The Flats on University — Local services in Fairfax

Edit 4: for the PR guy responding to my review (I removed some details to fit this section in) I have contacted management and they are unhelpful. I have been charged for a parking pass I don't have twice. I want them to fix their system and to either send out an email telling people to check for wrongful charges so they can fix them, or manually review the entries. I know there are others with the same problem as me. Many of the issues I have had are not able to be fixed by management, they were decisions made by corporate to save a buck before the building had foundation. As someone who has worked in residential real estate since high school, I don't see a viable way to fix everything, if you want to do something, stop outsourcing all your work. Nobody wants to pay an $8.00 "convenience fee" to pay rent online because you didn't make your own website, or to resend all our insurance information to foxen because you stopped approving them yourselves.

Edit 5: The usual electrical issues have increased in frequency. All the lights in the apt flicker (I believe because of poor wiring) causing minor annoyances most days.

The Flats has violated my lease and management shrugged it off, they charge fees for everything, including paying your rent. My AC has broken 5 times in the 2 years the flats have been working. The apartments near mine can have their fire alarm going off for over half an hour and nobody will deal with it. Last week the room 4 doors down had its alarm going off for so we thought there might be a real emergency. the fire alarms go off for no reason very frequently. I have seen my own fire alarm go off for these all of these reasons 1. Opening the oven at 350 degrees 2. Boiling water 4. Preheating the oven to 450 degrees (not opening it) Some of the contractors have no concept of professionalism and will show up at your door late at night, and for nothing time sensitive. I had one of the flats outsourced workers knock on my door at 8:15 pm to check if we had any holes in our walls and to see if anything needed to be repainted before our roommate moved in the next week. This was not time sensitive and they could have come back either of the next two days when we had people fixing up my roommates room and I wouldn't even have known they were here. Now let's talk about those people who fixed up my roommates room. I wake up and leave my room, There are contractors cleaning up my old roommates room to get ready for the next one to move in and to my great confusion there as a woman in my living room doing what I can only guess is "supervising" from the furthest place in the apt from the work happening, casually sitting on my couch, scrolling on her phone. I should clarify my reaction to seeing her when I woke up, I thought she was a friend of my roommate or something, no introduction to why there was someone resting on my couch otherwise, I even try introducing myself thinking she was a guest until I see a "borrowed" Safeway shopping cart in my kitchen with a load of maintenance supplies. That's what it took for me to ask who she was. I ask how long they'll be there and she doesn't know. A great supervisor she was, since she couldn't tell me the contractors would be done within the next 5 minutes. The contractors left a mess. I could make out a whole boot print from one of the contractors in the layer of dust on my kitchen floor. I have about half a dozen other stories of terrible management and broken facilities. Our fridge is kept on the least cold setting and my milk and tea keep turning into blocks of ice. Same thing happened to my roommate. (he had top shelf I had bottom one) This one isn't exactly the fault of the flats but if you want to live here it's important. Do you like waking up to screaming in the night? Because you're going to hear a whole lot of screaming, shouting, revving engines, and all the other loud sounds that you only get when you have no noise suppression. I'm at the word cap so this is it for the review, so TLDR at least we're not as bad as...

DO NOT RECOMMEND — Unsafe, Poorly Managed, and Not Worth the Price

I lived at The Flats on University and would not recommend it to anyone. The apartment looks good on a tour, but once you move in, you’ll deal with constant stress, safety issues, and unresponsive management.

Safety is not taken seriously. My roommate’s boyfriend was violent and broke our front door during a police incident. Management knew about the situation and did nothing until my family got involved. When I came back, the unit was trashed, smelled like weed, and had a bong on the table. The manager, Candace, didn’t check the apartment until my aunt called her. They weren’t planning to move me until we pushed for it, and they even tried to charge me more for a safer room.

Maintenance is extremely unreliable. I submitted a request on June 10 to fix our fridge water filter. My roommate did too. They said the part would arrive that week—it wasn’t fixed until July 16. The kitchen sink constantly loses water pressure, and fixes never last. Maintenance is slow, inconsistent, and doesn’t follow up.

Smoking rules are not enforced. People smoke in their rooms even though it’s not allowed. The halls constantly smell like weed. My roommate smoked inside every day and had her boyfriend living with her—both lease violations. Even when my other roommate and I said something, nothing was done until my family stepped in.

Pest issues are real. We had roaches coming in under the front door. Other residents have reported mice. Whether you deal with pests depends on where you’re placed, and there’s no real long-term prevention.

Terrible insulation and air circulation. Walls are thin—you’ll hear everything. Some rooms are freezing, others too hot depending on where the HVAC is. Windows aren’t sealed properly; cold air pours in during winter. They don’t have locks, screens, or grates. Bugs can get in easily and someone could climb through them. Major safety risk.

Build quality is cheap. The walls damage easily, even from Command strips. You’ll be charged for normal wear and tear. Countertops stain quickly, paint chips off, and materials overall are low quality.

Inconsistent treatment of residents. Some residents were given things like door sweeps—others weren’t. Communication is unclear, and lease rules are used only when it benefits management.

Wi-Fi goes out often and building locks frequently stop working after rain. Fobs won’t scan, and residents get locked out.

Final thoughts: The front desk staff is nice, but upper management is the real issue. Candace ignored every major situation until family had to step in. If you care about your safety, comfort, and health, don’t live here. I regret signing a lease. I would've moved...

I lived at the Flats on University for around two years before I moved out recently and there were some pro’s and cons to living here.

Some of the pro’s include: the amenities, which includes a pool, sauna, 24/7 open gym, courtyards, study rooms, and lounge. These were definitely some good additions that the Flats had made to make it more catered and accessible to their customers which were mainly college students.

When I moved in, there were already a couple of issues. There was some chipped floor in my bedroom (and since I was the first to move into that bedroom at all, this must have been an issue on the construction side), and the light on my ceiling fan always flickered.

First few months were extremely nice living here. It seemed like the ideal place to live; there was nothing that seemed to be wrong besides the somewhat frequent fire alarms that were set off, which I wouldn’t blame the flats for since they were false alarms triggered by students being irresponsible.

However, as the first summer approached, there was a large infestation of rats. It spanned throughout the whole building and alarmed many residents of each floor, and although the issue was dealt with it would have been ideal if the problem was resolved earlier which I’ll explain later. My second fall in the flats, I had a very bad water leak in my bathroom ceiling as a result of the people upstairs not keeping a shower curtain. I wish the materials used to construct the ceiling were a bit better so that the issue didn’t happen in the first place.

I’d like to thank maintenance staff in helping mitigate issues as soon as possible. Whenever my roommates or I had an issue they’d be at our front door fairly promptly, they were kind, and they’d make sure the issue was solved.

Additionally, as time progressed, some other issues arose- such as the study rooms becoming smelly (I really have no clue on how often they are cleaned), as well as the garage being forever open to let whomever from the public to enter and do as they will. I’ve seen other residents complain about this too and when I called to ask to resolve this problem, management said there was nothing that could be done about it. I feel like this problem could’ve been dealt with in a better way.

All in all, it’s a place close by to Mason which has a bunch of amenities, and has the basic things necessary for a student to live comfortably there. However, there are some ongoing issues that I hope get solved soon. Hope this...