Rochester Place — Local services in Rochester

EDIT: They will have you sign the lease without showing you the apartment or a model, BEFORE you even see it. They will not give you a tour, only of the pool, leasing office, and stream. They will not show you the apartment before signing any lease.

How is $1,300++ reasonable for 650 square feet, with no heat and no included utilities? And along with flooding and maintenance that do not fix any problems?

Before I am told with an automated message to contact property, we have multiple times. Absolutely no help.

I will be reviewing as calmly and kindly as possible.

Oh yes and a tour was denied of the actual apartment/ or even a model. Only when we moved in. So we were stuck with the place until we moved. Due to covid they said. Even though covid regulations was over by the time we wanted a tour in late January/ early February in 2022.

Heat was broken for months. Never fixed. We were shushed and ignored when the heater broke more, making loud noises in the late night. Causing no sleep. It was due to deposit in the heater from water. Took months to fix from February 2022.

3 floods. We had a lot of damage in cabinets, countertops and our personal items were destroyed. Maintenance “cleaned” with paper towel, only on tile. Left our carpet soaked, personal towels soaked with garbage and sewage from disposal, and food chunks everywhere. We were told things will be replaced. They never were. We were told to not have flood insurance when we moved in….

No payout clauses. Hidden fees.

Broken lock on main entrance for months.

We had to leave months early due to inhabitable environment. When we left, after we lived off site, they charge us extra “after lease utilities” twice as much as normal. It was never on lease that this payment was coming.

Ignored our calls. Ignored our complaints. Ignored our cries for help. Once I was greeted on the phone “what do you need/want”.

Maintenance orders never done. They were always marked completed, even if I was home all day. No one showed up. They only offered to fix things after we said we were leaving. But I said “we leave in 1 week. Now you decide to help? This is unacceptable”.

Overpriced for 650 SQUARE FEET. $890 for that small space, and now over $1,000….

New utility services payment which lumped EVERY TENANTS use, to an average. So we paid for EVERYONE lumped in an average. Not just our own. Without proper explanation or notice.

We tried to call to talk about our issues. We did all we could. We were taken care of moving in, but when they got us locked, we were treated like strangers.

We were insulted by being asked “do you even know how the heat works?” With the type of heaters they use. They said heat from pipes in walls…no heat blows out. But 1 month before leaving, heat blew from heaters up to 90 degrees, even with the heat off. Took over a week to fix the issue.

The 10 months were full of uncertainty and inhabitable living spaces. We were not valued. Only paid attention to, when we were about to sign for lease.

During maintenance, we asked to be notified when they looked at work orders. They only came when no one was home, or never called/texted.

Inspections were also never done, like the 2 times that were required. No one ever showed up to inspect.

Also our fridge’s seal was broken (in opening checklist marked broken) that was never repaired after constant work orders marked completed.

As you can tell this has not been a happy experience or livable at the fact. Broken promises and neglect at the absolute finest.

The following is some evidence (because they didn’t not believe us) of the floods, water damage, and...

TL:DR - This place is run by complacent, incompetent people. Bills are outrageously high for run-down apartment buildings. Runaway as fast as you can. My husband and I lived here for 5 years. Every year got worse and worse in every way. Rent increased majorly every year. Our first-year rent was $680 plus utilities. Now they charge $1000 for a 650 sq. ft. apartment. Appliances are old and outdated. There were bloodstains on our carpet when we moved in, so they also don't replace it between every tenant like they say. We lived in a building with 11 apartments and we all had to share one small, mildewed washing machine and a dryer that squealed so loudly we could hear it in our apartment. To use those machines you have to leave your building, cross the bridge to the leasing office, and hope you have the right kind of bills to reload your laundry card. We went to a coin laundromat more often than not. The main maintenance man is the only competent employee there. We had only great experiences with him, but there are by no means enough staff to handle the entire complex. We still had unaddressed work orders when we moved out. This lack of staff also led to almost no attention to snow and ice removal. The parking lot was a skating rink, and my husband ended up falling and getting a concussion. Another neighbor fell on the exterior stairs. The main office responded by putting buckets of salt out for us to scatter ourselves. One summer a squirrel nest was found in one of the A/C units in our building. After they were removed the maintenance man told the office manager he needed to put a screen on it to keep them from coming back. She loudly told him they $7 was coming out of his budget if he decided to do it. The A/C units also shoot rocks and ice out of them. We had multiple bug infestation issues. When we left we were battling small black beetles in our bathroom. We had frequent spiders, and the centipedes were so bad that we had to use a Swiffer to kill them. We had hundreds every Spring through Winter. The office workers are painful to deal with. On the rare occasion they tried to communicate with us, they would call us and not leave a message, then complain about us not answering. During the pandemic, they tried to bully us into resigning our lease early and when we said we needed to evaluate our finances they said "You're getting stimulus money, you're fine." They also STOLE our bicycles and stored them in a locked basement room. We happen to see them through a window and got them back only because we said we had filed a police report. When Amy came to unlock the room and give them to us we saw half a dozen other bikes and she told us it was good we called when we did because they were about to sell them all. None of the equipment in the fitness center works, and it is only accessible from 9-5 on weekdays when the office is "open". Best of luck though, because the office workers now lock the doors during business hours and only answer when you knock repeatedly. We were almost unable to turn our keys in because of this. The new management company has just made it worse. They changed how utility bills are calculated for electricity. They now take the cost for the entire building and divide it evenly among residents. Our bill for our last month was $90, even though we only lived in our apartment for 13 days. Our average bill was under $40...

I lived here for 4 years and it was a great place to live but Hartman & Tyner sucks. Here is my honest and thorough review of Rochester Place:

The staff of Rochester Place are great and the apartment itself was too, very fairly priced considering the location. I found it extremely nice being so close to Paint Creek trail and the parks. But the more I lived there the more I found that the owners, Hartman & Tyner, are a real problem. I think living here is a good choice but lock your bikes up in the storage room. There is an bike theft epidemic in that complex and Hartman & Tyner refuses to do anything about it. When I tried to make a notice to warn the other residents, they told me I couldn't post anything. I said well can you tell them? They told me that it's already in their lease, that it's advised to keep their bikes in storage. I asked if they could set up cameras or security lighting and they said Hartman & Tyner had tried that in their other locations and they didn't find it cost effective. I was pretty upset with that because I had just had my 3rd bike stolen. They take up a lot of room in your storage unit and it's hard getting it up the stairs. It's just so cheap to tell me to store it in my storage room rather than fixing the problem.

Also when they plow the parking lot, they never plow the parking spaces. Never. So get a shovel because you will have to shovel yourself out of your space to get out. and if you don't want to continue to have problems getting in and out of the spaces, then you'll have to shovel those too because maintenance never does it.

When you move in, make sure you take photos of everything in the apartment and make sure you keep your check in list. take photos of your apartment throughout your years there too. Because they are very stingy when it comes time to compile your damages.

Also, not handicap accessible and there are a ton of building code violations. But the complex looks really pretty in the summer and all my neighbors were nice. There were a few ppl in the building across from mine that got drunk and yelled in the yard a few times but it only happened a handful of times.

I've got other issues with Hartman & Tyner but my main conclusion is that they are stingy. I think it's a good place to live because it's cheap and it's very close to town. In general, Rochester is a a safe place to live and I always felt safe in my aapartment. I like that the front door locks so it's a double measure of security. The windows are nice and bug and provide a lot of light, especially if they're east facing. But over the years I grew annoyed with the parent company and with how they treated me. So don't expect to be treated well, the staff with Rochester Place are great and I've never had any problems with them, but Hartman & Tyner just looks at you like you're another number...