Apartment Review for Ballston Court - Arlington, VA

I've lived at Ballston Court in a 2 br apartment for ten months now. Upon my lease ending in the year, my roommate and I are definitely moving out. We want to be in the city, and the price difference to live near where we work isn't that significant. My roommate and I celebrated our 23rd birthdays while living in this apartment and we both work in DC. When we moved in to Ballston Court we were very romanced by spacious Virginia, the wood floors and clean, new looking apartment. Also, the courtyard and giant tree are beautiful and it's nice to walk home to that view every day. Yet, we've had a few problems. Our power has gone out maybe 3 times, only on the last time did management tell us that our fans needed to both be off when we use the hair dryer, otherwise the power would go out. Imagine how paranoid we were to use our blow dryers before we knew about the fan rule. Still, quite annoying. For the first six months of living there we lived above the apartment manager of the entire complex. She was crazy. She would pound a broomstick on her ceiling (our floor) at least twice a week if she thought we were walking too hard. Also, she kept putting notices under our door that Virginia law requires soft padding and carpeting on 90% of upstairs apartments with wood flooring. What the heck?! You can't carpet kitchen or bathroom. Plus, it was right after we had moved our whole lives across the country and we were poor. We didn't have the time and money to buy carpeting, and when we did get a large living room rug, she came IN TO OUR apartment (with a few day's notice letter under the door) to inspect to see if we had carpeting. Even though we did our best, she still wrote a rude letter about how we needed to go to home depot and buy the right kind of padding to go under our rugs. Whatever. We never did it. Plus, my roommate asked a girl that lived in the upstairs of another unit if she had received the threatening letters from management about carpeting and she said no and that she never had carpeting. So we obviously were the target of her own investigation because we lived directly above her. Also, her teenage son was a weirdo and her apartment stunk so bad you could smell it in the hallway. I was delighted when I walked by and heard her explain to someone that she was going to “movimiento” somewhere else. She was replaced by some young, fun guys and we got new management. The new management is much more sufficient and they live on site near the parking lot where you can drop your rent checks off. However, we encountered an ant infestation in our kitchen this last month, and it has been a nightmare. We just have to be ULTRA clean and careful. Management came in to caulk up the holes because we didn’t wanna be sprayed because of health issues. But it didn’t work and the ants came back when we got lazy with a mess. We’re just going to be super careful and clean until our move out date in two months. Also, the bathroom got pretty gross with mold and things, again, we’re just gonna wait it out. The management is mostly bilingual, with some confusion, but we like Hugo. The parking is adequate. It’s included in the rent and there is always a place to park, so it’s very nice. The spaces are kind of small, so my pretty car has taken some pretty good dings over the year. The laundry room usually has washers open, but the whole time we lived here there was at least one washer and one dryer broken at a time, sometimes even more. There’s a Harris Teeter very close by. The walk to the Metro is also very nice. It takes about 10-14 minutes depending on your pace. Also, if you want you can walk through the mall for most of the walk if it’s too hot/cold or rainy/snowy. The walk to the mall is about 5 mins. But the mall sucks. They have a CVS, Starbucks, some random women’s shopping, a movie theater, 3-5 sucky bars/restaurants, Coldstone and crummy food court. Actually, all the food in the area basically sucks, and I’m not sure why. If I count the total time from locking our apartment door to unlocking our office door it takes 30 mins for my roommate to get to work in Farragut Sq., 40 mins for me in Chinatown and 50+ minutes to get to the hill where I used to work. Of course those are the estimates if the train is on time. That’s why we’re moving in to the city. Also, because those times are lengthened for night time travel into the city because the trains run every 15-20 mins. All in all my stay at Ballston was average. Most of the tenants are 20somethings with day jobs. I think it’s overpriced for how old the apartments are and with the amount of problems we’ve had. Like the time that our air conditioner pissed water ALL over the floor! My roommate has been to another unit that she says is WAY bigger than ours and they pay the same price. Totally unfair. If you want a fairly safe and quiet Virginia neighborhood, this one is a pretty good bet.