Vela at Tempe Town Lake — Local services in Tempe

I have a lot of nice things to say about the community and some of the management team. I've been here for 2 years now and have experienced 5 different units but I feellike things are progressively getting worse.

Be mindful of the location near parking garages, lots of sounds and alarms through the shallow walls. The walls are thin so you can hear just about everything. I've taken the time to thoughtfully write this review if you're considering Vela.

I transfered 8-14-24 to a unit with a dryer that doesn't work. I've had over 5 visits from maintenance and they replaced it today with a faulty dryer that doesn't dry my clothes. My electric bill is over $250.

The unit above me leaked over a month ago and I have water stains all over my ceiling that have yet to be addressed.

The faucet leaked under my sink and they replaced the faucet but didn't dry it out and it smells musky moldy. Overall this complex is just going downhill. For 2600 a month, this is unacceptable.

I have found invalid charges on my account that took forever to fix. In fact one year they had inappropriately charged my account for months, equating to a couple hundred dollars. You have review your account frequently. Since my transfer, I have not had issues with billing. Note- They also charge you for common area electric, amenity fee, valet trash (that sometimes doesn't get picked up), and I'm sure there's more.

Upon my last move out I was told I needed to return the apartment in the order received and professionally steam clean the carpets.. after I returned keys and was charged $75 for carpet cleaning whereas my last 4 lease transfers that didnt apply. I was also charged $160 for a glass stove top and $90 for small nail holes (i was ok with that one- Im not the best at hanging decor 🤷‍♀️). They expect you to return it turnkey so they dont have to do any maintenance for the new tenant. Why charge a transfer fee & still bill for maintenance that is going to be needed regardless of length occupied? One or the other seems fair.

The lease transfer fee is $500 which they very generously waived due to me not getting my lease renewal credit for needing to move to a 2 bedroom... however it used to be $300. I lost my lease renewal credit of $800 because they saidit didn't apply to the new unit. They currently offer up to 8 weeks free for new residents. They used to offer different lease term rates, now they offer a consistent top of market rate.

Tempe town lake public restrooms are right by Vela entrances.

For about 4 months the garage gates didn't work. All the tempe town lake events cause an overflow of parking into our guest lot as well as the garage wheh its left open. The Hot tub was inoperable for 1-2months. There are excessive ants at the daybeds by the pool. And it smells of dog urine because the adjacent apartments dog park is neighboring the pool. Pool furniture needs replaced or cleaned.

We have a problem with homeless people occasionally getting in the building/facilities.

The pool bathroom is just disgusting/not sanitary.

The hallway paint was touched up but you can see how they never painted it to the ceiling or baseboards. All of the units I've lived in have had partial paint jobs showing the different tones and dented refrigerators yet its a luxury apartment. They repaint the tubs to look white but after a few showers you'll see how gross they are.

The third floor of the parking garage is half strictly electric vehicle parking now.

The call box to enter without a fob never works, packages are often missed and if you forget your fob you're S.O.L. The perks are the location.

Errin and Julia are easy to communicate with. I feel they have good intentions but overall experience has just been non satisfactory. I would be thrilled to see them work closer with their existing residence level of experience versus being focused on new lease ups.

If you're interested knowing some highly recommended complexes on the lake comment below and I'm happy to share my experiences and...

