Dwell served its temporary purpose for me, but once you're back on your feet, I'd suggest looking…read moreelsewhere. I appreciate that I was able to find availability so quickly, that a garage (detached but indoor hallway) could be rented, that it felt relatively safe (new/updated mgmt was even installing cameras before I left), and that management/maintenance always remained polite - hence the additional star.
But the name "luxury" is false. I've lived in a cockroach motel in Philly and in a shared 6-person dorm room in NYC, and despite those expected pitfalls, those places had less maintenance and noise issues than Dwell. There was brown sticky fluid dripping from the window after heavy rain, near my only expensive item in the apartment; it took three separate leaks to finally fix it.
Said window faced the garbage area, and the best advice, if you're going to live at Dwell: avoid any of the units anywhere near the garbage (I asked the leasing person before signing, but she said she was just filling in so she had no idea if garbage was an issue...). I complained multiple times, to the garbage/recycling companies, to management, to maintenance, even to the police (not 911) because my complaints were ignored by the preceding and because it is illegal to pick up trash before 7 AM in Cherry Hill due to noise ordinances. 3x/wk, especially Saturday @ 5-6 AM, it would sound like cars repeatedly crashing into each other because of the truck banging the metal canisters while flashing their lights, beeping while reversing. It took 3 months of constant complaints and no sleep before they finally showed up at 7:01 AM.
Then the trash compactor decided to die, so now there's 30-60 seconds of loud scraping metal noises, at random, not even at a set time, usually 10-15x throughout the night. If it rained or got a little windy, that would set off the trash compactor. I repeatedly asked someone to do the equivalent of "WD40," and for about 24-48 hours, sometimes it worked. But for the last 2 months of my sentence, I gave up.
And the smell. Keep that window and door closed because on a hot summer day, guaranteed you'll be met with the rotting stench of a dead corpse when you walk outside.
I told them that the fridge/freezer doors didn't always close consistently. They fixed the fridge one but said nothing was wrong with the freezer one, so I often came home to my freezer food being partially defrosted (I only noticed because there'd be a puddle of water on the floor).
I also told them that there was some resistance when trying to turn my front door key, that I had to lift up the door to re-align the bolt before I could turn and open. They replied that this was how the door worked, a pull-close mechanism. Months later, the key broke off in the lock because of constant bending...fortunately, I figured this would happen eventually and pulled it out before it broke completely, and the front office was still open. The door was clearly not aligned...so apparently, it's not normal to have to use 2 hands to open and close a door by lifting it.
The electricity bill is HIGH, at least $100/month during the summer. And my wi-fi kept dropping (Comcast couldn't figure out why other than maybe some wall interference, even bought a new router which works totally fine now in a new place). The garage is small; I could not open my car door fully to get out.
The bugs. So many bugs. The cockroach motel at least consistently just had cockroaches. At Dwell, there was a new type of bug every other day. After multiple complaints, management would send an exterminator to spray some liquid and put down some glue traps...but that did nothing. So on my own dime, I bought cans of Raid, bug bombs, fruit fly traps, an electric bug zapper, more glue traps - and the results were still horrifying. There was a spider in my dishwashing glove, something fell on my head once, and I had to wait a solid minute for the spider to get off my door handle before I could open it. I overheard another gentleman complaining about "fleas," but he didn't own any pets, so management corrected him and said those were just gnats, tis the season, exterminator coming soon...
But the last straw was despite all the above, after 11 months, they raised rent by 4.4%, which falls into the standard 3-5% but I asked them to reconsider given the issues. If they'd shaved down to 3%, I might have been lazy enough to stay, but they gave a flat no. Fortunately, this time, I had the opportunity to leisurely look elsewhere. Now I'm paying less for rent, completely refurbished despite more recent building, fireplace, key fob (no more broken keys), attached garage (can open BOTH car doors), $30/month for electric even in summer, wifi that works, better amenities, even safer community, more convenient location (instead of revving from 0-50 to turn right onto a highway during rush hour), minimal bugs, with absolutely no noise (other than crickets) or smell (other than grass).
