Avalon Park Crest

We lived there for almost 2 years.
The atmosphere of the place is georgeous, if you like modern/​hotel feel look, you are in the perfect place !
The gym is FANTASTIC, the machines are top of the line and it’s not so crowded as you would think.
Don’t expect much from the swimming pool, although if you have little kids they may really enjoy the spot (despite the tinny pool).
The common areas are great, you can have barbecues (patio area) or have a party at the lounge.
Erin helped us during our first months, and Dragana helped us during our last months. (She is the sweetest person on earth)
Moving out was smooth. We had a few differences about the fee but Audrey helped us all the way thru and was really great to us.
Overall, We really LOVED our stay here
Pros: location /​modern feel of the place/​gym /​EMPLOYEES
Cons: small pool and quality furniture (apt)

Generally a very good place to live. I lived here for a year. The office folks are helpful. My apartment is quiet (only heard people walking above once or twice the whole year). Maintenance is handled very quickly. I did not see any pests at all, and the common areas are kept very clean. Mostly no issues upon move out (I did a good job cleaning the apartment at the move out and did not get charged any cleaning fees). The guest parking situation improved quite a bit when additional guest spaces were opened in the Ground floor of the garage in 2015. Only two minor issues I did not like: 1) When I moved out, the water/​sewer billing was behind, so I was contacted about a month after I moved out to pay for more water and sewer utilities, and 2) the lease was very inflexible. Only certain length leases were available. Nothing between 12 months and 24 months were available. I tried to sign a 13 month lease, and was told this was impossible. Extending the lease by one more month towards the end was also impossible without incurring a huge increase (more than 70% increase per month!) in rent.

Review update from my move out experience…
No issues with moving out. Seriously, none. Got most of my deposit back (got hit with a $ 95 cleaning fee, but I knew that was coming), which is awesome. I even had two accent walls painted in my apartment, and was told I won’t get charged as long as I prime them before I left. I did just that, and had zero issues. Very straight forward communicators in the leasing office — my favs are still Jen and Erin, so kudos to them! :)

If I could I would give this dump NO stars. My husband and I lived here for 1 week — YES literally 7 days!!! It was by far the worst week we encountered. When we went to see our apartment before the actual move day there was a strange chemical smell in the apartment. (Not to mention the FOUL smells in the hallways) We were told it would go away immediately and that it was from the carpets being cleaned. Did it go away? NOPE it only got stronger and stronger everyday. We voiced our concern to the management and they did nothing but give us a fan… seriously a FAN. Finally we couldn’t take it and moved down the street to The Lofts and we absolutely love it. We had to move twice in a week and never got our deposit back from Avalon. When I see people touring the building I currently live in I let then know what happened to us at Avalon so that they don’t even consider it as an option.

I recently moved from Avalon eaves to this other Avalon property, and I did a relatively risky thing. I only saw the model for a 1 bedroom then signed the lease for a rarely available loft. The place itself was so beautiful that I had to jump at the chance. And please understand that Avalon eaves is OLD & sort of falling apart so there was really no comparison. Anyway, Mike at Avalon Park Crest did a fabulous job and was beyond helpful. Actually, EVERYONE in the office there is so wonderful.
So my apartment is even more gorgeous than I expected. I had to write because the only complaint I can think of is that I don’t have cell reception in every room and texting is a pain. Whatever… It’s very, very, very quiet. I’m on the 6^th floor and I can hear people in the hall once in a while.
I’m incredibly impressed with the staff and the place. I’ve had my own issues since I moved in and the staff have bent over backwards to help. I move a lot, and have actually never seen anything like it.
So if you’re looking for a clean, lovely, quiet, fun place to live then look no further. It’s not inexpensive, but you get what you pay for. And the location couldn’t be better.
I was a bit worried after reading some of the other reviews, but I guess you can’t make everyone happy.

Don’t like it at all. I am missing my previous apt a lot. There are paint smell everywhere, I think they use very cheap paint. The most unfortunate thing is that they paint my apt right before I move in. So when I was there, everyone, including the moving helper, was shocked by the strong paint. I asked to switch but they do not like to do so and ask me to say if it gone after one week. Now it’s a week later, the paint smell is still there. I am wondering what’s the point to switch after I already been here to breath the smell for one week!