Our unit was not available on our move in day, despite us calling earlier that morning to confirm its availability. Apparently they simply forgot to clean it for us. We were forced to then find lodging for the night. They offered a storage unit for the night, which just happened to be on a completely different part of the complex, which nearly doubled our move in time. As mentioned above, we were forced to wait another day to move in because it wasn’t clean, but then when we did actually move in, our unit was still not clean. We were promised two parking spots and two key fabs on our initial tour to try to get us to move in, and then on move in day we were charged for both. I’m sure we aren’t the only people they have used this tactic on. It routinely takes more than a week or two for any maintenance requests to be completed. If you mark anything as “low” priority, they essentially assume it doesn’t need their attention. One request took more than a month to complete, and was only completed because we repeatedly contacted the office and the maintenance department. Our circuit breaker routinely shuts down while using multiple kitchen appliances. This was brought to the attention of the on call maintenance person who simply told us to turn it back on each time that it happens. One of the times we fixed it, two of the outlets in our kitchen quit working and it took nearly a month for maintenance to fix them. Our fridge intermittently leaks water onto the floor. This was also brought to the attention of the on call maintenance person who said the ice maker sometimes does that and just to clean it up each time. Multiple exterior doors are frequently left open for anyone to come in and out as they please. This has been brought to the attention of the staff who say they are “trying” to fix it, but nothing has been done. This complex is absolutely not secure. There are allegedly quiet hours, but multiple times we have been woken up in the middle of the night (on week days) with music blasting from the community stereo. It took months for them to limit the degree of noise allowed overnight. The community utilizes a valet trash system, which is fine, but because of that people often leave their trash in the hallway on non-Valet days (Friday and Saturday) which often leaves the hallways smelling like trash throughout the weekend. Residents often leave trash bags in the stairwells, and they usually don’t get cleaned up for multiple days. Someone threw a bunch of sauce (probably marinara, who knows) on the wall of one of the public hallways. This was left there by the staff for nearly a week. Once is was brought to their attention they simply painted over the sauce on the wall, while leaving all the residual sauce on the floor, INCLUDING THE CONTAINER THE SAUCE CAME IN. We had to contact them AGAIN to clean up the floor and the sauce container, and they didn’t clean that part up for another 36-48 hours. The pools are busy on weekends, which is fine, but many residents leave beer cans all over the pool and do not clean up after themselves. Once I saw a group of residents leave a broken glass beer bottle near the pool. A mom had to end up cleaning it up so her kids didn’t step in the broken glass. Weekend/Monday mornings are a disaster around here. There has been some turnover in the office staff, but it hasn’t seemed to make much of a difference. Nothing seems to change, and certainly not in a timely manner. They will repeatedly tell you that they are “doing their best,” but if this is truly their best, you should probably find somewhere else to live. If you are looking for a college dorm, this is the place for you, but they advertise as a place for “professionals” which certainly is not the case. The only thing we will miss about this place is the proximity to the lake, but otherwise we can’t get out of here...

Let me start off by saying that this location is beautiful. Wonderful location because it has a park, had a great view of the river even though not 24hrs Park security will also harass you, some staff was nice and helpful. This is where it went downhill. When my husband and I moved then we were not informed that it was a alleged smoke-free community now we understand certain areas of the community were smoke-free like the common areas but on our own balcony are they tried saying no smoking it was very irritating. I got a phone call and of course I missed it because I was at work from Marria Stating that she had several complaints about smoking on the inside of our unit in which has never happened and smoking on the balcony in which did happen occasional. In which I mean for the amount that we were paying nothing like this should be said. This should be something that was brought up before moving it but it was not. So we alleviate that situation we get another call from the same manager at the time stating about a notice yes smoking does not cease we will be forced to send notice. I not only then reached out to the manager but the regional manager as well. The regional stated something about smoke free Arizona in which I’m familiar with it and that just means common areas I have never heard that someone could not smoke on their own balcony. We initially wanted to break the lease completely unfortunately was not given the option even though it was a total inconvenience, we were offered to move in to a sister property in which we still had to do the whole application process again, my commute to work is longer, on top of paying another deposit again which I’m a little confused why especially if this was because the smoking situation and supposed to be a transfer.Even though they offered certain specials in which I’m pretty sure other tenants were getting we still never understood the situation. We were told that it was a smoke-free community and that there was signage throughout the whole community we scaled all areas and the only spots that were not permitted for smoking was the common areas in which is common sense. It was supposed to be a transfer that happened for the new community but now we are stuck in another lease in which should have not been happening from the beginning. One person I can say that has been very helpful is Ann at the beginning of everything. I would not recommend this location if you are a smoker. I can say so much right now but this post is already very long. The current place we are at is Vela on Camelback and although it is nice it is not only smaller but on certain days we get a foul trash smell in our closet in the restroom as well as in our bedroom I have brought it to managements attention when I informed them of where it is coming from I did not hear anything else. Vela Tempe town...