Hawthorne at Commonwealth

I have had (almost) nothing but horrible experiences with the management since moving in. My girlfriend and I originally planned to move into Hawthorne in February, but due to our work schedules had to move in sooner. When I called– on a Thursday– to ask about moving the date up I was told that they’d have the unit I wanted & that was listed as available ready by the end of the weekend since it was an «upgraded» unit. Two weeks later when it’s finally «ready» I picked up our keys (which were the incorrect ones) and learned that we had no running water because they had cut it off due to doing a horrible job redoing our tub. On top of that, our heat didn’t work. At all. For probably the first 3 – 4 weeks that we were here. In January. Luckily we have a fabulous maintenance man, Sharron, who went above & beyond what we expected and even left his personal space heater here for us. The «upgrades» are awful, apparently painting over super old cabinets is something to pay $ 200 extra for per month, and we went at least a month with a random kitchen drawer missing. Now that we’re about 9 months into our lease, I can honestly say that moving to this complex has been a huge mistake.
Since the buildings are so old and the appliances suck we end up with huge power bills and even went through a 3 month long phase where we couldn’t have our tv turned on while the microwave was running without having a circuit blow. Which generally wouldn’t be a problem, but the circuit breakers aren’t located in each unit, they’re all located in one person’s unit per building. Management knew of the issue and their suggestion was «to get to know our neighbors.» Finally after multiple issues (& complaints to corporate) involving our electricity– including going without power in the 1^st floor of our unit for 17 hours– it has been resolved. You basically have to beg & plead to have maintenance issues resolved in a somewhat timely manner. There’s also a huge issue with the online rent payment & destruction of the property by random neighborhood kids.
Yes, this is cheap for Plaza Midwood but it absolutely is not worth it.

I moved in here about 9 months ago. I was immediately disappointed when I moved into my new apartment. The ‘upgrades’ I paid for were not really all that upgraded. The new kitchen appliances are great, and that is where it ends. The countertops are the same old countertops with some granite looking paint sprayed over them. I have cracking and bubbling counters in my kitchen and bathrooms. The new cabinets just have new doors, the cabinets themselves are probably 20 years old and have been painted over at least 10 times. The wood flooring is just vinyl, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by that but I thought it would at least be laminate. Now that’s all aesthetics, but the real issue is with the terrible structure, especially plumbing, of these buildings and massive bug infestation. Within the first day of moving in (in July) we saw a cockroach in our apartment. They just kept multiplying after that. They are all over our back porch and in the parking lot and they often times make it into our home. In the last 2 months we have had 3 water leaks. 2 outside due to freezing temperatures, which I understand management can’t control, but they could have handled the issue better. We were left without water for 5 days with no help from management. The maintenance team did their best, but when 20 apartments have burst pipes, 2 men can’t fix everything. The next time the fixed it quicker as we were the only ones at that time with a burst pipe. Then one morning we woke up to our entire first floor with about an inch of water. The water line to our fridge burst off and filled up the whole first floor. The maintenance staff said it was because the wrong tubing was used. At this point I am tired of the bad plumbing, average management, over priced rent, pet rent each month per animal, bug issues, and nothing really special to make it all worth it. I will be moving out as soon as my lease is over!

Only good thing about this place is the cheap rent and the flexible leasing terms. With cheap rent comes not great customer service, a cock roach or five, and weeks until things are fixed when there is an issue. They are in the process of fixing up the property but I have not taken advantage of any of it and don’t care too. All I can say is that I miss the leasing agents from Cambridge Townhomes who was always on top of everything.