Charter Square Apartments

Okay, since apartment reviews always seem to be either angry rants or fake rhetoric rather than informational blurbs, let me try to give you a real, objective (as possible) review of this complex. Keep in mind that I worked from home, so I was there at all times of the day.
The Good:
— The price was inexpensive for the area. $ 865/​month for 2br/​1bath (heat included). When researching equivalent set-​ups in other complexes, rates generally didn’t dip below $ 950 /​month.
— You can pay everything online! I love living in 2014. (If you want to use a credit card, there is a $ 27 service fee, but that is rentpayment.com’s fault, not Charter Square).
— Easy access to anywhere in Oakland Country: you’re right next to I-​75 and Big Beaver, which makes for quick access (driving and walking) to nearby breweries (yum!). I often walked across Big Beaver to Panera to get lunch; or, take an evening run down the road to CVS.
— Swimming pool is fairly large and also has a nice little picnic area. Granted, it gets busy in the summer with all the kids, but I never found this to be a problem.
— My roommate often used the treadmills in the «workout facility». The only issue he experienced was that after hours, kids would often be just playing around in there.
— When I first moved in, my electrical was going haywire. Circuits popping, lightbulbs going out, refrigerator stopping and starting, typical Poltergeist stuff. I called the maintenance department at least 4 times in a month to report essentially the same issue. On their third try, they finally just replaced my refrigerator, no questions asked. The electrical problems went away immediately.
The Not so Good:
— My building was predominantly Indian families and thus the predominant fragrance was curry. I like Indian food as much as the next guy, but whenever we turned on our vents, our apartment became flushed with the scents of Indian cuisine. I had to carve out a few extra bucks per month for air fresheners (or I just cooked bacon).
— In my building especially, there were a lot of kids that were loud, door-​slamming, intercom-​buzzing hooligans. This annoyed me to no end. Not only that, but kids don’t understand the idea of a shared space, so they would basically trash the hallways.
— Objectively, parking is terrible. I lived in the building immediately behind the swimming pool (building 16), and our parking lot serviced 5 — 6 buildings, but really only had 80% of the actual spots required to do so. People would park anywhere: handicap spots, fire lanes, etc. There are nearby alternative lots but it can be frustrating if you’re carrying a lot of stuff (like groceries).
— Parking lots are barely lit at night. There are no overhead lamps, just «spotlight» lamps attached to the sides of buildings, but they leave a lot of dark areas.
— The laundry facilities are a joke. Not only do you have to pay for them with a special card (typical nickel & diming), but there is only ONE washer and dryer per building. ONE! No way that could service all the residents of my building. My roommate and I were lucky enough to be able to do our laundry elsewhere.
— Hopefully you will never experience this, but there was a lot of wildlife that were either sharpening their claws or conducting a fight club on the roof above my unit. This ruckus actually woke me up a few mornings, and sometimes almost sounded like a squirrel was stuck in the walls.
— I had two sets of keys, one for my building and one for my unit. With enough force (which wasn’t much), you could basically «rip» the front door to the building open, making that layer of security useless.
Let me clear up some things:
— Walking into the leasing office with a sense of entitlement will always end in a bad experience. I have to imagine that staff (Charter Square is huge) has to deal with loads of stupid issues each and every day, and I’m just one more angry resident about to unload my very important issue. Each time I walked in there with a smile on my face and calmly spelled out my issue, the staff was accommodating. (This goes the same with the maintenance staff).
— This complex has LOTS of families, and thus, LOTS of kids. You have to be more careful when driving around, and be a little more tolerant.
— Yes, you will always hear some traffic in the background. Think of it like any background noise. I got used to it after 5 minutes and never had problems sleeping.
Overall, Charter Square is a good «starter» apartment (my roommate and I were pretty much fresh out of college), but I would probably look elsewhere in Troy if you have flexibility in your budget. The proximity to I-​75 is (literally) unbeatable, and makes moving around the Troy/​Royal Oak/​Clawson area very convenient.
P. S. I have actually been compiling this review over the course of my one-​year lease with Charter Square, so hopefully you can see the care and objectivity I tried to capture during my stay here.

If I could give 0 stars I would. The staff in the office doesn’t care at all about the people in the building. They didn’t respond to things broken in our apartment. On top of that, we had to pay $ 400 for two months if energy bills because of the old air conditioning in our apartment. When trying to speak with the manager she said she didn’t have time to call DTE. I personally had to take time off my job to call on speaker phone so the manager would answer DTE’s questions. The manger would not believe that I was paying $ 200 per month and when through our whole apartment multiple times to see if it was because if our doing (seeing if we had a jacuzzi in an 800 sq ft apartment, if we run an electric heater/​air conditioner, etc…). Obviously nothing we were doing was out of the ordinary. DTE said in the history if their information no one in our apartment has ever spent that much in their energy bill. EVER! That’s why they were asking if we had some items that may be costly. We went to work at 7am and cane back at 7pm. Yet somehow we were using $ 200 a month in electricity… Since the «manager» at the complex did not care we were stuck paying the bill. We were in the
process of buying a house and didn’t want it mess that up so we’d do anything to get out if this hell hole… Still they have not cared to talk to us about our situation. I could have owned a home with the amount if money I’ve wasted at this terrible place. I hope one person reads this and does not have to go through this crap.

Don’t move in here! It’s starting to get ghetto and the staff is very rude.
Things go missing whenever maintenance comes to fix things in your house when you’re not there. Also, Charter Square faces a I-​75 freeway and Big Beaver Road. Both of which are busy and loud and they won’t even give you sound proof windows. The very least thing they could do is care, but they don’t! I live in a town house, but I’ve also been in the apartments. The apartment’s hallways stink of curry. So don’t move in unless you want to smell like curry. Not to mention you can hear your neighbors very easily.