I lived at park crest for a little under 4 months. Jen and most of the staff are nice. So from a customer service aspect it was awesome. Our problems were addressed in a decently fast manner.
It took 5 verizon techs, and 3 cox reps to get a solid internet connection into our «new» apt. Not to forget the 3 network tech visits in addition. The visits lasted from 1 – 5 hours each — so it was a lot of work plus the hours (I really mean days) of phone calls. The wiring was not consistent and seamed to flip flop between apartments (said by Verizon). Ultimately the property was made extremely cheap then painted and accented to look modern.
Sloppy painting all over the building, detailing the building was not the goal of the painters. Shower pressure was awesome, shower temperature was an absolute joke (4 – 6 minutes).
For a non smoking community there were many smokers in the midst of the property. Hallways left uncleaned for days at a time. Mold and fungus in the courtyard.
Dogs will ultimately be the downfall of this community. People walked them in the courtyard (forbidden) and by the side of the road. The ammonia is bleaching the grass that faces the main road. The elevators often have dog pee on the floors. Hallways have dog fur, dirt from the dogs and sometimes urine.
Parking is an absolute joke. Don’t dare try to find a close parking spot except maybe the weekends. That’s when people go out of town and free spots appear. If you plan on having friends your only real options are carpool into the mall. There is minimal guest parking. Thankfully I moved before the towing began or I’d have been livid. Be warned it’s a very tight fit to move up different sections and even if it’s a completely packed house.
The gym is definitely a plus. I did enjoy using that.
I lived here for less than 120 days and we had 2 ear piercing fire alarms. Seriously I recognize you need to have the alarms. I just feel that the decibels were unnecessarily loud. It’s in all the rooms and living room/​kitchen. You could literally wake the dead. They also happened between the hours of 11pm– 1 am or just as I went to bed.
Don’t dare think you will get cell phone signal if your not on the top two floors. Especially if your in the courtyard and not facing the towers. They offer repeaters but it defeats the purpose if those repeaters require a gps lock. You rarely get a solid lock so you will be booted quite frequently. Yes you can run a 30 ft cable through your apt which might help. As long as you don’t trip on it.
The elevators broke quite frequently. When 2 of the 4 were down — it was aggravating to fight the maze of corridors. The elevators should not have broken that frequently. It was blamed on people holding the doors open longer than the 4 seconds you had to enter. Then they would be down for 2 – 5 days at a time. Maybe if you adjusted the sensors.
Moving in and out via the elevators is a nightmare. Seriously bad considering you can only rent for 4 hours at a time, if… it’s available or broken.
The hallways were supposed to have at least some ventilation. As a cost cutting tactic they were never turned on during the summer months when I was present. Essentially each apt heated it. Problem was the smells varied quite drastically. Everything from burnt food to my favorite wet dog. It would have been nice to have some form of ventilation considering the cost.
Now let’s talk about price. Yes it was costly. With utilities seeping out your doors and windows. You had the cost for parking more than one car (for a two bedroom– comical). Water, electrical and utilities. Then you had a little over 2700 a month. I’m sure it’s increased by now as a way to add the appearance of a discount for early adopters.
It was expensive. It’s a rather cheap product in a great location. So yes location, location, location but the metro wasn’t open yet.
I feel for the price tag we should have expected a more finely detailed quality product. It’s almost like ikea products. Looks good, but how long is it truly going to look that way. A year… Who knows.
Appearance and location is about the only good items for this property.
I would rate this a 2.5 star but I will not dare give this a 3 star.
Btw… If you respond (Avalon) with some lame remark pointing out you empathize. Please do us both a favor and save the keystrokes. As you have no substance to your responses.

Pros: The people are nice. Looks prestigious. Good garage space. The weight room is beast. Management is very friendly.
Cons: Elevators can sometimes take 10 – 15 until they finally arrive. This is irksome, especially when you are leaving to go to work early in the morning. I previously lived in a 15 story community and the wait time was negligible. This apartment community is only 8 stories high! The management is super friendly, but Avalon will bite you in the rear when it comes to moving out. They charged me a whopping $ 3,600 to terminate my lease (2 months rent). Their initial, and may I add, lengthy, paperwork has crammed in some words that state how an early termination can be determined by the front office. There is no set early termination fee price. This means that they can charge you whatever they feel like. So let’s hope they are not feeling cranky that day. Also, better make sure you have no issues with the front office!!! The security deposit?! Give up your hopes of ever getting back more than $ 10. I lived in the apartment for 5 months. I do not mind the carpet cleaning or the partial paint that they charged me. I do believe that it should come out of their damn overhead. They also alleged that they had to clean the oven because it was dirty. What is mildly amusing is that we did not even use the oven once! They also have a tiny pool. Lastly, our hallway’s odor was very bad.

