Ferris Manor

"You get what you pay for and what you're getting is lowest bidder quality and standards across the board. The upside of this place is that it's priced competitively for the area coming in under most other apartments of comparable size, especially without it being a high rise. The units are spacious for the cost and the location is convenient for college students or those that work in town. The downside, well, the downsides, are virtually everything else. You've got your corporate landlord (Gates Hudson) that treats the complex like the redheaded stepchild of their numerous properties. The closest management staff are all the way over in Arlington, pretty much never answer the phone, and even when they do are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. The buildings are old and neglected, there is a rampant pest problem, mice and roach infestations were a constant for nearly the entirety of the six years we spent there. There is a handy man on site, and he’s a good guy but he’s one man in charge of dozens of units (that are falling apart) so don’t expect timely service. His expertise are also limited so work is frequently outsourced to a lowest bidder contractor with no incentive not to do the laziest possible job imaginable to fix the problem. Every time we had a contractor show up to repair something, they left trash behind, sometimes tools, and occasionally managed to damage something else in the process resulting in a vicious circle of maintenance requests that never resolve. There was no recourse to put in for emergency maintenance that would get any kind of swift response. One night we had a pipe burst in an apartment directly above ours and our only option was to call the fire department to come shut off the water line while our apartment slowly flooded. The management person on call took over an hour to get on site and was useless by the time they’d arrived as the firemen has already broken into the area they needed to access the water line. The water damage was extensive. Another time, high winds caused a portion of our balcony to sheer off and the problem wasn’t addressed for months despite our request, the eventual maintenance solution was to put new vinyl siding in place without addressing the actual structural integrity issue of pieces of the poured cement structure had come away as well. I know I said previously that the rent was cheap and compared to the rates elsewhere it is. This does not stop the landlord from hiking the rent as much as they legally can every single time you renew and this along with the deteriorating state of the unit and the fundamental lack of care shown was a big factor in our decision to finally leave. On top of the rent hikes the office is vicious if it even appears as though you’re late on rent, they are certainly much faster at sending you a court order than they are at fixing anything. We were on auto pay the entire time we rented from them and never once knowingly missed a payment. Twice the system had a brain-fart and did not transmit a payment. Instead of letting us know or giving us any benefit of the doubt on even the first occasion over two years in, the response was to send us a formal court order that required us to take time off to address. It wasted our time and had we been hourly workers would have also cost us money, all for a system glitch. To say the treatment by management is impersonal and callous would be an understatement. Both times when we were finally made aware of the auto-pay issue we paid the rent immediately. The inability of management to adjust their response to any issue whatsoever based on context wastes everyone’s time and resources. Overall, I was able to hang in there for six years while my partner and I finished our degrees. We are both low maintenance individuals willing to put up with a lot before complaining. This is the first review I’ve felt truly compelled to leave to warn people away from an abysmal living situation. These buildings are in rough shape and any fixes applied were almost always just band-aids. Avoid."

"Another one bites the dust! Awful place! Infested with roaches! Thieving neighbors, rusted and outdated appliances. I was gone in 5 DAYS! You'd think it'd get better after the last review two years ago. IT HASN'T! DO NOT RENT HERE! You will regret it forever!"

"A horrible experience. My apartment was invaded twice. Next door neighbor's half grown children always tampered with my car, until finally, it was broken into. Police reports in magnitude did no good at all. Despite how clean my apartment was kept, roaches were everywhere all of the time. Also, a movie was stolen from my apartment when pest control entered.while I was at work. Management (off-site) did nothing. Reporting incidents to them was like talking to myself."

"Ferris Manor apartments is managed by Fort Strong, a subsidiary of Gates and Hudson. I know this because I have contacted both on several occasions regarding a roach infestation in the units. These communications typically go unanswered. In the past 3 months the units have experienced a roach infestation. They have sent out an exterminator 4 times (typically it takes several phone calls and then they tell you it will take 2+ weeks till they come) with no success. Additionally, I have caught a mouse, which they have done nothing about, and lastly they have my AC broke in the middle of 95 degree weather and it took them 8 days to get it fixed (not replaced). During the same time several other units had to get their AC fixed. If i could I would not even give them the single star."