Cambridge Woods

Good location for USF. The units are old but basically fine. It’s nice to have the ponds and green spaces. The pools are standard. The gym is small and the equipment looks like hand-me-downs (and the ac is constantly broken). Office folk have always been friendly to me. The old maintenance guy was great, but I haven’t seen him around for a while (and response from maintenance seems to have suffered for his absence—I hope he’s okay).

The main concern is the ever increasing fees. Know that the… advertised rate is before $300 (give or take) in non-negotiable fees. They will also try to increase your rent by almost 20% every year! Those fees include about $40 for trash, even though they recently stopped recycling (fees were not adjusted). Worst of all, while they charge $25 per resident for parking, they’ve just made guest parking pay-by-plate. So if you want to live here, it’s gonna cost you (or your guests) extra if you wanna host a game night; every time your significant other stops by, pay up; family coming to visit? Dad better download that parking app before he gets there.

They announced the guest parking thing a while ago and enough residents complained that they agreed to drop it. Then they installed just a few pay-to-park signs, and now it’s all but 7 (for hundreds of residents). I know their problem was that some residents weren’t buying passes and were just parking in guest spaces, but that wasn’t a problem for me. There was still plenty of available parking for me and any guests I might have over. So basically, they’ve found a way to get more money out of my neighbors that also gets more money out of me!

(I assume numbers here will differ across tenants / I could have made some calculation errors in this post (but it isn’t about the numbers))

Rating Transparency: *Two stars because this system says 2 stars is “ok,” 3 stars “good”* | without the fee problem, I might go as high as 3.5 (4 is “great,” 5 is “excellent”). Read More