I stayed here as a part of a corporate relocation for two months. The community itself is relatively new so everything is fairly clean and orderly, which is nice. My time there I had to deal with the staff on occasion and while they seemed respectful, they are completely unhelpful. They do not seem to try in any way to work with their tenants in a way that is fair. The parking fob that I was given to get into the garage stopped working and I was forced to park in guest parking. Avalon has a policy they neglected to tell me about that they tow residents from the guest parking area with no warning. My car was parked there for less than 12 hours, and there is no other parking in the area I could have left my vehicle. This cost me money to get my car out of the inpound as well as a day’s worth of pay from having to miss work.
Very disappointed resident.

I have lived in this building for 7 months. In that time I have had two water leaks in the same place in my bedroom, one first happened the first week we moved in and then appeared 6 months later in the exact same spot, there have been 3 fire alarm drills that have woken me up out of a dead sleep (two of them were at 3 am and were not resolved till around 10am), water has been shut off on two occasions once all day till 9pm, needless to say no one could flush their toilet or make dinner, the parking garage gate that we as residents pay to have is always broken, there is no visitor parking for friends, my closet fell out of the wall, and finally my neighbor was stuck in one of the elevators for an hour missing a business meeting and received no compensation or even a concerned apology.
I live in the corner 2 bedroom model and pay over $ 2800 a month for this piece of junk. It looks nice with hard wood floors and granite countertops but is actually very cheaply made. This whole building seems like it was put together with sticks and mud because that’s how it operates. For anyone who actually needs to live in their apartment this is not the place for you. The inconveniences have added up and have officially made this overpriced place a hazard to live in. I would recommend avoiding the avalon buildings in this Tysons area all together and find complexes with a better track record.
For a building that is only a year old this is inexcusable. I am not above paying the price I do for rent but I do when my building is unlivable. For fire alarm drills to be going on and off all day multiple times a month is just ridiculous. I highly suggest looking at other luxury complexes in Mc Lean because this place is a dump. Don’t waste your time and money on this building. You will inevitably find yourself frustrated, inconvenienced, and stuck in a lease that just seems to never end.

One star is even too generous! They simply are the worst company and apartment complex! If you desire for comfort and luxury, this place represents the opposite! It’s quite disappointing. Early morning fire drills are common, their unwelcoming and rather rude attitude at the front office is embarrassing, and your guests’ frustration with the parking situation is never resolved! Trust me from my experience that not will I or anyone I love will live in their complexes in the future!

Update: Beware of their awful moving out practices. We were charged $ 150 for carpet cleaning and painting. Note, I own a bissell carpet cleaner and routinely would wash our carpets. Upon inspection the maintenance guy took pictures of spots. While walking with him I pointed out that some of them were lint because of the move and picked them up. I then asked him to edit his pictures accordingly which he never did. However this was not the biggest move out problem. Fast forward to a call we received a month after move out of $ 450 charges. Not only did they keep our whole deposit we still owed them $ 150! We were forced to move out a day before the end of our lease because their office was closed! Don’t worry, they still charged us for a day we couldn’t live there and days we couldn’t park there and days we couldn’t use the water or sewage! All together adding up to $ 300 more. Customer service sucks. Stay far away!!!
My husband and I lived across the street so we watched them build this property. When it was time to move out of our corporate apartment we thought we’d give this a try. We do love our loft 1 bedroom apartment and do appreciate the many upgrades from other Avalon properties. It is at this moment hard to give this place more than 3 stars for a few reasons:
1. Construction next door wakes us up at 7 am six days a week
2. It took 5 months of living here before the gate started working.
3. Guests have to call me 3 or 4 times from the box before it works
4. I’ve had 3 packages go missing
5. There are like 20 guest parking spots that are filled most of the time (by either residents or their significant others who stay over like every night) which is a pain when you have a guest who needs to park.
6. Water outages for hours
7. Middle of the night fire alarms due to faulty systems
I think these are mostly growing pains with an exception to the construction and will make this a great place to live in down the road!

