Overall, renting from Constellar has been a horrib...

Overall, renting from Constellar has been a horrible experience.

Pros: Location, beautiful and spacious apartment, affordable rent (initially), ease of online portal to pay rent.

Cons: The list is long

1) Communication with Constellar throughout most of my lease was little to non-existent. Our first property manager Victoria hardly ever answered emails, and when I would call or email regarding an issue with our property, `I was either not answered or told the issue would be taken care of when it never was. Or it took days on end to happen. Our second property manager Emily was slightly better, but often gave excuses for why she wasn't communicating or able to do something, such as being short staffed. That's not our problem. Being short staffed is not an excuse for horrible customer service.

2) we were told the apartment would be move in ready upon commencement of the lease. we had to send multiple maintenance requests in the beginning for broken stoves, leaking windows, improperly installed doors that would not stay closed, lights that often short or black out for no reason. wifi took over a month to install because of inadequate information and communication from constellar, fire alarms constantly going off with NO SMOKE in the building. heating and cooling issues throughout the apartment. construction stickers were left on the outside of all windows because they were too lazy to remove them.they did not provide blinds to their massive windows and my roommate and I had to shell out the money for them. our fridge shelves broke within a day of being there and were NEVER replaced despite promises they would be. DISGUSTING stairwell that was not cleaned once until 7 months later after harassing them with multiple emails and calls they finally cleaned it. there was also no garbage system and piles of trash were just left outside the building for days by tenants. A dumpster would have been nice and even better, a place to recycle.

3) When it came time to renew our lease, constellar wanted to raise the rent by $300, which is 17% higher. that is a ridiculous increase in rent. the only way we were able to get out of it was by pointing out to them that they had written in their OWN CONTRACT that they cannot increase rent within 6 months of the lease ending, and they contacted us regarding the increase only a couple months before it ended.

4) finally, and perhaps the worst part, is that there ended up being a mix up with our water bills. We were paying the water on another unit instead of our own, and we were in communication with constellar regarding this issue well before our lease ended. They told us they were sending someone out to look at the meters and determine what was going on. They waited until after we moved out and it was time to give us back our security deposit to inform us we had an outstanding balance on the correct water bill and that they would be deducting this from our security deposit. Our property manager Emily ignored most of my emails for an update regarding the incorrect security deposit amount. They also took $50 out of it for unpaid rent, which ended up also being inaccurate.

The ONLY reason this review is getting 2 stars instead of 1 is because Nicole (who has commented on some of the reviews below requesting tenants reach out to her for assistance), was able to assist me in a prompt manner to return the money that was owed to us from the water bill and the incorrect $50 dollars that was taken. I am appreciative of this and would like to acknowledge that this was the only ray of light in the darkness that was working with Constellar. I hope they improve for their future tenants but I will NEVER rent with them again.