The Palms Apartments

Starting with the positives: it's extremely central, everything you'd want to do in Charleston is 10-15 mins away. Office staff are friendly and maintenance requests get handled in a timely manner. On to the negatives. The rent sounds cheap, but the utilities do you in. Never expected to see a $250 electric bill in one month just to keep the apartment below 80 - it's so badly insulated. No matter how clean you are, most residents leave their places trashed, so roaches are always around. The walls are thin, you can hear what your neighbor is doing downstairs, and the floors and ceilings creak like a 200 year old house. After the huge fire in February, which I learned is not their first, one of my friends whose building burned down said the renter's insurance policy offered by the complex left him with nothing. It's livable for my broke college phase of life, but it's not wonderful. If you care enough to be reading the reviews, you should look elsewhere.

I moved out of here at the end of last year due to increasing rent prices with absolutely no attempts to make the place nicer. So glad I did because then a bunch of the buildings burnt down showing that it was not only a bad place to live it's also unsafe and they don't have any firewalls or safety installations to stop 7 buildings from burning to the ground. I know that my building had 1 extinguisher upstairs and it is in the hall to share with the other units. UNSAFE, OUTDATED, OVERPRICED. RUN AS FAR AS YOU CAN

Please save yourself the trouble and frustration! I’ll start with the worst part, there was a huge fire which was NOT accidental, that burned much of the complex to the literal ground. This was horrible for the residents that lost everything, however following this there was zero feeling of safety living here. I explained this to management and requested to leave my apartment one month early and explained that I was prepared to pay a prorated amount to cover this. They were not hearing that. Would not accommodate this request although the complex was extremely unsafe. I have a puppy, and did not feel comfortable leaving him there alone. They are less than understanding and professional. I have been a model resident up to this point, I’ll add; never paid rent late and never had any complaints. To top it off, this apartment complex is one of the worst I’ve been in. Upon moving in, there were stains in the carpet, holes in the walls were horribly patched from the previous resident. The walls are BEYOND thin, you’ll hear everything your neighbors are doing, and I mean everything. Very small washer and dryer, everything is dated, and absolutely smells awful due to the amount of residents that smoke marijuana. Honestly, look anywhere else but here to live.

This place is awful. Our apartment was infested and management did nothing. When we moved out for health and safety reasons, they charged us to break our lease and made sure we couldn’t rent anywhere else until we paid them off. Don’t live here unless you’re desperate, and even then, I’d advise you to reconsider.

We had to move to MI to help my parents, which broke our lease. We had to pay an $1800 penalty. While our rent could be paid online, these fees had to be paid by way of cashier's check. One of my payments was lost in the mail. Next they switched to payments by wire transfer, forcing me to go into a store and pay a fee. NEXT they changed it to a CASH ONLY payment option for my final payment. Literally made it harder to pay while threatening to send to collections. What a joke.

This place is pretty decent for what you're paying. Been here for a few years so have extensive experience as to what it's like to be a resident. Office staff is hit or miss one of them is very personable and friendly but the other always seems like she can't get you off the phone or out the door fast enough. It is in a great location, relatively quiet, close to the highway, grocery stores, and shopping, and there is a park right around the corner if you have kids. There is a decent amount of space as far as storage and living space, though the kitchen is very small and there is literally one drawer in the whole kitchen, in my unit at least. They claim to have ice makers but I do not have one, not sure what the situation with that is. Pool is nice but the workout room is practically a storage closet with a treadmill in it and the grill is always broken.(Been closed all summer with no offer of rent reduction or other compensation to make up for the loss of access to amenities anyways.) The parking is a serious issue, they do not guarantee you a space anywhere near your apartment or any space at all, people are parked all over the street and every spot it filled up. The insulation is poor so you will have extremely high electric bills in the summer but your apartment will still be sweltering. Again insulation comes in to play because you can hear every noise your neighbors make and they can hear you. And by everything I mean everything. I can hear the TVs, voices, walking, talking, restroom visits, music. Everything. Overall it has been acceptable because the price is low but that has been going up yearly so it is becoming unaffordable just like everything else but not offering any updates to make the increases worth your while. Rent price is misleading. They will tack on fees like water/sewer, trash, pest control, pet registry, and a new monthly fee for your pets which they never did before the last year or so. Feels like just another scheme to get more money out of the working class and into the hands of the wealthy. You will likely end up paying close to 50-60 more a month in rent than they claim on websites after all the "not included" fees are added on to base rent. So to sum it up...meh...if you can't afford anything more it's ok-ish. Sorry for the long post but wanted to be as thorough as possible instead of just saying it's good or it's bad.

The Palms is an outstanding place to live, the management staff is incredible and has helped me individually when I was in transition - and also helped my father immensely (at a much older age) equipping him with all the necessary safety mechanisms as apartment needed. The palms staff is like family, and we are very grateful for such a great team. The units are good, the maintenance is fast, and the prices are outstanding.

For the price you pay at The Palms, it is a nice complex. The neighbors are kind, the pool is cool and there's ample room to walk your dog. Not to mention there's a park literally next door with a playground and sports fields. You're walking distance to two grocery stores and the maintenance staff is always quick to fix.