submitted by David P. - |Recommended: YesGreat staff,clean friendly and always helpful.
response from property -David, Thank you very much for your 5 star review! We strive to be helpful and inspire everyday!
submitted by Lyndsey A. - |Recommended: YesIncredible customer service. Friendly and reliable.
response from property -Thank you for the great review! Our goal is to provide an inspiring experience for all our guests.
submitted by Scott - |Recommended: YesI've visited the apartments. They are clean, spacious and well appointed. Residents and managers are friendly and helpful.
response from property -Scott, Thank you very much for your great review! We hope you send your friends/family looking for an apt our way!
submitted by Joe - |Recommended: YesLove it here Everyone was so nice and willing to help out. And the Gym and Pool are very clean and well kept up.
response from property -Joe, We are very pleased you are so happy at Colonie Apartments!
Please let us know if there is anything you need!
submitted by Jeanne M. - |Recommended: YesGreat apartments, well maintained, super nice staff.
response from property -Jeanne, Thank you for the 5 star review! So happy you are pleased.
submitted by Anna A. - |Recommended: YesKyle was super helpful, very knowledgeable, always very friendly and quick to help and fix what I call in.
The office staff JoAnn and Laura were friendly, quick to assist with my needs and understating to other my concerns. They made me comfortable and reassured me this is a good place for college student to live at while attending University at Buffalo.
response from property -Anna, Thank you so much for the 5 Star review of our Colonie Apartments team!
It is our goal to provide outstanding and inspired service so we are very happy you are pleased!
submitted by Delphine D. - |Recommended: YesVery clean and well maintained — office staff very professional , friendly and goes the extra mile to help
response from property -Thank you very much for your 5 star review Del!
We are here to make your living experience inspiring!
submitted by Steven Z. - |Recommended: YesWonderful for a college student or early professional, but has its flaws — Though my overall experience with Colonie Apartments has been fairly positive I do have a couple of minor moderate things that I've noticed while here that I believe are worth sharing. Though this review does focus primarily on my criticisms of the units as a whole, I will say and have said to management that I have appreciated and enjoyed my time as a tenant. The staff has been friendly and quick to respond to us MOST of the time and a lot of the issues we have had that can be addressed have been addressed in a fairly timely manner including issues with our AC, bathroom vent, shower piping, water temperature, etc. As I’ll mention later as well they also let us install a toilet we purchased instead of having us keep the one that was in the unit which I felt was great – especially for comfort sake. When it comes to reviews, because I expected a lot from this place, I am going to be overly critical of the small details as those are what most of the time make or break a place, especially one that brands itself as a Luxury Apartment Complex. The higher standard the complex puts itself to is the baseline I have set for the contents of my review. Please keep that in mind as you read through the following information.
One massively positive thing I have to say is that the sound levels of the apartments are excellent. We live next to two different units and directly above one and the only time I have ever heard anyone within the apartments, its been when we’ve both had windows open in the fall. Otherwise, unless I were to see people in the common spaces which happens every now and again I would have guessed we were the only ones in the building. As soon as that big metal front door closes, it’s as if your unit is the only unit in the building. I LOVE this about the apartment Smell is fairly contained too, though we did have some issues with neighbors partaking in certain fragrant activities that caused the common spaces to smell but for the most part a little air freshener when it gets unpleasant has kept that down to a minimum.
First and foremost we moved in just after a multi-million dollar renovation to the campus and it was mainly noticeable in the kitchen and I assume the flooring was a part of the renovations as well but there were issues with simple things like cheap blinds, holes in the walls and ceilings believe it or not as well as slightly crooked outlets in most of the rooms and a barely functioning call box that would allow for outside folks to buzz, but we could not open the door or communicate with them otherwise. A lot of these minor aesthetic things appear to be corner cutting things that could have been easily handled and I am not sure if this is just an “our unit” thing or if it is a complex wide thing. If it mattered to me a whole bunch I would have attempted to fix this but at this point most of the outlets are behind furniture in some way or another so I’ve left them alone.
