The Flats at West Alabama — Local services in Houston

I would not recommend FWA or any Greystar property for the following reasons:

Freight elevator was constantly broken. Longest outage seemed to run around 6 wks but there were multiple shorter outages throughout. Stick on flooring repeatedly peeled up after multiple unsuccessful attempts from maintenance to repair it. Package delivery was a headache. You have to pay an additional fee for a 3rd party delivery service so FWA staff doesn’t have to deal with packages. Cheap countertops/walls. Both easily scuff at the slightest touch and are difficult to fix. Constant ongoing construction throughout our stay - additional eye sore. Vehicle break ins - They hired a security guard at one point but it was for only a short time before I stopped seeing them on property. Poor electrical circuitry - Anything more than 1 appliance running in the kitchen seemed to frequently trip the circuit breaker. Water filter replacement used to be a covered maintenance request but they now charge you for it - additional unnecessary fee Courtyard noise level - during the summer, residents frequently were blasting music in the courtyard way past curfew. Not a huge deal if it was the weekend but it frequently happened during the work week. We accidentally put our trash out early (honest mistake). FWA Asst Mgr allowed someone they were touring to throw trash in our bin and still proceeded to charge us for placing it out early. FWA Asst Mgr accidentally unlocked our door - they did not notify us about this until we contacted them out of concern for our safety Multiple rent payment platform changes throughout our stay - additional headache trying to rush and get your bank hooked up every time it changes to avoid getting a late charge Sink collapse - woke up one morning to our sink caved in with nothing more than a few tupperwares in it(see picture). Spoke with another resident who had the same thing happen. According to maintenance this is a pretty common occurrence. Door to the garage consistently did not have its handle (see picture). Forced you to stick your hand inside and attempt to not cut your hand on the sharp metal. Management - they’re difficult to get a hold over via email/phone. The handful of times I went down to the office at opening they wouldn’t arrive for at least another 20 mins. Move out - maintenance yelled at us for parking our Uhaul in the loading bay even after we had booked the timeslot multiple weeks in advance Move out fees - spent roughly 6 hrs cleaning and still received notice of additional fees required. FWA will shrug you off to corporate (Greystar) to which they just asked the apartment what they think and then promptly declined our claim despite having documented these issues on the move-in form.

Extremely disappointed in our experience with FWA...

Don't sign here, I lived here in a 3B2B unit for one year, and was charged for $1800 when moved out.

The apartment charged us $800 dollars to replace all carpet. When we moved in, the carpet is not brand new. They sent us a table that calculates the age of carpet in some unexplained way, and asked us to be responsible for the carpet life lost. No matter how much effort you put to keep it clean, they charge you anyways.

The management is also terrible. In last winter, there was severe weather in Houston, and one window in our apartment was cracked by the cold temperature. We informed the front desk about this and they told us someone will fix it. It turns out that nobody came and we were charged for $350 for the window.

They charged us $400 cleaning fee, $150 for cleaning and $250 for ozone machine. We cleaned our apartment for almost one week, left all windows open for one week to refresh the air, and still got charged. They expected everything to be brand new. They also said that the ozone machine is necessary to remove the “smoke smell”. We don’t smoke and your apartment will have “smoke smell” if you cook. We were also told that some cleaning fees are for pest control, even though we paid monthly pest control fee and there was no pest control when we lived there.

There is also no way to dispute. The staff of the Greystar is extremely rude. He ignored my emails and calls for 1 month. When I was finally able to reach him, he just sent me all the invoices, and then asked me to pay. He said that he only took care of the invoices and documents, which is saying that even the apartment charged you unnecessarily, as long as they have an invoice, you need to pay. He also refused us to dispute, and said that they will send our information to third-party collection if we don’t pay. After this, he hang up immediately and sent me a final reminder email about sending us to third-party collection. So in the whole disputing process, we were ignored for more than one month, only spoke with staff for less than 5 minutes, saw invoices for unnecessary charges, and received a final reminder.

My final advice is: Don’t sign here unless you are or you have a lawyer. If you have already signed, mark sure you take as much pictures and videos as possible, before moving on and after moving out. Make sure you have records for any communications with the staff. In this way, hopefully you will get charged less. To avoid the additional air cleaning fee, I would recommend to keep some air sample for your apartment, if you are able to do this and this costs you less than $250. If you haven’t done any of...

Don't even THINK about signing a lease here until you read about my 90 day experience at the Flats.

I stayed in an airbnb here for 3 months. You can decide for yourself if you want to live here or not.

The person who lived upstairs was waking me up 3-4 times per week. The flats is very poorly built. You can hear a ton of footsteps from units above you. It sounded like a 500 pound person was jumping up and down. I suffer from insomnia and this def wrecked my sleep.

The pool is quite noisy. You can hear it at night. Adds to the noise of the place.

The staff has an attitude.

My drain clogged multiple times. This place was built in 2021 and is falling apart. It took multiple visits from plumbers to clean the place. They said someone poured grease down the drain from another unit and it flew to my unit. My place stunk.

The GFCI outlets kept tripping. I reported it multiple times to the complex. The repair guy didn't fix a think. I would hear the GFCI outlet trip 10X per day. I am not an electrician but this is probably not safe. They could care less about fixing this.

The latch app I am not a fan of. Good luck if you lose power. lol The fob is superior unless you are an airbnb landlord.

The air filter was dirty as hell. It was not replaced at all the first few years. Maybe the airbnb jocks fault

The printer in the office didn't work. I needed to print an important business document and it was BROKEN. Like everything else at this place.

The ELEVATOR was BROKEN 3 of the first 4 weeks I lived there. I was parking on the roof so it sucked to get to the first floor.

The centipedes and bugs are real. When it's warmer outside they are much more active. So expect bugs in the warmer months.

All of this happened in 3 months!

It's not a bad place if you are younger and tolerant to issues like this. But if you are older and...