Crescent Apartments, Reston, Virginia (Washington: section 8, for sale, apartment complex)

[csmartinez750]

1527 Cameron Crescent Drive
Reston, VA 20190

Im thinking of filing an application with Crescent Apartments and would like to have any feedback. Anyones experience living there or near there, the area, ect. Thanks.

[seldomseen]

goto Apartment Ratings - Apartments for Rent with Ratings and Reviews from Actual Renters and enter do a search of the apartment

[csmartinez750]

At Apartment Ratings, the rating is 44%. The reviews are mixed, The people who are happy living there are real happy and the people who dont like living there REALLY dont like living there. Both to the extremes. Now Im confused . I called for information and the person who attended me was real nice and helpful. Anybody has lived here or know information about Crescent Apartments?

[seldomseen]

Looks like it's a 50/50 gamble for you now. Have you visited the apartment complex at different times of the day/days of the week? This will provide a clear idea of what you can expect? Is the complex up to your standards in cleanliness, amenities, proximity to stores/entertainment, price, et cetera? Did you ask the leasing consult direct questions like crime within the complex? Residence noise? etc. This particular apartment complex is a third tier apartment in NoVa, but if it meets your criterias all you can do is take the chance.

[csmartinez750]

What is a third tier apartment?

[aea136]

I don't really trust Apartment Ratings. People who have an extremely bad rental experience are likely to bother registering and writing up a long report, but people with average or good experiences don't bother. Notice that very few NoVA apartments have a positive rating better than 50%. In my experience, apartments are never as bad to live in as the angry reviewers fresh of a bad experience make them out to be.

That said, the reviews can sometimes give a flavor of the problems you might face. Shaky internet connection? That might be a problem if you plan to telecommute and really need reliable internet....or no problem at all if you just like to check your e-mail in the evenings.

I would note the complaints that seem to come up repeatedly on Apt. Ratings and ask your potential landlords about them.

[seldomseen]

As with any other consumer resource tools, the apartment ratings website is just that a tool. One is definately going to have to use his/her own descretion to determine what "complaints" they are going to heed or not. And as with any other public posting forum, you will have your share of morons that will complain about the most petty issues. Apartmentratings is still worth a look even though some of the information posted there will be subjective.

In the property managed industry, apartments are classified in tiers typically, 1, 2, and 3, and sometimes 4. In a nustshell Tier-1 apartments are your luxury, very expensive, gated type of commuities. Tier-2 apartments are can generally offer many of the same things as a Tier-1, but are generally offer rent that is somewhat cheaper. Tier-3 are basically your apartments that are 10-20 years old etc..Keep in mind that this is just a very basic description of the Tier "class" used just so you can get a better idea of the term. There are 20 year old apartments that are considered Tier-1 or Tier-2. An example of a Tier-1 property management community in NoVa is AvalonBay. Some companies like Charles E. Smith have a portfolio of properties that are mixed.

[lchoro]

I live within 1/4 mile of the Crescent Apts. It's been bought by the county for eventual redevelopment as section 8 subsidized housing.

Times Community Newspapers - Crescent sale price driven by condo potential (broken link)

Some units within the complex may already be subsidized. The plan is to bring in more high-rise apartments into Lake Anne plaza area and attract a larger grocery store there. There are two Hispanic grocery stores, one of which may be open 24/7.

The experiences with the apartments are probably shaped by your experiences with your immediate neighbors. It seems like a pretty quiet working-class neighborhood. I haven't known anyone living there for more than 20 years. I see a lot of the renters have parked service vans/trucks that they drive to and from work. The apts and the grounds look well-kept and clean on the outside. Some of that is due to the complex being cleaned up before being put up for sale a year ago. I wouldn't worry about redevelopment there for at least five years.

[dullnboring]

Originally Posted by aea136

I don't really trust Apartment Ratings. People who have an extremely bad rental experience are likely to bother registering and writing up a long report, but people with average or good experiences don't bother. Notice that very few NoVA apartments have a positive rating better than 50%. In my experience, apartments are never as bad to live in as the angry reviewers fresh of a bad experience make them out to be.

That said, the reviews can sometimes give a flavor of the problems you might face. Shaky internet connection? That might be a problem if you plan to telecommute and really need reliable internet....or no problem at all if you just like to check your e-mail in the evenings.

I would note the complaints that seem to come up repeatedly on Apt. Ratings and ask your potential landlords about them.

Good advice. I would take the rantings on sites like Apartment Ratings with a grain of salt. They are definitely worthy of checking out but just keep in mind that the people who have an axe to grind are the ones most likely to submit reviews to that site. If a person enjoys their day-to-day life, the appliances in their apartment work fine, they haven't seen or heard of any crime, and all in all they go about their business through the length of their apartment stay perfectly content, they're not likely to randomly decide to fill out an online review of the complex because it just doesn't occur to them. On the other hand, someone with a particularly bad experience often will actively seek out to "spread the word" as much as they can, even if their experience isn't indicative of the residents as a whole. It's just like how if you buy any sort of random product at a store, use it and are extremely happy with it, you're unlikely to call up the customer service line and give them compliments about their products, whereas you'd be much more likely to call if you had a complaint, even if you knew complaining yielded zero results.

Basically, don't discount the ratings on the site, but don't rely on them either. It's a good sign that at least some of the people posting reviews loved the apartments at least. If it were a truly awful place, you wouldn't have such a thing, except perhaps for a suspicious post or two that read as if it had been planted by apartment staff, which are usually easy to spot.

[seldomseen]

You ought to check out the following two websites if you already haven't.

Apartment Showcase.com - Apartments For Rent - Apartment Search in Maryland, Washington DC, Northern Virginia
ApartmentGuide.com - apartments for rent, apartment finder

Good luck! Both of these are free apartment search/guide publications for the DC Metro area.