Austin Manor

This is a fine place to move to if you need to move quickly. Pros: - They will almost always have an apartment available, in the size you are looking for, for a decent price. - The flat bill for what is essentially unlimited hot water a month is nice (40 per person as of time of writing). - The yard, when when moved in, is almost picturesque. Currently its a muddy mess because of the construction before winter but it has potential. - I've met some of the nicest people I've ever met in my adult life, in this building. - Abbey is usually incredibly responsive to emails, even if she does not have a solution. - It is close enough to town to make walking a viable solution to most things. Cons: - Because it is an old building, it has a LOT of maintenance issues. You will have water outages at least once every 3 months so they can fix pipes. If they have to enter your apartment, they will give you notice AT LEAST the morning of, if not usually the day before. - You will lose hot water at least once a year. It's not a maybe, it will happen. Their boiler system is old and when a part breaks for it (when not if), it will not be a quick fix to get it back up and running. In the year I have lived here, it has broken twice and took 3 days on the low end to get it fixed. - Their maintenance in general isn't particularly speedy or responsive. When we first moved in, we noticed an issue with the shower head not being flush with the wall that was not fixed and it was never brought up with us, despite multiple calls about it. It IS flush now but only because they had to cut holes in our walls and the hallway to fix a leaky pipe. After a while we stopped putting in maintenance requests and fixed the issues we could fix ourselves because it wasn't worth the headache (IE the pin on the hallway closet door not staying in). - Smoking on the property is a headache if you don't smoke or don't like the smell of smoke, or if you have a dog that likes to eat anything on the ground. - The kitchens are absolutely tiny. - The laundry room is fine enough with 5 washers and 5 dryers but each load of laundry will cost you 3.75 to wash and dry IF it doesn't have issues drying, which it frequently does with at least one machine being out of order at the time of writing. TL:DR - It is an old building with all the problems that come with renting in an old building but if you can stomach that, its a fine enough place to live, especially if you are looking to move on in about a year. *Note: As of the time of writing this review, we are getting ready to move out and we have not gone through the process of attempting to get back our security deposit. This review may change slightly one way or the other depending on if the rumors of that process being difficult are true.

I've lived here for about a year now. If you're looking to move to this place, don't. I can list the pros and cons for you as well. Pros: - Incredibly close to OWU. - Close to Main Street. - Relatively cheap rent. - There is a lovely gentleman who plays very beautiful piano some days out of the week on the first floor. Cons: - Several times throughout the year there will be water shut-offs without much of a notice. It'll be a letter on your door and water will be off from 8am to 5pm. Sometimes they won't even do that, opting to reschedule it without notice. - Shared laundry that you must pay for. One load of laundry costs us $16 each time. And if your neighbors smoke, expect your clothing to smell like their cigarettes and their detergent. - None of the windows are insulated so your heating bill will be going up by quite a lot in the winter unless you DIY your own solution. Ours was to tape towels to the top and bottom of our windows. When this was brought up, Austin Manor did nothing about it. - There is a constant cannabis & cigarette smell outside the premises that, due to aforementioned insulated windows, gets into the home. Sometimes the weed smell is INSIDE the apartment building and seeps in through the vents. The rule is 'smoking is allowed 20 feet away from the building on all sides' but no one ever upholds that rule. There are cigarette butts on the floor that dogs pick up and chew. - You will receive no warning on maintenance requests. You will simply just wake up to a knock on your door, or worse, drilling on the side of your bedroom wall that cuts through your unit and wakes everyone up. Your drop ceilings will randomly open and there will be maintenance crew just inside. If they have to break open your wall, expect it to not be fixed for weeks (ours took a month because when we asked them to fix it within a week, they said 'no, sorry, the maintenance manager won't be in town that week.') and we had to deal with our dust allergies the entire time. - No fans in the bathroom means you have to buy your own dehumidifier. Otherwise? Enjoy the mold. - Incredibly small kitchens, barely any storage space, and the stove is the size of a Barbie Dreamhouse stove. There is no feasible way to cook large meals on them. If you have multiple countertop appliances, don't fill out an application. - Your neighbors can (and will) have full-blown arguments at 1, 2, even 3AM outside your windows and not care about noise ordinances. - If you enjoy having regular heat and AC, don't come here! As we speak, it is 77 degrees in my apartment, the heat has been shut off for days and our windows opened and it refuses to cool down. The entire building operates on a boiler toggle system that habitually breaks down, especially during the winter. This past winter alone we were without hot water for 2 weeks and they only credited us for an alleged hotel stay (if we so chose to take it) and the water bill for the month. We were told to 'boil water' but with the incredibly poor insulation in this place, water did not stay hot enough after boiling for a warm bath. Ice-cold showers will be your reminder of the fact that they don't replace things here, they order parts for things that break and then you have to wait about 3-5 days (or a week) for their repair people to come and fix it. - THE INCESSANT PEST PROBLEM. Unless it is winter, expect to see ants, ladybugs, centipedes and spiders. The aforementioned insulation makes it a perfect home for them to crawl into, let alone the nests outside the main doors that pest control does nothing about. This is all to say nothing of the people smoking incessantly in their cars in the parking lot and stinking up the entire area, the terrible maintenance and pest control, no investments in the building but in prettying it up (seriously, it took 3 months for them to fix unbroken slabs of concrete path and it still looks torn up to hell out there) but not in upgrading the living spaces and the (lack of) amenities. Ultimately, you get what you pay for and this place is not it. AVOID IT!!

Beautiful old apartment building, and the rooms are really big. Of course it is also old so some things are dated and worn or have damage but the managers have been doing a lot of work. They've been really responsive about fixing stuff and helping you when you need it. It's also cheap lol