I hate writing negative reviews, but my experience at Royal York warrants one. I went into it with high hopes and was excited by the location and old charm of the building, but that quickly faded. I am the first to admit that Mike Sr. is a great guy and did a great job showing the apartment, but after signing my lease, I never saw him again. Here is a summary of my experience at Royal York:
-The utility billing is a joke and borderline illegal. I was told that they would bill the electricity based on actual consumption. When I asked about setting up my account with the power company, I was told that it would come from Sterling and there was nothing to set up. The bill was normal until I put an air conditioner in early in the spring. You can't put an a/c in without telling them so they could adjust my bill. This made no sense, but I went with it. My very next bill was 3x what the previous had been. During this billing period, I was actually gone on a medical rotation, 4 hours away (and all the electricity was obviously turned off). When questioned, the woman at the office (Patty?) was immediately rude and said it was based on the usage. (She said even though I was gone, my "fridge still had to be on"! What?! That should not = $120 in a 700sq foot apartment!) When I asked for the bill from the power company, she got even nastier and more disrespectful. She lied and said there was no bill from the power company but that the Sterling Company reads it and calculates it. This is a complete lie and I could never get an explanation for the power bill being so high while I was gone. She finally said she'd "do me a favor" and take off 50% of the electric bill. When I tried to question the validity again of how the bill was determined, she threatened to "take away" the favor, so I dropped it.
-Management (Patty?) is crooked. I got a job out of town 2 months before my lease was up. To break your lease, you must pay a fee that is 3 months rent, so of course I didn't opt for this...I just paid the final 2 months rent. The 3 months' fee is understandable and fair. But when I told them I would just pay the final two months' rent and drop my keys off when I moved out before the lease was up, I was told that I had to be out by a certain date!! I received a notification being told I had broken the contract and if I didn't move out by said date, I would be fined. Not only that, but I now had 2 weeks to pay for BOTH of the future months' rent... what?!?!
She called a few days later trying to encourage me to move out even sooner. For encouragement, she offered to return my entire deposit, and allow me to only pay 1 of the 2 months left. (my deposit was the same amount as a month's rent). When I pointed that out, she said she was just hoping I could move out earlier so someone else could move in!
I had already paid those two months, so I asked if I that meant I wasn't getting my deposit back!? She said I definitely would, unless I left it a wreck, left trash, etc. She also promised she would send my deposit back ASAP.
EXACTLY 31 days after moving out (so much for "ASAP"), I received a PORTION of my deposit....I was charged for "cleaning" when I left the apartment FAR better than I found it. It just so happened that in the time between being shown the apartment and when I moved in, that Sterling put some of those cheap peel off vinyl tiles in the kitchen. The problem is that when they did, they left a stain on them that my boyfriend and I scrubbed on with no luck. When I moved out, a cleaning charge for the kitchen floor was tacked on.
-Climate control is non-existent. You will die if you don't have at least two windows open in the WINTER time. You might as well plan on buying a window air conditioner that is the next size up from the one recommended at the store based on the apartment square footage. (I DID live on the 10th floor though. I was told by tenants on lower floors they didn't have the same problem. Instead, they had the constant roar of the radiators to deal with...so pick your evil I guess?)
-To top it all off, I had silverfish in my apartment. I told management (3x in total) bc they were constantly scurrying around in the bathroom and kitchen. Their traps would catch some of them, but the exterminator would never come to spray...I was told he just reset the traps? They never completely left.
- & to respond to the previous posting - I was told we were NOT allowed to self park. $95/month for valet or street parking were my options!
I do want to say that every employee I dealt with (other than the woman at Sterling Land Company, Patty?), was friendly and helpful.
I read prior negative reviews of this woman before moving in, but hoped I would be able to stay free of her. I was wrong, and left this apartment complex fuming because of her. It was either hire a lawyer, or warn everyone else of Sterling Land Company Management....so hopefully this warning does some good! read more