Commons at Knoxville (OLD)

Would love to just advise everyone who is planning to or considering living here to run away. Our apartment was disgusting even though management says ‘it’s clean’. We had to clean it ourselves during move in as well as make several calls to maintenance because our washer/dryer/sinks/dishwasher etc were not working or smelled terrible. My sink never drained properly and my rooommates leaked all day. The ice machine in our fridge never worked. Our showers had terrible pressure and turned cold extremely quickly + it would take HOURS for the water to drain so we would have to stand in dirty water. Gross. If I could go back I would never live here ever again. We felt like management never cared about us or our problems and could never answer our questions. Also, beware, they charge you bogus and insane high cleaning/damage fees when nothing is wrong! We spent days cleaning our apartment and left it better than when we arrived. Only to be charged hundreds of dollars for unnecessary fees. We are also being charged $125 each for paint. A quart of paint would cost $15-$20 which is all we needed and they refused to give me the code or tell me the color because ‘the ice storms in Texas in January caused the trucks bringing their extremely specific paint color to never arrive’. And somehow that’s all of the residents fault instead of managements. It does not cost $500 to paint over 2 small parts of a wall. Don’t live here! Don’t trust the good reviews because they are probably fake. Everyone who lives there hates it and regrets it.

I have lived here for the past few years and love it! Great price and location!

DO NOT LIVE HERE!!!!!! It is not worth saving the money (I know it is tempting as a former UTK student in debt) to live in such an awful complex!! The previous tenants of my apartment had a cat that gave birth to 8 kittens in my bedroom and the Commons refused to clean my carpets for months. When we moved in the place was DIGUSTING. There was a years worth of sticky grime over all of the furniture and kitchen & I had to hire a private cleaning service before I even could move in because it was that bad. Maintenance and customer service is awful! The place is trashy and out-dated with the world's worst staff I have ever encountered. Be sure to document everything or they will charge you (if you dare to even live there)!!! I am currently pursuing a lawsuit with them because they are trying to charge me 1 YEAR after I moved out for cleaning fees that aren't true. I have video evidence of my pristinely clean apartment when I moved out and they are trying to charge me when I left the place ASTRONOMICALLY cleaner than when I moved in! I wasn't allowed to do a walk-through with staff at move-out because of COVID-19 so they are trying to take advantage of everyone because of that.

I would absolutely never recommend anyone to live here. Their prices are insane for the quality and size of the apartment. Our apartment was extremely old with multiple broken fixtures when we moved in with extreme water damage to the tub and walls. The place was disgusting when we moved in, and somehow this place had the nerve to charge us $800 in cleaning fees after we spent over 3 hours cleaning our apartment. We had problems with management too. To begin with, the website says the Commons is pet friendly as long as you pay a pet fee, so we got a cat and reached out to the management multiple times to get the paperwork we needed. Without any reply, they simply charged us the "illegal pet charge" and told us we had to remove the animal immediately. Because of this, we tried to find the contracts we had signed in order to find the pet policy, only to find we did not have access to our own lease. I had to go into the office in person and have her manually send it to me because when I called they told me I could find it myself. When we finally found the contracts, the new management told us they had changed management after we signed, so the old lease we signed did not apply. However, we never signed a new contract. Towards the middle of the year, mold started to grow under the seal of our bathtub, so we put in requests to get it changed. We spoke with 3 different people, including the property manager herself, who guaranteed me it would get done within the week. It was never changed, and we were charged for the mold we were unable to clean. I could keep going, but to summarize, nothing this complex does is in the interest of anyone but themselves, and I would warn anyone to stay as far away as possible.

I don’t know what idealistic, paid off person gave the other 5 star review but they were clearly dillusional. I have been with the commons for multiple years now and I never should have resigned. They ignore or wave off your concerns. When I called for the third week in a row about my broken dishwasher, I was yelled at and hung up on. The mold in these places is rediculous and we find ourselves constantly scrubbing the floors, bathrooms and kitchen to keep it at bay. The cable and WiFi while not directly their domain, is chosen and “take care of” by them (we have no choice but to give them the money to take care of it) goes out every other week. Do yourself a favor and find somewhere else to live.

The commons is a great place to call your home away from home. As a student i find the staff to be pleasant and reasonably easy to work with. The maintenance staff takes a while to fix things that aren't necessity but considering the fact that they do an amazing job when they get to it I'm willing to forgive their occasional delays. A friend and I moved into a 4 bed 2 bath and were assigned two random roommates who have already been living their for a year. The outside is clean and well taken care of and bugs seem to be a non-issue. I have yet to hear of any serious complaints about the apartments outside of the additional parking fees, however i park on the street right behind my complex and have had very little issues finding spots with the exception of football weekends. My apartment (12th and highland location) is within easy walking distance of school, down town, worlds fair park, "the hill" bar, and still reasonably close to the strip. Anything not within walking distance can be accessed by bus pretty easily (even Walmart). One of my roommates has a service animal (something i admit i wish had been told to me before move in), however i've come to love the dog and my new roommates. While the rooms we are staying in could use some updating everything works great and when something like a dryer or washer goes out it is fixed quickly. I also have friends who stay in the 4 bed room 4 baths and they are updated and look very nice. It's nice transitioning from a dorm or your parents home to a place where you only have to cover rent and electricity, its almost like a middle step between living in a dorm to paying full bills as an adult. The internet is usually good with the occasional issues (which happen everywhere) and if we didnt have a dog in our apartment everything would seemingly stay clean and well kept. The three reasons i dont give 5 stars here is because 1.rent is a bit high although competitive with most fort locations, 2. They didnt let me know before hand that there would be an animal in my apartment (which i assume is extremely rare considering they dont let animals stay under normal circumstances) and finally 3. Perfection is something that should be always strived for and never truly obtained. I truly enjoyed my time here, so much so that I have already signed to live another year here. If anything changes i will update my review but for now things seem pretty good from where im living.