The AC Heating in the unit we had was very hit or miss and for most of the summer it was incredibly MISS most of the time. We ended up bringing in fans and a couple portable air conditioners to keep the bedrooms at a temperature below 76 degrees and we were later told by a maintenance person that the temperature imbalance was due to our building being one that was not a part of an AC system upgrade that only happened to about half of the buildings at Colonie as of Summer 2019. Heating has been performing as expected if not better. We have been tweaking vents and such to distribute the heat well and so far, so good. One complaint I can add that is more or less just something to be aware of is that the HVAC system is loud primarily due to its location. It sits in a closet within the main living space of the unit so when it’s on you can't ignore it. We’ve also noticed little critters like to use that closet as an entryway into the apartment because it seems the holes cut through the exterior walls aren’t fully sealed but you can’t fully blame bugs on the building as bugs almost always find a way whether we like it or not. I would just like for their options to be limited as much as possible in a perfect world.
Moving on to the bathroom, the toilet that was originally in the unit was on the small side with a whopping 5.0-gallon flush that felt incredibly wasteful to us. However, the staff allowed us to purchase our own replacement of choice and they installed it for us less than a week after purchase which was well worth the 250 the toilet cost. The bathroom has a weird textured wall design, it’s on the spikey side of things which was not expected and makes wall repair difficult. They also replaced a mirror in the bathroom but the work around it was not done well so you can still see where the old mirror medicine cabinet was. This may just be an issue in our unit, and it isn’t a deal breaker but it’s worth mentioning. The floor being the same faux wood as the rest of the unit was also an interesting choice to me – I would’ve expected some form of tile but with the bath mats on the floor its not as big of an issue. The baseboard in the bathroom and the kitchen seems to be something out of an office building and it doesn’t fit into an apartment setting outside of a common area and even then, it’s a little odd, and the strip that’s on the bottom of the exterior of the tub keeps peeling off even though we have had it repaired twice at this point. The shower initially had an old valve that was incredibly sensitive and not super easy to get right. Less than a degree of turn could make a difference between frigid cold and scalding hot – unfortunately we had an issue where it got stuck and ended up breaking causing some minor flooding in the lower apartment but since then we have gotten new piping for the shower and it has worked as you’d expect since. Our maintenance worker at the time had no solution for stopping the flooding so our unit went without water for almost two days. I believe he no longer works for the facility so that issue may be moot, but I felt it crazy that he gave up, turned off the water and left use to fend for ourselves for two days. No bathroom use, no showers, no sink operation – it felt borderline illegal to not have those necessities available to us.
The bedrooms are very nice with the master being a generously large size. The weird thing with the master is that it only has one vent in the ceiling which is right by the window so its basically useless and the closets in both rooms have weird metal shelving that looks old with rust in certain spots and the coat hanger pole isn’t very sturdy in any closets that have one. However, the two bedroom closets are plenty large enough and deep enough for our totes and hanging clothing and whatever else which is wonderful I would love to have a coat hanger pole that doesn’t sag when little weight is added to them but that’s why we leave those doors closed almost all the time, out of sight out of mind.
The front closet and pantry are both nice storage spaces with high ceilings and they are deep enough for us to store plenty in. our main issue is that the front closet door doesn’t close properly without us having to pull up on the handle but again, it’s a minor issue that would be nice to have fixed but doesn’t later the quality of life while in the apartment. It probably is something that maintenance could handle in minutes but again, it hasn’t bothered us to the point of feeling the need to reach out
The kitchen and dining room are nice together, the kitchen is on the small side and tucked away from the rest of the apartment which could be an issue for some folks but certainly isn’t for us. The appliances are all brand new and perform just as expected. The stove being a glass top electric unit can get a little messier quicker than some other gas range stoves I’ve used but overall again it is a nice feature of the apartment. The storage cabinets are a little bit on the small side but we got a storage cabinet that we put in the dining room and it takes care of the extra things we needed homes for. This is of course a “we have too much stuff” issue, not a “this apartment doesn’t have enough storage space” issue.
