Villas at Chestnut Ridge — Local services in Town of Amherst

Not very suitable for graduate students. Pros and cons (in no order): That said, the front office student staff are very kind and helpful but there's only so much they can do. I suspect the management runs the place with a very thin set of full time staff. In the 1.5 years of my stay here I've only seen 1 maintenance guy who's consistently on the premises. A real nice hard working guy who's out clearing snow all by himself on the massive property at 6am in the frigid sub-freezing temperatures. That's pretty much the story with almost all of the other office staff. They work hard but are starved of resources and man power. Some of the problems I've seen here are: The ducks are really everywhere in the summer and dirty up the area. Even after repeated complains they do little to get the ducks away from the buildings even during breeding season when the ducks chase after people. During break time they like to turn off the street lights to the point that parking becomes dangerous and you might very well hit into an adjacent car. Buildings 10 and 11 are neglected in my opinion because they happen to be in the farthest corner of the property and I see all the above problems worsen near these buildings. The roads were very bad the first year of my stay and they decided to repair them which was great but it was managed very poorly with by pass routes not being laid out and massive confusion between the road workers and the office staff along with neighbor street homeowners venting out on unsuspecting residents for using their roads. I nearly missed class and had to park my car at the office and walk all the way to building 11 (at the other end of the property) on more than one occasion. The walls are not paper thin but the place is kinda noisy and it becomes an issue if you have lots of work to do (all the time) when the other students do not have exams. Taking important official calls (interviews/company, etc) can be very tricky cos randomly someone might just end up loudly storming down the staircase right outside your door. On the plus side the place is secure, with cops patrolling the place every so often and except the rare party nights I haven't seen people doing crazy stuff on the street. The postal management is also not as good as it could be, they only log USPS packages in the office while all other packages are just left outside the building on the open floor. With so many people ordering from amazon and UPS, FedEx the valuable packages keep lying outside unprotected and open to rain or snow damage. If you've an expensive package (maybe a new phone or laptop) the only option that's worked for me is to try to ask the UPS or FedEx delivery to hold the package at their location and go pick it up, which is definitely an extra step and extra gas on the car trip. WiFi issues did occur a few times with one outage lasting 3 days at a stretch but otherwise it's been fine with speed and consistency. They turn off A/C's somewhere in fall for the entire property in one go and when the temperature rises in between it's kind of a pain with the heat which lasts on and off for about a month. The furnishings are not great but certainly not bad. The table isn't the best for serious full time work (as for graduates students with more than one laptop and an elaborate setup). The kitchen chimney (exhaust) is an issue, it doesn't suck the air out of the room so if you're making food with onions in it you're gonna cry a lot :P. The bed is made with poor and stiff planks that hurt and poke through the mattress after a while. Verdict: It's definitely better than quite a few other places but really depends on your needs. As a graduate student I found that the long term stay and the use of the room as a sorta home office proved challenging. I'd instead suggest Flickinger Court on UB campus housing for graduates students. On the other hand the student staff is great and if you're staying here with friends and roommates then you might have a really good time and actually enjoy a...

DO NOT LIVE HERE, THEY ARE JUST STEALING YOUR MONEY!!!! I was a student at UB and lived at Chestnut for the 2024-2025 school year. I decided to move in because I thought it would be cheaper than living on the dorms, but honestly it isn’t. I would not stay here unless you are rich because if you have no money you will become more broke than you were before. Rent is already crazy expensive, but every time you pay there is a $20 fee on top of rent. Also they do not actually put you with roommates you matched with on roomsync. I matched with someone and then they put me with a stranger who would have her parents spend the night downstairs and was a slob. We had ants coming out of the stove because of her and we talked to management, but they did nothing. The bus schedule is unpredictable, so leave early if you don’t want to be late to class. I would say bring your car, but then you have to pay $50 each month to have your car onto of your rent and utilities. They just want your money. Yesterday was move out day and my one roommate and I were cleaning up our apartment, so we didn’t get charged a fee for being dirty even though it is the other roommate who is dirty and we ended up being 2 minutes late to turn in our keys and they are charging us each $200. Each of us have to pay $200 for turning our keys in 2 minutes late because we were trying to clean up to avoid a fee for being dirty. I don’t understand what they are doing with that money. I understand that the lease agreement says you have to be out by 12, but who am I hurting if I turn my keys in 2 minutes late because I was trying to clean up the apartment to make your job easier. If you lose your keys, I understand being charged a feee, but being charged $200 for turning in keys two minutes late is ridiculous. You already took all my money, so how do you expect me to give you any more. Why do you get charged $200 because I know that they aren’t cleaning the apartments the day we move out. I turned in my keys so you aren’t using the money to buy new keys and I know you aren’t using the money for the residents are to upgrade the apartments because the apartments are shitty. Even though they have pest control you will still have bugs in your apartment. Management sucks they don’t care about you all they want is your money. They just want to take your money and for how expensive the apartments are they really aren’t that great. The only good part about the apartment was maintenance. They were always super friendly and showed up as soon as possible when you put...

Villas at Chestnut is OK but I don't know if I would recommend it to other people. My first issue with them started when I had just signed my lease. Unfortunately I had signed it under a manager who was then let go due to so many people being smart enough to not re-lease (and a lack of new leasers), which ended up screwing up my account so badly that it thought I had 3 leases for the same place at the same time, and it took a lot of work between me and the poor person attending the phone to fix. Then, when I moved into my room, the floor and bathroom were both incredibly dirty and a lot of items were missing or damaged. I was charged for the replacement of the items I reported missing in my moving-in paperwork (I think, although the fees they occasionally charge are incredibly cryptic and hard to decipher), and the items were never even replaced by staff. Outside of that the sidewalks aren't maintained during the winter which can be annoying when you're trying to get to the bus without slipping on ice. The bus itself is incredibly crowded in the morning and the bus drivers tend to halt bussing outside of any scheduled break from around 2:35ish-3:20pm when the bus drivers swap vehicles, which can be pretty annoying when you're trying to get to a 3pm class on time. It's also pretty expensive for not a lot of space. You're paying 974/mo (not including utilities) for a cramped room and a full kitchen, and then they tend to slap on a lot of random little fees, all accompanied by a ridiculous charge to even pay your bills through Bilt. I will say that on the bright side, the spa seems okay and the fitness center is pretty nice. The bussing also ends at 10:50pm on weekdays which is convenient for late night student clubs on north/south campus or classes. For those reasons, I can't say the place is outright horrible, but there's definitely better...