The Darcy

The Darcy is the worst place I've ever lived. If you value security, availability of management, and peace and quiet, do not live here. In short, the garage is never closed, and random people park in there all the time so half the time you can't park in your designated spot. The door to get INTO the apartment building is open all the time, so it is not secure at all. Every apartment building has the same access code, so there is no security there either - and that's if your door handle stays on your door. When trying to ask management to change any of these things, good luck. You can never get anyone on the phone... not to mention - who even is the management company? In my two years here, the management company changed three times. If you call the building owner, they will direct you to the current management, who will not return your calls or emails. Additionally, the building is not made well, so there is no insulation from your tap-dancing, clog-wearing, music blasting upstairs neighbors. In fact, you can hear their entire conversation. If you live near the stairs, you can hear people coming and going all day and night, and if you live on the second floor, the garage door (when closed!!!!!) is extremely loud. Believe it or not, that is The Darcy in a nutshell. I would give it less than one star if I could.

Nothing ever works. The elevator has been broken every other week. Our AC has been off and on working all summer. The toilet broke last weekend. If you want an apartment with stuff that works don’t live here!

I had to move in to the Darcy on a Sunday evening from out of state. Not ideal, but I let the property manager know well in advance to ensure we could coordinate a way for me to get in the door. The building uses digital keypads on its apartment doors, and upon my arrival, the unlock code I was provided failed to work. I fortunately was able to connect with someone on the outsourced emergency line, and after an hour of trying different combinations, an online version of the keypad's manual led us to find that the keypad had never actually been set as the default code of 1234 got me in the door. Unfortunately, my headache didn't end there. The apartment was filthy when I walked in and the sink didn't work - the unit clearly had not been prepared for a move in. Several days later when the cleaning crew came out to take care of the filth, the head of the service told me they had not been scheduled to clean the unit in the weeks prior, despite property management telling me they just rushed their job. Fast forward several weeks, and I'm returning from 10 days out of town late on a Sunday evening. When I got to my door, I started typing out my code on the keypad, but it was unresponsive. The backlight was extremely dim, signaling to me that the battery was low and clearly didn't have enough juice to perform its duty. Here we go again. As it was creeping into the early hours of the morning, I chose to avoid the headache of waiting on a locksmith and booked a hotel room nearby. The next morning, a locksmith helped me get into the apartment and we found that the batteries installed on the keypad had expired in October of 2020... Following this experience, I contacted property management and requested a reimbursement or rent credit for the lodging and transit expenses I incurred that evening. To my surprise, they were unwilling to accommodate it and cited their emergency request process. While I understand that process is in place for a reason, it was still a shock to me that they were unwilling to accommodate my rather menial ask considering the experiences I'd had so far, particularly at move in, while living at the Darcy. I will also note that it took them over three weeks to reach this conclusion, which has been a recurring theme for resolution of general requests... I've heard a lot about how busy property management has been, so if punctuality is something you value in the property management of your residence, keep this in mind...