The windows are huge and lovely but the biggest issue I have with them is that they are not energy star rated that I can tell and they suck out heat cold like nobody’s business especially in the dining room and the living room with the glass sliding doors. It is dramatically colder warmer by the windows and doors to the point where it feels like they’re open. I have considered putting plastic on all of them to try and help with the leaks it seems they cause but it feels like something that we shouldn’t have to be concerned about with a multi-million-dollar renovation of this complex. I would’ve hoped the windows would have been a part of that. It also seems like whoever installed the blinds on all of the windows did it completely wrong causing at least one set of them to fall off the window completely before I went and fixed them all. The windows are around 80” wide which means the blinds that are used need supports so they don’t sag. The supports were installed, but not in the correct places so they can notch into the blinds like they are supposed to. When the blinds did fall off of the window in the dining room it was because we were pulling the blinds up and they slipped off of the incorrectly installed supports. The blinds were also broken in both the bedrooms. Each set had at least one broken blind fin that snapped off somehow. The smaller bedroom has cordless blinds which are nice, and the larger bedroom has the same blinds as the dining room.
The patio is a nice addition to the unit and we were glad to use it all the time in the warmer months. We lose some space due to the AC condenser unit that is placed in a slightly weird space but otherwise it’s a nice large outdoor space and our building is lucky enough to have it face into a little wooded area which I appreciate.
The common areas are probably the most sub-par part of the unit. The doorknobs are all cheap and mismatched, most of the brass ones are all scratched up, the walls need to be painted and have patchwork completed but nothing more. The outside of the apartment doors are all scratched up and the railing’s black paint is peeling exposing bare wood which is a safety hazard. I’ve reached out a couple times to have this fixed but it has yet to be addressed to the point where I’m tempted to fix it myself but likely won’t as I don’t want to break any lease agreements by altering the common space even if its just for repair and safety concerns. To be completely honest the common areas appear dingy and no where near the level of a “luxury apartment complex” as Colonie brands itself. You can tell that the buildings were renovated but there’s certain things that were neglected that help show how old the units actually are. The mailboxes, the doors, the broken buzzer system, the closet interiors I assume and the doors for the patio are all pretty disappointing and I feel decrease the value of the units as a whole. I also don’t agree with the cost of the washer drier set up especially since I wasn’t made aware of the cost of them until we moved in. I used to live in an apartment complex in Florida that cost me the same per month, was five minutes away from Walt Disney World, had a larger layout and included FREE TO USE washers and driers in every unit in a little room off of the kitchen. If I had to choose one thing that would keep me from getting an apartment in the future it would be the laundry situation. Having to share a washer and drier and pay to do so for me would be the deal breaker had I known about it before moving into the unit. I know it’s a more common thing now a days especially in certain types of apartment complexes but when you’re paying a premium to live somewhere you shouldn’t also have to pay to use communal laundry appliances. Especially ones that don’t work all too well. We have to run the drier 2-3 times to dry towels and we have to dry them in half loads or they just stay damp. We’ve discovered doing a half load of towels on the hot setting with wool balls added in to help speed up the process is the only way that drier will fully dry towels at all. Most of the time we end up taking laundry to my parent’s house because its faster, cheaper more efficient and more private than the offerings at Colonie which is a shame because I know for a lot of people who do live there, they don’t have this opportunity.
The last couple things I have to mention about the apartment are that there are no lights in the ceilings of either bedroom or the living room. The dining room at least for us had a heavy large ugly upside-down dome light and the kitchen had a heavy glass lighting fixture that made replacing bulbs difficult as its almost too large and clunky. I also have no idea what’s going on with the light in the hallway. Its like a janky recessed thing you’d expect to find in a public rest room and it doesn’t at all fit in with the rest of the apartment but its just in a small hallway and if you don’t look up you wont even notice it. Be careful with switches, especially in the rooms that don’t have lights in them by default. For example, the switch in the living room turns off the outlet we have our internet router plugged into which we did not know right away. We have since fully installed smart lighting and leave the switches on as the lights turn on and off on their own but for folks who don’t plan on doing that, keep the switch outlets in mind when laying out your space and consider pull-chain lights instead so you don’t have to mess with the switches unless you choose to.
