WARNING on this property: shady practices; outrageous charges; potentially taking advantage of…read moreelders with language barriers.
I signed a lease with Artist Walk Apartments. During our inspection of the apartment on the day of moving in, we found the apartment to be extremely noisy. The noise comes from the bathroom fans that are on 24/7 (you cannot turn it off). We measure the noise to be around 70 dB at highest, 55 dB at lowest. The Fremont noise regulation requires a continuous noise of less than 45 dB at night. Because the apartment does not meet government noise regulation, and we were legit getting severe headches from the noise of the apartment, we immediately requested to cancel the lease.
Problem begins:
My parents don't speak English well. They arrived at the leasing office first, and were asked to sign the apartment inspection document BEFORE they were allowed to inspect the apartment. They were told that if they don't sign, they aren't abe to get keys. As a result, they were conned into signing the inspection document before we found out that the apartment does not meet government noise regulation.
Because we signed the inspection document, the apartment now insists that we have "Moved In", and not only do they refuse to refund our 600 USD deposit, they also requested us to pay two months of rent totalling almost 8000 USD for us to cancel our lease. Please note that we NEVER moved into the apartment, and we requested to cancel the lease WELL within the 24 hours of our apartment inspection.
We have reported all of our noise findings to various government agencies, and we are fighting all of the charges through all legal means available to us. Please note that they have initially agreed to "Cancel" our lease, but now threatened us with TWO months rent for "breaking" our lease. They said they would replace the fans, but repeatedly made it clear that it may not solve the issue. Since they cannot promise the issue to be resolved, we insisted on cancelling our lease. So now we have to seek legal means. They have now demanded a payment of well over 8000 USD because we've touched the apartment keys. They refused to admit that their apartment violates the government noise regulation and unethically made my parents sign the inspection document BEFORE they were allowed to inspect the apartment. We requested to cancel the lease PURELY because the apartment noise violates government regulation. Even their own measurements showed a clear violation.
In the end, it is the unethical practices from these people that are truly shocking. They clearly think us civilians do not have the means to fight back. The apartment itself shoudn't be allowed on the rental market until all issues are fixed; but in the end there is no easy fix to subpar morals, discrimination, lack of ethics, penchant for manipulation, and a complete disregard of rules, regulation, and human decency.
July 11th, 2025:
For legal purposes I am writing this update to respond to "Maggie". I have plenty of communication evidence, and formal evidence that I've tried to resolve this issue "informally" with your team. I am no longer interested in circling back and forth with your team. So far, your team have done nothing but gaslight me, provide conflicting accusations that shouldn't make any sense even to yourself. Here is a summary of what you have done so far:
1. I received an application credit of 50 USD. You now said you will be charging me for that because I DID NOT move in, and the credit only applies when I've moved in.
2. You requested that I pay two months rent to "break the lease" because I DID MOVE IN. Note, in previous bullet point your reason for charging me was I DID NOT move in. So which one is it? At this point, it is clear you are just making up things as you go so you can charge me.
3. With all of the above stated charges, you still refuse to refund my 600 USD deposit, for what reason?
4. On July 7th, when we inspected the apartment, we immediately asked for the fans to be replaced. They refused. We asked to cancel the lease. They said we can cancel, but it has to be done immediately. We complied and canceled immediately.
5. A day later, after THEIR OWN measurements showed THEIR OWN noise violation, they tried to glaslight us saying the apartment is fine. They can try to update the fan for us, but it most likely won't change anything. Because they made zero promise to resolve the issue, we insisted on our cancelation.
6. 3 days later, they threatened us saying we broke the lease, and they will be charging us two months rent for breaking the lease; 600 USD for the deposit we already paid; AND they are going to charge me for the application credit of 50 USD I received (see first two points).
This experience has been completely insane. I feel like rules are being made up along the way to charge me as much money as possible; these rules came out of no where and were in NO WAY disclosed beforehand.