The West End Apartments-Asteria, Villas and Vesta

The first thing you need to know is don’t rent an apartment that you’re not fit to climb the stairs to because the elevator situation is abysmal. Many times there is only one elevator for the entire building. This means a long line to go upstairs and it stops at every floor on the way down, even after its full and no one else can get on. Today someone pulled the fire alarm which shuts down all elevators. 2 hours later they’re still down. No word on when they’ll be working again. I just climbed 28 floors.
They do have a pool but it’s $ 300 a summer to set foot inside the fence.

Management eventually got back to me and removed all the charges, admitting that they had made a mistake and apologizing for the back-​and-​forth. Consequently, I believe the restoration of one star is appropriate. The bottom line is that this shouldn’t have happened in the first place and the aggressive tone that management took was unwarranted.
The incident also highlights the importance of making sure there is a written record. Statements of «company policy» and «you were told» do not inspire confidence and tend to be greeted with suspicion. If things are likely to change in the future, they can be captured at the time the lease is signed. No rational tenant would agree to renegotiate a signed year-​long lease two months in, especially for a higher rent.

We have lived in the West End Apartments (Villas) for 3 weeks now. We feel as if this is already home for us and we are really happy with every aspect of our new living environment. The leasing agent from my first enquiry made the application and move in experience so smooth and easy. He was extremely professional and courteous, and has continued to take a personal interest to ensure that we are satisfied.
The area is well maintained and the unit and all amenities are of the highest standards, making living in the West End Apartments a great experience!

My wife and I lived in the Villas for two years and the apartment was great. There are also a few really good people that work at the concierge desk in Asteria that know residents by name and go above and beyond to make residents feel welcome.
Unfortunately, everyone in the leasing and billing offices has no idea how to do their jobs properly. They have no idea how to treat loyal residents (that pay their rent on time month after month) with respect. Their only focus is on collecting as much money as possible. We received an 11% rent increase after our first year as residents, and numerous friends in other buildings received double digit rent increases over multiple years. The real icing on the cake was the many, many wasted hours I spent calling and emailing in an effort to settle our final bill after we moved out only to have them send it to a collection agency less than 2 weeks after actually informing us of the final amount!
Don’t be fooled by the nice apartments and attractive rent in your first year. You will absolutely receive a sizable rent increase in every subsequent year. And don’t expect to be handed that rent increase by a well-​trained professional who knows how to do their job and treat residents with respect; you will most certainly be engaging some of the most INEPT people in the world, who have no clue how to provide good leasing and billing services to residents.
Lucky for them, Unilocal doesn’t allow a rating below one star…

I lived here for just over four years and I have to agree with the previous reviews. The concierge staff is top notch and terrific even though they are outsourced. They are real pros.
The office staff, on the other hand, treats current residents like rented mules. Once a year, the office staff may hand you a highly touted breakfast bag (Chocolate chip muffin cookies, chocolate power bars and a kid’s juice box for breakfast? Really?) and say they want you to be proud to call the West End your home, but the office staff plays hardball all the time and pays lip service to improving customer service and being more responsive. But honestly, you have to expect that ethos with the big corporate landlords, but this staff takes it to a new low. My advice: live here for the location, not the office staff. That is what I do. You would do that anyway right? So what other advice can I give you? Plenty.
Here is some advice from a past resident:
1. She says call the office with your questions. Visits are better but never use e-​mail as they rarely respond timely — email takes weeks even if you direct it to a person. After you sign the lease, do not expect a response to any question you ask of the leasing agent with whom you dealt — remember, you are dead to them.
2. If you are looking to rent here, rents change daily based on algorithms devised by the head office in Chicago. We noticed rents published on the website are higher on the weekends and lower at mid week for the exact same apartment. Her advice is: track the rents for a week or two and take screenshots of the mid week rents. If you can only go and view apartments on the weekend and you decide to rent on a weekend, bring the screenshots with you and ask for the published mid week rent which you happen to have a print-​out of. If they say «too bad», get up and leave and return in the middle of next week when the rents have gone back down. Yes it depends on the market demand but they are generally higher on the weekends and lower during the week.
3. Don’t rush the decision — there is always a vacancy and the available apartments are not that different.
4. Related to #3 above, the sooner you can move in, the lower your rent. The rent is $ 200-​$ 300 lower for an apartment available next week than one available in 6 weeks. Use this to your advantage.
5. If you are breaking a lease in this complex, as of now, (March, 2013), go for the month-​to-​month option if you are leaving in 30 days or more. If leaving in less than 30 days, pay the month and a half rent penalty as that is cutting it close. That said, it is an active rental market now and she has rarely seen an apartment empty there for more than two weeks.
6. When they jack up your rent by $ 500 after year one, they will negotiate, but not by a lot.
Overall great property, location and concierge staff, but the office staff starts with minus 5 stars, preventing a higher rating.
N.B. Oh, and I won’t be calling the office to rehash something you declined to make right the first time so please do not invite me to do so. Why waste both of our times?

Total ripoff!!! Zero starts!
They try to position it as a high end, full service building but they don’t even offer the most basic requirement: SAFETY! I just had my second bike stolen over a 5 month period from the residents bike rack which is INSIDE the building. And the bike was locked…
The management of the building did not care less about the situation and did NOTHING to investigate it or put any measures in place to prevent this from happening again (neither the time when my first bike was stolen nor now). Their response to my request to do something was (direct quote): «The fact of the matter is that we cannot prevent theft from happening»!
This is RIDICULOUS and highly UNACCEPTABLE! The theft happened inside the building and in an area that can be accessed only be residents or employees.
Furthermore, the management’s behavior has been unacceptable from day one, when I first rented my apartment:
1) they tried to extract from me a realtor’s fee while the building rules are that residents don’t pay for the realtor fee
2) they made me aware of certain extra costs of renting (in the hundreds of dollars level) only AFTER I had submitted my application and a nonrefundable application fee!
3) they delivered the apartment with unacceptable level of damage done to the floors and never fixed it (despite repeated requests to address this damage and despite the level of rent I pay, which is not for an apartment in the state they delivered mine)
I would not recommend this building to anyone! Management practices are not just unprofessional and unacceptable but also unethical! They try to rip you off every step of the way and it is not worth paying all this money for what you get!