Botetourt Apartments

"Looking at many apartments upon arriving to Norfolk, VA, I was able to narrow down to a few and the BOTETOURT Apartment building was selected; it is a great place to live! The entire team is truly dedicated in making the BOTETOURT Apartment a fantastic place to live due to their friendliness, helpfulness and dedication to its occupants. It literally feels like every and each member of the team is part of your family, which is sometimes overlooked while residing in a rental property. The apartments are also very well kept and were designed in a functional matter in regards to the great layout! Thank you BOTETOURT team; you all are awesome! I always love coming home!"

"We moved into the Botetourt Apartments in September 2021 and moved out April 2022. We applied for and signed the lease for the apartment over the phone and e-mail which was a painless process. Items to sign were sent over docusign. Unfortunately the events that occurred after we had moved in greatly lowered my rating. Location: 10/10 It’s right off a main road, easy to get to highways. In the Freemason Historic District, lots of great access to the Elizabeth River Trail, downtown is all within walking distance… Cure Coffeehouse and Virginia Cheese Company directly across the street are an added bonus that you should absolutely visit. Parking: 3/10 Parking on the street is 2-hour. Tenants get a sticker that lets them park in a gravel lot behind the building. It is always severely packed full and can be difficult to navigate. If you have a larger SUV or truck, you may have difficulty parking at all. Apartment: 7/10 The bedrooms are large and bright. The bathrooms are nice, though the master is a little small. The master closet is a joke and the door wouldn’t even open all the way because of some pillar in the way. The kitchen is small and the freezer space is virtually nonexistent. Also some food items (frozen pizzas in particular) were difficult to fit into the small oven. The hardwood floors are nice and the apartment itself is pretty quiet. Access: 6/10 You have the front door on the opposite side from where you park and a locked side door with access to the basement. The front door requires a key fob. ENSURE that your fob works before the weekend or you’ll be locked out of your apartment for a couple days unless someone lets you in. It took us over a week to get key fobs that worked and until then we had to call the manager any time we wanted to get back into the building. It also took us four months to be put into the call box which meant a lot of missed Amazon deliveries… Website: 3/10 Very buggy. The payment center sometimes doesn’t actually complete your transaction so triple check that. You can pay ahead which is nice. The messaging system is pretty clunky. Management: 0/10 Herein lies why you should probably avoid these apartments. Despite the perfect location management really made things unbearable. The worst part is that with some communication none of this would have been an issue. In October 2021 the power to the building went out. We didn’t have power through the weekend and we also hadn’t heard anything from management. On Monday they announced that the power was out (clearly) and they were working on it. Fortunately the power came back on in another day or so, but the heating had gone out. It was still warm so it didn’t matter too much but the heat to the water had also gone out. Management was incredibly lax in their communication and would typically only respond with an excuse once you complained to them on the website. The boiler had gone out but every time they tried to fix it something else would break. We ended up being without heat except for a couple sporadic days until February. There was no compensation and there was absolutely no communication. In fact when the AC stopped working we weren’t told that they turn it off in the winter (despite it still being 70-80 outside). On multiple occasions the management was incredibly unhelpful and would take constant prodding and requests to get anything done. Until they get new management that actually knows what they’re doing and can learn to communicate I would be wary about moving in to these apartments. If it wasn’t for their location and proximity to the hospital (where we worked) I would have never stayed here."

"Be careful when you apply! They will take your application deposit before they approve your rental application. We applied for a unit at The Botetourt on April 24th and our application was approved on May 3rd. As part of the application, we needed to put down a $200 deposit. After we were approved, we chose to go with a different apartment. However, because we did not withdraw our application before April 27th (a full week before our application was actually approved), The Botetourt is keeping our $200. I signed the application contract like the sucker I am, but I want future applications to beware of this predatory policy. You only have 3 days to decide whether you want to live there, but The Botetourt have as much time as they want to evaluate your application."

"These apartments have some of the best views of downtown Norfolk. It's such a shame that the management company does not respond to resident needs and requests. We have lived here for just over 2 years and my only complaint is the management... well, them and all the problems they ignore... We have lost many great neighbors due to the poor management too. Such a shame :("

"Great upscale apartments. Friendly and helpful management. Walking distance to coffee cafe, restaurants and the YMCA. Cobblestone streets and renovated building creat a historic vibe. Love it!"