The Wilde — Local services in Raleigh

I moved down to Raleigh from Michigan with very little knowledge of the area. At first, I thought I had found a hidden gem in the U Raleigh with low rent, great amenities and nice furnishings. However, the longer that I have been here, the worse the problems get. The management team has no communication with or consideration for its residents. To start, I signed for one bedroom in a 4 Bedroom apartment. At move-in I found out I would only have one other roommate as they were not able to fill the rest of the apartment. However, a little under a month after getting settled, I came home to find my apartment unlocked and random people that I had never met before checking the apartment out. They appeared to be staff and future residents but were never introduced as such. This happened multiple times, where the staff would come in, unannounced and unapologetic to show our apartment. (Why they did not show these potential residents a show room like the one I was shown is beyond me). Then, two more girls did end up signing, but again, the U did not communicate AT ALL with us, I still have no idea what the girl's name is or how to contact one of them as we run on different schedules and have little to know interaction. I have tried to contact management, but they were extremely dismissive and never replied. Additionally, if you are not a student and work normal 9-5 hours, you are screwed as far as picking up packages, contacting management, etc. goes. Their office hours are 10-6, no exceptions. This also means that the offices spaces and computer areas are also only open at those times, because they don't have anyone on site to lock/unlock rooms. There is an emergency maintenance phone number, but no emergency landlord number to call. The pool was locked every weekend of August and September because "they were unable to coordinate someone who would be onsite to unlock the facility". I suppose that's what you get when you rent from a complex that only staffs students in their management offices. Residents resorted to jumping the 6 foot fence to use the pool anyways. As a student or as a young professional, it seems rather obvious that the most popular time to hang around a pool would be the weekend. But, this management team has no consideration for the best interests of their residents. I get multiple emails saying that my rent is past due, when I pay it on time each month, come to find out, it's a glitch in their email system that has subject lines that do not correspond to the actual email. THERE IS NO VISITOR PARKING. This has been a huge issue, I have asked multiple management people where visitor parking is and no one seems to know for sure, I have gotten multiple answers, some say it's in front of clubhouse, other's say its in the designated visitor spots, others claim that those visitor spots aren't truly visitor spots and the towing company doesn't consider them as such. All it says in the lease is that visitor's need to park in designated areas or they will be towed. Well, I asked a security guard and he assured me my visitor's car would not get towed parked where it was, but it did anyways. When I contacted management, they were EXTREMELY rude, condescending and dismissive. They told me that these were just the rules and that's the way they've always been so I should've known better despite the lack of clarity in the lease and the assurance otherwise from the security guard. They offered to contact the towing company and call me back, but they never followed up with me. If you ever have a visitor here, you are doomed, because there is never an open space and management doesn't want to have any part of it. Overall, their customer service and consideration for their residents is extremely lacking. I would strongly dissuade anyone who is trying to rent from this place to reconsider. It's easy to be fooled by their social media and internet presence that they care, but it all goes away as soon as they...

0/5 stars. My roommate who had already lived here for a year tried to talk me out of this place, and I should have listened to him. Here's why.

Maintenance requests take months. My dresser was missing a drawer since I moved in in August, and it took them until February to fix it. One pic below is from the day before they left the dresser outside overnight, before they finally got around to bringing it up to my apartment; the other is from July, until which point its companion dresser has still been left outside like trash for 5 months. The shelves pulled out of the wall of my closet in November (pic attached). 3 weeks later they "had ordered the parts." They were never fixed before I moved out after a year. Numerous other maintenance requests had a similar timeframe. I imagine it would have been really bad if we had experienced flooding or bugs the way other reviewers here have. Upon being questioned about the long delays, admin responded that they were still awaiting parts, and that they had a lot of other reqs to fill. Not only are they failing to provide maintenance (their only job) for me personally; if their claim is true that it's taking so long because they have many other reqs, that means it must be taking this long for many of them as well, so it's not an isolated incident.

Edit: they have more recently admitted their problems were because they're low on workers, which means their above "parts order delay" excuse was a lie. Also, this does not absolve them; if they can't provide services because they won't pay enough to attract workers, they deserve to go out of business.

