Yugo Columbia Lofts

The nicest, friendliest, most professional, and — importantly — most HELPFUL staff ever. You will not find an apartment complex in Columbia (or, probably, anywhere) with office and maintenance staff like this. They really are superb. They make the effort to know you by name and treat you with RESPECT. I lived here for two years, and decided to leave only due to a number of personal reasons unrelated to management or the space itself. You don’t miss your water til the well runs dry! I miss them already. They even helped me when several of my packages were shipped to their office after I had moved, and took the time to ask how I was doing and wish me well. Thanks for everything and keep it up!

The only thing I can give this place is it’s close to campus and some of the rooms have lofts which are nice. Other than that, I haven’t really enjoyed living here at all. I chose The Lofts because I wanted to live on my own in an apartment still fairly close to campus, but it feels like I still live in a dorm. The management has been worse than when I had an RM my freshman year. I understand that it’s an older building and the rooms occasionally need inspections, but I’ve never lived in an apartment complex that has to check almost monthly on things that don’t even seem like they need to be looked at. Also, one of the managers, Amy, has accused me and roommate of smoking marijuana three times or more. They’ve even gone as far as trying to charge each of us $300 for having it, when we didn’t, just because they “thought we did.” I don’t know about you, but that seems bogus to me. They didn’t even mention it to us or ask us, we just received a letter saying we each owed them $300. It seems like every time I see Amy she’s asking if I smell anything or if it’s coming from our apartment, when it is in fact not. At first I really enjoyed staying here, I even renewed my lease, but it seems like right after I did that everything went down hill. The laundry costs money and the machines are always messing up and flooding with water. Our dishwasher has broken like three times and each time they say they’ll replace it but they just “fix” the one we already had, and it eventually messes up again. Don’t get me wrong, a majority of the staff is friendly and helpful, but the few that make it bad, make it really bad. At least for me. The rent in my opinion is too high for the apartment. I lived at The Southern before here and it was 10 times better there. I honestly wish I would’ve stayed there sometimes, the rent was cheaper, the management wasn’t always spying down your neck, and we weren’t randomly charged for things for no reason. I’ll be glad when I finish out my lease.

I recently stopped by and saw the giant apartment on the fifth floor. I have to say I was very pleased with everything. It was clean, the people in the office were very sweet. I wish they had more availability so could have stayed there.

Being and engineering major it is the perfect location from all my classes. I love the rooms, I live in a 2 bedroom apartment so I have a loft. The price is okay. They do not have laundry in the rooms themselves which is a huge inconvenience as it is, but you also have to pay $1.50 a load to wash and an additional $1.50 to dry. The loads are small so you end up having to pay for more than one load. The staff is friendly and they always have candy which is nice.

Do not ever.. I repeat.. EVER sign a lease here. The management is hilariously incompetent and disrespectful, the units are downright abysmal, and there is absolutely no security to this place. Maintenance responds to problems (you'll have a lot) quickly though, which I GUESS is a plus (they shouldn't have had to come to my unit at least once a week for a year though because these problems should have been fixed by management way before they let us live in it). Don't expect your AC to work. Don't expect good appliances. Don't expect any good quality of living. The best part? Even though you make all your payments on time and you're account is in good standing for the entire lease term, after you move out they will be MORE than happy to charge you for things never put in the lease (having to have the carpets "professionally cleaned" even though when I moved in they were a disaster. My roommate and I both had utility overages in JUNE that they didn't contact us about until THIS MONTH (we moved out in July!!). They didn't give us ANY time to pay (our letters were postmarked this month even though they say they sent them out to all residents in August). No e-mail communication, no phone calls, no ANYTHING. Our fees went straight to collections with no time for us to contact them about the charges, dispute the charges, or even pay the charges. Your packages will be left in the main office for anyone to grab, as they don't check to see who you are when you go to get a package. Multiple times I went and grabbed my roommate's packages when I was grabbing mine and they said NOTHING nor asked me for any ID to confirm all the packages were mine. They barely glanced at me when I walked in and said nothing when I walked out. I actually had a package stolen because apparently it's too hard for these people to do their job. Oh, also, enjoy every faucet leaking in your apartment and absolutely horrid internet speeds (great for when you're a student!) as well! Please, for your sanity, and to put these crooks out of business, please don't ever rent here. You deserve better and this place doesn't deserve to be in business.

This apartment is awesome if you are a student at the University of South Carolina. It is one of the closest to campus. There is a shuttle that comes right across the street that will take you to the main campus. The building looks old, but they are really nice inside. It's easy to get lost in this building, though. There is a pool, which isn't incredibly nice, but it works. They also do not have washer and dryers inside the apartments themselves, but in a laundry room in the building, which can get annoying. It is pretty quiet most of the time, except for the trains. There are train tracks on basically all sides of the building. Overall, it is a nice place to live as a student in the city.