Apartment Review for Balcones Woods Apartments - Austin, TX

If you enjoy being without water without any prior knowledge, then this is the place for you! On multiple occasions, Balcones Woods Apartment staff have shut the water down to both my building and the entire complex without any warning. The reasons range from installing a new dishwasher in a neighboring apartment during the apartment remodeling to a broken water main. While the broken water main is an excellent reason to shut the complex's water off without notice, the way the management handles communication is deplorable. On the days they shut the water off for dishwasher/sink installments, there was never any warning it was going to happen - you found out when you tried to turn your shower on in the morning. During the recent water main break, they posted one message on their phones saying the water would be back on later that evening. The water went out at 4pm and the staff left at their usual time without doing anything other than putting up a phone message. At 2pm the next day, they put a note on every door saying it would be on between 3 and 4pm, but didn't include any information about whether we should boil water or be concerned that it wasn't safe to drink. The water was finally restored 28 hours after it went out, and well after the staff had gone home for the weekend and were unable to tell us if it was safe to consume. Three days after it was restored, they shut it off again because they found some more issues they needed to repair. Again, no information from the apartment complex. Unless you were awake at 7am, you didn't get to shower before work. The management clearly doesn't understand the need to communicate with the tenants. Like I said, unless you enjoy not knowing if you'll have water and can shower when you wake up in the morning, this is not the place for you. In addition to poor communication, the workmanship of the recent repairs is just plain awful. Our kitchen cabinets are falling off because they used a drill bit that was far too large to hold the screws for the hinges. There are dots of paint all over the "wood" floor they just installed because they spray painted the walls after putting the floor down and without covering it. I went about a month in this apartment before the drawer and cabinet fronts were installed in the bathroom. The carpet upstairs is anything but flat, there are huge waves in it that one could pretty easily trip over. The windows don't seal properly, and when it's windy out our curtains sway in the breeze. When they painted the outside of the building, they painted our dryer vent shut, not once but twice. It was taking three runs through the dryer to dry our clothes before we figured out that was what happened the first time. A week later, it was painted shut again. The remodeling did nothing besides update the "look" of the apartment. Our plugs still fall out of the walls sometimes because the outlets are so old. I would have preferred to keep the old stoves/dishwashers and not have to worry about fire hazards from plugs falling out of old electrical outlets. The quality of repairs is poor, at best. Communication is a foreign concept to the management and staff. Availability of parking is about the only thing this place has going for it.