Location: Michigan
My husband and I applied for an apartment in a large multi-building low-rise complex. When applying, this complex doesn’t take a general application for all apartments, but requires you to select the floorplan you would like and apply to the available units listed under that floorplan. The website showed this apartment number (301) as being layout “C3”, and displayed a clear blueprint of the layout. We had previously toured through a different unit, where the staff essentially said “yours would look similar to this, but this room and this room would be over here instead”. The other style layout would work for us, so we continued to apply to the one we preferred.
We were approved last week and they sent over a lease. We signed the lease, and went over on July 1st to pick up the keys. Throughout this whole process, contacting the leasing office has been an absolute nightmare. Nobody ever answers phones, returns voice-mail, or when we visit the office it’s always unstaffed (despite posting hours of abailability). When we went to pick up the keys, we were met with a locked door and 4 other angry residents also needing to talk to the office. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a maintainence worker opened the door and tried to handle the complaints but obviously only has the authority to relay messages to the office staff. He took our deposit cheque and came back with keys for our apartment. We finally went off to open the door to our unit and found out it’s a completely different layout than the one we had applied for. The apartment number is correct, but the blueprint advertised is not. This matters to us as our furniture would only fit in the specific layout we applied for. We returned to the office, but there was still no staff available and doors were locked. It was about 30 minutes until closing hour so we waited with no sign of staff returning. We left a voice-mail requesting that they don’t deposit our cheque as we’ve found out the unit is incorrect, and need to talk to them immediately. Needless to say, this whole experience has given us zero confidence in this property and we’d prefer to not move forward.
The next day, my husband showed up to the office an hour before they opened to ensure that the staff couldn’t avoid him this time. They informed him that they had already cashed his cheque and would need corporate approval to cancel this lease. We’ve now heard from corporate that they are declining to break the lease and refuse to return our deposit. We plan on contacting an attorney to discuss if we have any options, but I thought I’d also ask if anyone here may have some insight into our options. Thank you in advance!