Apartment Review for Garfield Park - Denver, CO

I have a long list of issues with this property. I will start by addressing the foul business practices of this property. First the owner fails to deposit your rent checks for over a month. After the first problem with this I began using money orders to make my rent payments, she then would "misplace" the payments and post eviction notices on my door. Embarrassing! I would contact the office to have this situation fixed as I had a copy of my money order stub and left it in voicemails. She NEVER contacted me back to resolve the problem. This happened 3 times over a period of one year. Next the utilities of the building are not charged based on individual unit usages. It is totaled up and divided by the number of tenants. This was explained to me upon moving in and I was fine with it. But midway through my lease they stopped creating the bills for the utilities. Leaving monthly notes on our doors expressing they were having computer problems. I went with out a utility bill for 8 months! They then outsourced it to a third party billing center who then tried to charge me for other services not listed on our lease agreement. Such as for security fees, pest control, and other unexplained charges. I called the owner again regarding this matter of the unbilled invoices and then this third party billing company only to receive no returned phone calls. Another issue I have is that they do not take care of the security of their tenants. This resulted in multiple stabbings and beatings of patients in our own parking lot and then they never had the parking lot plowed when it snowed. During that blizzard in December of 2006 I had to get a group of friends to help the tenants dig out their cars while the apt manager complained we got snow in her shoveled sidewalk. The next issues I encountered were when I finally planned to move out since I had then received my third eviction notice for a payment they lost, ONCE again. I gave my thirty days and a few days later received a note on my door from the apt manager to schedule the moving out evaluation of the apartment. I called to schedule this of course to not receive any returned phone calls. So I cleaned the apartment, left it in better shape than when I got it, and moved out. Now, 4 months later I received a letter from them trying to collect over $2000 in apartment repairs! The charges included carpet and vinyl replacement(the conditions of each of these was intact and perfect, carpet just needed shampooing. This is Denver, it snows, so of course the entry way was slightly dirty, but came out with a shampoo when I would do it myself), bathroom cabinet repairs(the bathroom doesn’t have cabinets), cleaning of cabinet door knobs, repainting of the apt(in the lease and THEIR contract it states they can not charge the resident for repainting if they have resided there for more than a year), and a million other charges for items that were already cleaned or perfectly intact. The other final charges were one month's for "not notifying the property manager of my 30 day notice". How is that possible when I have a hand written note on file from the apt manager trying to schedule the check out? They did receive notice and payment for the final month. I suppose the owner lost the payment again! This now makes the 4th documented case. So my entire experience at this property was not professional in the least. They were great when I moved in, but the quality of service and respect definitely dwindled down to NOTHING. I do not recommend this property in the least. Yes the apartments appear nice, but with all the repairs needed(holes were left in my bathroom ceiling for over a month for pipes repairs), them showing my apartment to possible renters(while I was not home), not providing proper security measures, loosing payments, and not returning phone calls it is the most unprofessional experience I have ever had with a rental property.