Moving from out of town in 2013, 3003 Van Ness had an appealing offer -- advertising a competitive rate with all utilities included, close to a metro and grocery.
While I'll explain the rest of our experience later, the highlight (or lowlight rather) for me is really the false advertising and deceitful pricing. Upon asking for our renewal rates after a year (and again after 2 years), we were informed that if we opted to go month to month (which is your legal right in DC, we would later find out) our "concession" of about $1000/month would vanish and we'd suddenly have a 50% increase in our rent. They coerced us into renewing for 12 months. Despite escalating it to the regional manager, we were not provided with any other options that year or in future years. We pointed out the double digit number of vacant available units renting for less than ours, but they did not care about anything other than how to squeeze us for more money. We'd later find out these practices would be investigated by the Attorney General.
Aside from the dishonest leasing practices, the rest of our experience started okay but progressively got worse. The initial leasing process was a bit of a struggle, getting straightforward answers about things or even a response at times. My partner and I decided to move forward with renting it anyways thinking that this was maybe normal in DC. The apartment was a bit dated, but large for DC and we were thrilled about that.
There were some maintenance issues right when we moved in, but the maintenance staff was always friendly and did what they could to fix ongoing problems. The front desk was hit and miss depending on who was there, the good ones never stayed long due to poor management. As time went on, we found out that the building management (Equity Residential at the time we lived there) had struck a deal with UDC and was using several apartments as dorm rooms. These students were unsupervised and as you could imagine, created an atmosphere a bit different than we imagined for a place advertising a "quiet community". We decided to move after one of the students repeatedly broke into the roof and was shooting people with a BB gun. The student was tried in court but the building did not adequately address the issues or do anything to prevent further incidents, as made evident by the multiple fights that broke out in subsequent weeks. I would do some research before moving here.
Male, 30s