The resident portal, through which tenants can submit and monitor the status of maintenance requests, does not function properly. There is a section captioned "past requests," which presumably should contain some record of when you requested maintenance and when that was provided. That section is always blank, so it's either broken (which would be incompetence on the part of management) or they delete requests (which would be malice). I'm inclined to attribute this to the latter, since fixing this would make it easier for residents to quantify exactly how long their response times are. Whenever I would ask at the office about my open requests, they (edit: almost) always confirmed an accurate account of the ones they had records of, so I guess there's some miscommunication happening between their database and whatever updates the resident portal. However, this is important because it demonstrates that the long wait times are not because maintenance was unaware of the issues; they knew perfectly well about the issues, and they STILL took months to fix the problems in the apartment.

There are, as other residents have pointed out here, notoriously few parking spaces. This is not simply because the lots are too small; it's because management has seen fit to place numerous shipping containers lengthwise across like seven spaces each, in many locations throughout the complex. Good luck getting a spot near your building if you're out past 10pm.

(edit: removed a complaint about a construction project that finally got finished).

This may seem like a small thing, but there are no lights in the living, dining, or laundry areas. Bring lots of lamps, if you insist on staying here, which I do not recommend. We had to buy or bring our own.

In conclusion, this establishment's only redeeming factor is that it technically shelters you from the elements and is located near campus alongside better apartments, which does not justify the $725 rent we continue to pay monthly in exchange for the privilege of letting our maintenance requests fall on deaf ears. If you can, I implore you to shop elsewhere for housing, because these people will not help you when something inevitably breaks.

Edit: One of their placating replies below offered for me to reach out to the office. I continued to for the rest of the year, with no result. Please, live...

I lived at the Wilde over the course of the 2023-2024 Academic year, so I suppose now is my turn to leave a review of this complex.

In general, I had a positive experience living at The Wilde. The unit I was in was in a convenient location, and in good condition upon move-in. Some things, such as our AC unit were broken on move-in, however their maintenance staff was quick to help us keep it running with a temporary solution until they could perform a more permanent fix a week or two after moving in. In general, every issue was able to be fixed by maintenance in a mostly timely manner with the exception of a hole under our kitchen sink that took them several months to fix.

Bugs are present here as they are in all college apartments, and like all college apartments your bug-related experience will vary greatly depending on which floor you are on. In my case, we were second floor and therefore it was pretty easy to manage. You can submit maintenance requests to have pest control come spray, and whenever bugs started to become more of a problem that was a good enough solution for us.

As far as noise is concerned: the walls and doors are paper-thin. You will be able to hear your roommates in every room in your apartment, people in nearby apartments, and people outside. This complex being largely composed of college students, you can certainly expect some noise outside during weekends. In my particular case, my room was against the wall facing the staircase, which came with its own source of noise.

Something else of note: the internet here is usually kind of terrible. It's consistently jittery, and the actual speed can vary drastically. When we signed we were told there would be wired internet support, and while there are Ethernet ports in all rooms, they are not hooked up because the complex refuses to support them. If they extended their support to Ethernet I believe a lot of the inconsistencies with the internet connection speed would be fixed. Furthermore, the unit's router cannot be accessed by residents, so when it randomly goes down your only choice is to either wait for it to come back or call their ISP: WhiteSky, which was generally unhelpful in my experience.

One other thing that I think certainly could be improved is the outside of the apartments, which seem to be pretty neglected. Many buildings have staircases with damaged concrete exposing rebar, which could be hazardous to residents. There have also been times when maintenance would dig a hole to access some pipes underground, fill the hole with dirt, and then leave it, resulting in patchy dead grass spots with lots of weeds. The walls and concrete outside can get quite dirty as well. There are also issues with residents leaving dog poop outside without cleaning it up, resulting in a pretty bad smell as well. All of this results in a pretty ugly experience that could be improved drastically with some basic lawn maintenance and an annual pressure-wash.

All-in-all, this complex wasn't nearly as bad to me as some reviewers claim it has been to them. However, I'm certain that your mileage will vary based on building, floor, and individual unit. Some certainly seem more neglected than others. But, in my case, our apartment was in relatively good shape, maintenance was responsive, and the price was really good considering it all. While it has its issues, I could certainly say that this was a great value for a place to live for how much my lease was, especially in the current housing market.

Regardless, outside that value, there's nothing really special here compared to nearby competition, which is why I rate my stay at the...