three Emory female students and the thieves broke into their apartment too. You can't even think what could've happened if one of these girls would have been there. We could be talking about a tragedy now.

Finally, Highland's manager (Tanis Tamar) told us that they are not responsible for security inside the complex because that was DeKalb County Police's duty and that was why he paid taxes for, which I consider ridiculous since Highland Lake is private property owned and administered by Fairfield Residential and as far as I know, the County Police is not responsible for security inside private streets like the ones inside...

Three flooded apartments in 3.5 years in three separate apartments caused by frozen pipes in the upstairs apartments or malfunctions in the sprinkler system. The first flood was three winters ago due to a frozen sprinkler pipe in the apartment upstairs. The most recent two of these floods happened in the last 8 days. Last week, multiple apartments in different buildings (mine included) flooded due to frozen pipes. Apparently they turned off water to the sprinklers then to stop further flooding. I moved out of my flooded apartment to a new one this weekend, and three days later they turned water back on to the sprinkler system to test it. Guess what, the new apartment flooded too.

Do not move here. Live on the top floor if you must live here because if a flood happens in the top floor apartment, all the ones underneath will be affected. Especially the lower set of buildings seem to have serious plumbing problems. Maybe the set of buildings on top of the hill is better, although there seems to be more parties and noise up there.

Maybe you could ask for a written disclosure of the flood history in the unit before you sign a lease?? I know at least buildings 3, 5, and 8 have been affected by flooding but maybe others as well.

I would also recommend asking them to add a clause to your lease allowing you to move out without penalty if your apartment floods due to burst pipes in another unit or a malfunctioning sprinkler system, because these things are totally out of your control and will ruin your experience and waste huge amounts of your time. Even if you get flooded repeatedly, you will have to fight tooth and nail to get out of your lease without paying an exorbitant penalty. If you are expecting management to be reasonable and take responsibility for their own plumbing issues, you are in for a surprise.

Plenty of other issues here - noisy undergrads, maintenance that is extremely slow (took them nearly 6 months to fix a leak in my ceiling prior to flood number 2), the security gate is usually not working properly, etc.

EDIT: just wanted to say, I just read Heejin Park's review below and he experienced the exact same issues with dealing with people in the leasing office. If someone says they will do something like call you, email you, update your information in a file, remove an application from the system, etc. do not assume they will do so. If you do not have written evidence of an interaction, they may deny they ever spoke to you. Do all maintenance requests using the online system and both leave a message and put it in the written system. If maintenance closes your repair request without actually doing the repair work or coming by the apartment (this happens about 50% of the time in my experience), put the request right back in and call the maintenance center again so you have a record in the system that they have not done the...