This place gives the appearance and initial wow factor from not only the pictures online but the tour. However there are quite a few cons. For an almost a $ 3000 a month apartment well 2700 still close to 3. The finish work is complete shit! There are gaps on the flooring, door stops missing, many outlets and switches are crooked, the tiling has grout from the contractor not cleaning up, the data connection port in the living room wasn’t wired properly (fios spent 2 hours and commented many units are like this), cellular reception is garbage (the office has micro units you can borrow), the construction noise is to be expected. Thin walls doesn’t really speak to how thin they are. I can hear my neighbor clearly in the bedroom. When people are in the courtyard it’s crazy loud and I can hear them in the bathroom with the door shut. The gym is nice and one main reason I chose Park Crest besides location to commuting to work. All in all the property is nice. Amenities are nice, but for the same price or less and 5 miles away or less you can get many more amenities. Like 24 hour concierge, guest suites, property social events, shuttles to major destinations like the metro to get in and out without driving. This place is quiet, expensive, nice for what it has, and a great spot for a young professional looking to settle until they find the perfect home. I simply believe it was built way to fast! Finish work makes a HUGE difference in really a nice place or a façade.
** I am keeping this at a 3, and only a three. I forgot to mention, if you like hot showers for more than 8 minutes, THIS IS NOT THE PROPERTY FOR YOU. The showers last if you are lucky 10 minutes, and then you are stuck with miserable warm water. The water pressure is great for the time you do have!

This building is run by Avalon Properties. You can read their not so stellar reviews on many site. So about the building and my experience:
Pros:
— Indoor/​underground parking garage
— Nice apartment layouts
— Energy efficient appliances and windows (my utilities are very low)
— Nice gym
— Walking distance to 24 hour grocery store
— Excellent, prompt and friendly maintenance staff
— You have the option of Cox cable or Verizon fios for service.
Cons:
— They really cheaped out and cut corners on the finishing. Vynil flooring in the kitchen and bathroom. Small tubs, cheap cabinets, toilet paper holder, toilet, even the paint on the walls scuffs if your sleeve rubs against it
— Half of the units get no cell phone reception. Basically the interior half that are the ones that you want to rent because they look into the courtyard and have no street noise. They keep saying they are working on the problem and are installing boosters, but they are not doing anything. A few neighbors said they got their own boosters and at least once a day they have to take it outside to rest it and catch the signal. The booster can stop working at anytime, so if you don’t check it and it looses signal, you will never get an incoming call. Not ideal.
— 30 day Guarantee. This is the biggest scam. They will let you move, but first you have to move all your stuff right after you unpacked it all. Second, if you decide to move to another unit, there is no more guarantee. If there is a problem with the second unit that is not apparent at first, you’re stuck and there’s no breaking the lease. If you want to leave, you have to pay the balance of the lease in full. Or you have to pay a full months rent as a fee to move to another unit.
— The floors are thin. I feel like they are thinner than the walls. You can hear every footstep from the people above you. AND when the person above you uses any appliance or their shower, it seems louder than when you use those things in your own apartment.
— Limited leasing office hours: they open at 9:30 and close at 5:30pm. If you have a real job to be able to afford the above market rents here, you probably won’t be able to make it back in time to catch them in the office until the weekend.
— Not many amenities. The nice gym is about it. They have «cable» on the cardio machines, but they don’t have alot of channels and most of them are fuzzy. Also the lighting was not designed well so there’s so much glare on most of the screens that you can’t see anything. I moved in in the summer and was shown the pool on the tour. They neglected to say it was not finished (in that they needed it inspected to allow people to swim in it), open or only 3 feet deep. It opened in September. They acted like they were doing something nice by extending the pool hours for the residence. Great, so sitting in 3 feet of cold water as the weather changes. Sounds like fun to me. I can see it being an oversized toilet for little kids next summer. Or maybe it was that people were complaining that they paid a yearly amenity fee for barely any amenities and half of them where not even ready for use. Apparently if you complained, they gave you some credits. But of course that’s if you can make it home before the office closed or want to spend your weekend arguing with leasing staff.
— they barely do a credit check. no employment verification ect. so you have all kinds living in the building. And multiple families with children living in one unit (probably for the school district). And of course those parents feel like the hallways are equivalent to playgrounds, so its okay for their children to play tag and run screaming up back and forth. They even stand in the hall way to watch the kids as they do it.
— zero security at night time. I once called the 24 hour line because some car was parked in front of the automatic gate and drove through when my car pulled up behind and it opened. He was screaming on his cell phone at someone saying he’s in the building now and they better open the door. Obviously not someone that belonged there. The 24 hour line said they don’t have anyone to respond on property, so they suggest that I go up to the individual and tell him this is a private residence and he must leave. I talked to the leasing office about it the next day, hey said they are not responsible for security of the garage.
— They say its strictly non smoking property including common and outdoor areas. False. There are people that routinely smoke at entrances You can set you watch by it. All they would have to do is go there and ask them to stop. I have informed them of the times and places. They give the standard lines — either they will look into it, or you are welcome to tell them its a smoke free property which includes outside common areas. Are they willing to give me subsidized rent for doing their jobs?