Knollwood Apartment Homes

Knollwood is a total rip off. Sure the apartments are nice inside and the grounds clean, but when you move out you WILL be taken for your full deposit and possibly even more.
It is a good location to the Edward Via Virginia College of Medicine, which is a plus for those students, but there are so many other good housing options in Blacksburg and Christiansburg that I’d say take your money elsewhere. I think Knollwood preys upon the medical students, knowing they’ll pay the high prices for their apartments.
When I lived there I kept the place very clean. I had a very small dog, and I paid the pet deposit as well as a monthly pet fee for her. She was a very well trained older dog and only stayed for a few months. There was one room with computer equipment that she NEVER went into because the door was always closed to that room. When I moved out, the housing office told me there was a huge urine stain in that room, like taking up nearly half of the room. I told them that it was impossible that it was a pet stain and they insisted it was. I believe someone had once spilled a soda there but it had been thoroughly cleaned, nothing was visible, nothing smelled, but Knollwood ripped up the carpet and in the padding found some kind of stain and insisted it was from my pet. My pet would have had to have urinated there 20 times to make that stain and she was never, not ONCE, in that room. They charged me the full security deposit as well as an extra $ 800 to replace all of the carpet in the whole apartment, which was ridiculous. When asked why they had to replace the carpet in the WHOLE apartment instead of just that one room which was separated from all of the rest of the apartment by a hallway which did not have carpet, they said that the carpets would not match otherwise.
My mother had come down to help me clean the apartment before moving out, not to mention, I used to clean houses, and by anyone’s standard the apartment was immaculately clean and they still complained about like a microscopic smear in the bathtub that was not visible on pictures I took before I moved out, or a dot on the walls (which they insisted had to be repainted, all of them). I felt very taken advantage of and seriously considered taking them to court over this, but I was a very busy graduate student who had to travel away for my studies and did not have the time. I regret it though, especially after hearing about my neighbor’s similar experiences. All of my neighbors also were taken for their full security deposits.
Anyway, there are other apartments that are just as nice and where the office is more reasonable, I’d go with one of those instead.

My husband and I lived here for three years while we were graduate students at Tech. When we first visited Tech to look for housing in June before our first Fall semester, we wanted to live here, but they were already rented out. We came by the leasing office in Nov and were put on the waiting list for the following year. I think around January, we signed a lease on a two bedroom, third floor apartment.
We really enjoyed our time living here. The apartment had a very nice layout. It was great to have a separate laundry room (we bought a washer and dryer for $ 25 from a leaving student!) and storage area off the balcony. The third floor was awesome, as we had really high, vaulted ceilings. We could have two cats, with an extra $ 20/​month in rent. Parking was never a problem. The proximity to campus and the corporate research center was awesome. We just walked to the stadium for all the Tech games.
The ladies in the leasing office are very nice and friendly. The leasing group hosted parties in the common room, and there was always a table of sweets or something in the office area. We never used the workout area, but there are several pieces of equipment. The pool is nice in the summer, as it doesn’t get too crowded and there are enough lounge chairs.
Two.5 downsides:
1) Fall 2006, they decided to turn them into condos. So, it was kind of annoying to have them show our apartment every so often. I mean, all of the apartments pretty much have the exact same layout.
2) Our last year there, Knollwood become THE place for the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine students to live. There were four doors on our side of the building, and the VCOM students lived in the other three. Constant running up and down the stairs. Slamming the doors (which shook the entire apartment). There was a noticeable change to the community when VCOM students invaded… almost like undergrads, just slightly older…
2.5) It is a little isolated from restaurants and food stores. A «quick» run for milk will be about 30 mins, roundtrip.
When we moved out, we pretty much got all of our deposit back. Since we were moving across county, we decided to just eat the cleaning fee (I think around $ 300?) and not spend our last days in Blacksburg cleaning.
So, if, for some strange, wacked out reason, we were to return to Blacksburg and the housing market is still crazy, I’d definitely want to try to live here again.