I leased a studio apartment that I lived in for 2 years, and boy the experience I had. At first, the place was alright, the people at the leasing office looked and sounded nice, the place was decent looking for the price I was paying, and it was my first apartment. It was one of the cheaper and closer [to school] options out there, so I was optimistically like, "Why not!?"
I somewhat enjoyed my time there, I had a warm and safe space while I went to SHSU, and I learned to do so many things on my
...own such as changing the AC filter, for example. However, it had its cons as well.
Fleas. I had a flea problem (I did not have pets, and I was very particular with leaving my shoes by the door); they solved it by spraying the place down.
Millipedes (and tons of them). There seemed to be a millipede problem every summer for the past 2 summers I lived here. For some reason they were able to get in; I had to spray any openings every other week just to not have so many coming in!
Messed up oven. As someone who bakes, I use the oven frequently, and it was just frustrating! The oven was a very old model which I had to adapt my baking to not burn the heck out of my food, for example, if my baking requires 20 mins, I had to adjust it to 15 mins or less.
Tub, so here's the thing, THEY PAINT OVER THE TUB TO MAKE IT LOOK "CLEAN!" I had my suspicions, but it wasn't until I tried having a bath that one time that little paint flakes floated on the surface of the water.
Lame maintenance. I had a leaky ceiling problem more than twice and maintenance weren't able to find the problem to fix it. The people upstairs had a broken toilet problem which affected my apt. as well so I went ahead and called them. They checked it out and said they couldn't find the source of the leak. A week later, it happened again, so I called them and the same thing happened- they couldn't find the leak. The leaking happened two more times, but I just gave up trying to get help- so whoever gets my apt., good luck!
Finally, and because I did not know this, be warned that they charge you for moving out! $75 fee for "Admin move out," WHAT! They also charged me for "dirty oven knobs" because the oven, who tries to bring hellfire every time I baked, was too hot that it roasted the oven knobs.
Regardless, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR, so if you can spare a few hundred bucks a month, great, do not lease here, or do. Nevertheless, you will eventually learn to love it..maybe.
Max of 2.