My wife and I recently moved from Maine to Florida. We wanted to rent a house for a few months before buying, but when we could not find a decent house to rent, we settled on a 7-month lease at Bay Park Apartments at 101 South Old Coachman Road in Clearwater. We did like a few thing about Bay Park: 3 Dog Parks, Grills, Tennis Court and a slightly Heated Pool, and proximity to services
That is about where the positives ended.
We were paying $1265 per month (a supposed discount of $250 per month from their normal pricing) for a 2nd Floor apartment.
Our problems started within a couple of weeks of moving in. Either the building is among the worst ever built for soundproofing or our upstairs neighbors are unreasonably loud. The neighbors are two single mothers with three kids combined, ages 12,6, and 2. It sounds half the time as if they are "running with the bulls".
They run so much that it sometimes shakes the items in our buffet cabinet. It starts as early as 5:30am and sometimes lasts as long at 11 at night. Totally unreasonable.
When we complained to the leasing office, Yvette, the manager, responded by having a thicker carpet pad installed in one room. Really? Did she really believe a carpet pad would stop the noise? It's like placing a band-aid on a hemmoraging wound.
We kept complaining and at the same time accelerated our search to buy a home. Her next solution was to move us to a third floor apartment. Why would we want to move to another apartment since we were only going to be there for the short-term?
We then requested to amend the lease since they could not or would not enforce their lease with the upstairs neighbor. She gave us an addendum to allows us to give a 60-day notice to leave. When she did, she told my wife that "this is one of the better built apartments in the area. So moving to another one will be worse with noise."
When my wife told her we just placed a house under contract, she was stunned. Our problems persisted and got to the point where I finally had enough and called the Clearwater Police. The neighbors kids were keeping my child awake at 11:00 on a school night. The police could not really do anything about the noise, but I wanted a message sent loud and clear. The problems continued.
On Saturday March 20th we were awakened yet again to the stomping of the children above at 6:30am. Yvette claims that Bay Park has done everything they can. We asked for her supervisors name and phone number and she refused to give it to us. That in itself is quite unprofessional.
We called the Laramar Group's corporate office to complain about Yvette. Their response was to send the problem to Yvette and have her take care of it. Laramar Group just does not get it. Buyer beware if you are thinking of renting a "luxury apartment" at Bay Park. Your disappointment will be plenty.
0 comments