Apartment Review for Bell Tower Apartments - San Antonio, TX

The upsides of this complex is that the rent was reasonable on a 1-bedroom and it's next to an elementary so there wasn't a lot of crime or residents throwing loud parties. The downsides were pretty significant, leading me to leave when my lease came up. The complex is old and it shows. The water pressure in the shower was terrible. The shower enclosure was plastic and the seams are not caulked, so mold was thriving in them and there was no way to clean it out. The apartments don't have individual water heaters and the shared heater often wasn't sufficient to keep shower temperatures steady. The laundry facility at the complex is dismal - it's left open 24/7 and is full of dirt and insects. Multiple washers were often broken for weeks at a time. The air conditioner is either ancient or hasn't been serviced regularly or both, leading to higher electricity bills than necessary for a small apartment. The cabinetry, tile, shower enclosure, and countertops are old, cheap and sometimes in a state of disrepair making them hard to deal with and clean. I was told I was "on the list" when I moved in to have the bottoms of the cabinets in the bathroom and kitchen repaired as they were warped, but that list is either more than a year long or got lost, because I never heard anything about it after that and the bottoms eventually fell through to the floor underneath under a normal amount of weight. The wall outlets were very loose, making some of them unusable or you had to move the plug around endlessly to find just the right spot where it would draw power - very frustrating. A couple couches have been sitting alongside one of the main dumpsters for weeks and this sort of furniture dumping is not uncommon here. Unwanted stray animals wander the complex, especially in the spring. A couple dogs seem to have become permanent residents - someone in the complex seems to be feeding them but they're still always outside - not sure why management hasn't had ACS remove them. If they were vicious or caught rabies the situation could become dangerous. All in all it was very worth an extra $300 or so a month to move into a larger, significantly nicer 2-bedroom apartment with more amenities elsewhere.