The front door is also as I mentioned before fairly heavy as its metal but because of this it takes some strength to get it open. I often use my shoulder and force it open by kind of leaning into it. I also wish the actual door handle had a lock on it in addition to the dead bolt. Therefore, if someone forgets their keys but has to leave and doesn’t want to leave the door unlocked they could just lock the door knob and have the other person unlock the door when they go home later in the day. I can not tell you how many times a room mate has forgotten where their keys are and I’ve had to run home to lock the door because the only door lock method currently is a dead bolt which you can only lock once the door is closed and need a key to lock it from the outside.
response from property -Thank you for your 4 Star Review Steven! We wish you the best of luck in the future!
submitted by Anna L. - |Recommended: YesGreat place except some ceiling issue. — We have a great experience here in Colonie Apartment. The only problem we met here is the ceiling. We kept having a leaking problem in our bathroom during the winter. After asking several times for sending maintenance orders, we simply gave up. Except that, this is a great apartment to live in for a long period.
response from property -Hi Anna, Thank you so much for the great review! As you are aware we responded to your ceiling calls when you called and resolved the issue immediately. Upon seeing your note here we revisited the issue because we had no idea you had another problem. The upstairs neighbor was unaware they were letting water out of there shower. We are happy to report no further issues. Please do not wait to let us know if there are any other issues! We look forward to a long and happy relationship with you!
submitted by Aravind K. - |Recommended: YesA beautiful place for peaceful living — Definitely will recommend this to all my friends
response from property -Thank you so much for the 5 star review!
Remember when your friends moves in you will earn a discount on your rent!
We are happy that we are able to provide you a comfortable and happy place to call home.
submitted by Minyu L. - |Recommended: YesGreat — Wonderful
response from property -Thank you so much for the 5 star review!
We are happy that your living experience at Colonie Apartments is an inspiring one!
submitted by Carlie - |Recommended: YesMy husband and I have lived here for about three months now and I’m very impressed. Maintenance has been called a few times for very minor issues but that didn’t stop Kyle for his quick response every time He is very professional and gets things fixed for you right away The office staff is very friendly and helps with any concerns you have as well. One of my favorite things about living here is that it’s pet friendly My huskies love to lay in front of our sliding glass door and spy on all the neighbors. Only downfall is my noisy upstairs neighbors but it’s apartment living and that’s pretty much expected anywhere you go Thanks Colonie apartments and their employees for making our time here feel like home
response from property -We are thrilled that you are so happy at Colonie Apartments! We agree that Kyle is a great addition to our team! Please let us know if you need anything at all!
submitted by Mercedes M. - |Recommended: YesPerfect — The property staff is amazing, the apartments are perfect and the maintenance staff is available quickly if you need them. The only small issue is that you can hear your neighbors walking easily but other than that this place is great.
response from property -Thank you so much for the 5 star review! We pride ourselves on making your experience an inspiring one. We are very happy you have chosen Colonie Apartments as your home.
submitted by Sirui L. - |Recommended: YesGood — Pet friendly
response from property -Thank you for your 5 star review of Colonie Apartments!
We are pleased that your furry friend enjoys her home with us too!
submitted by Nicholas N. - |Recommended: YesOverall pleasant, quite and easy living. Helpful staff — Overall good. Some inconsiderate residents with dog droppings, but otherwise, the facilities and amenities are nice. The staff is helpful and pleasant.
response from property -Nicholas, Thank you very much for the 5 star review! We are thrilled you are so happy with your experience at Colonie as that is our goal! We have been keeping a close eye around your building for any pet waste and reached out to neighbors to be more mindful on picking up after their pets. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us for anything needed.
The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views do not reflect the views of Colonie Apartments, its owners, managers, agents, employees or content providers. No representation or warranty, express or implied, is made or given by Colonie Apartments, its owners, managers, agents, employees or content providers regarding safety, accuracy, completeness or suitability of the information or material expressed herein for any particular purpose
