Teak at the Branch

Living here for a little over a month. So far I am not thrilled with my experience. Teak charges $140 a month for their amenities fee which includes an app that controls the door for your apartment, the common doors around the apartment, and the garage. Several times in my short time living here half of the doors in the app are listed as “unavailable” and you cannot unlock them on the app. I understand things can break but these doors will be down for several days at a time and it happens regularly. It is very frustrating having to walk around the building to find a door that is working on the app. Recently the door to the gym has been down for several days with no updates on when this issue will be fixed. You would think when you are paying $140 on top of rent for amenities, these amenities would actually work.

DO NOT LIVE HERE. Update: Juanna Goodwin, manager at the Teak, has made my first month here a nightmare. After finally getting back to me after 3 weeks of trying to get her attention, all she did was summarize what I’d been communicating to her (glad you’re finally up to speed Juanna!), and pick and choose which parts of my old lease she would like to honor. She is willing to change my lease to the originally agreed upon lease term, but isn’t willing to correct it to the originally agreed upon rent price. After everything, including extra move in costs, random charges, and an unjustified rent increase, it comes out to over $900 lost to this company. And I haven’t even made my first full rent payment. The ONLY good part about this complex is the maintenance team. They are fast, do what they say they are going to do, and are reliable, kind people. Original review: I am extremely disappointed with my experience at this apartment complex so far. I moved in recently and immediately ran into issues that still have not even been acknowledged by management, let alone addressed. The unit I initially signed for and received did not match the unit I toured or was told I would be leasing. I was informed afterward that units are sometimes listed as the same floor plan despite having different layouts, simply because they share the same square footage. Although I ultimately ended up in the correct unit, this only occurred after I incurred over $240 in waiting fees from the moving company due to the apartment complex’s error. I am now being told that I must pay the “current market rate” for this unit, which is $40 more per month than the lease I originally signed for. It is important to note that the unit I am currently occupying was available at the time I signed my lease and was offered at the same rate as the original unit. Charging a higher rate under these circumstances is by definition a bait-and-switch practice. My next request was the removal of the washer/dryer from my unit (which I was told only had the connections and not the actual appliances) and the installation of my own purchased washer/dryer that is currently sitting unused in my living room, which is very feasible and only requires management’s approval. I have made multiple attempts to contact management and have received no response. Specifically, manager Juanna Goodwin is explicitly ignoring my requests to simply have a conversation, and is deferring me to her assistant, who I also have not heard a word from in almost 2 weeks. The lack of communication and urgency is incredibly frustrating, especially for a new resident whose problems started before I even arrived. At this point, I am not asking for anything unreasonable, just basic communication and resolution. Unfortunately, management’s silence has made this situation far more stressful than it ever needed to be. I hope this review gets the attention of someone who can finally address these issues.

I really wasn’t gonna make this post, but an email today from the assistant property manager, Nayive, made me change my mind. SHORT VERSION: DO NOT LIVE HERE. Long version: I lived at the Teak for almost 5 years. I moved in before the current management company took over. All in all, it was a decent place to live for the price and location. When it was bought and sold to S2, everything went downhill. Management is not just terrible, but downright nonexistent. They don’t do anything. Dirty floors in the hallway, broken elevators, disgustingly, dirty pools, you name it, it needs repair. There is no luxury here. Teak is one of the four properties and is basically one of the stepchildren that they forget about. The only really care about Cedar and the Ash and even those properties are a hot mess from what I hear. During the time I lived there, I brought in five new residents for the property, totaling about $100,000 worth of revenue a year for them. I just got my final statement from them after leaving and they are trying to charge me $145 for “apartment damage” aka wear and tear from living there for 5 YEARS. The same property manager, Nayive, also “forgot” to put my lease end date in the system and tried to charge me extra months. She refused to return any of my phone calls, and I had to speak with one of the other front office workers. After a lot of back-and-forth, it was fixed by another employee. DO NOT LIVE HERE. There are so many other apartments in Dallas that are better than this place.