Oxford Village Apartments

There's a lot to unpack here. I came here as an International Student in 2018 and I thought that a fully furnished apartment and a separate lease was the best option, since I didn't know anybody. My mistake was leasing for more than a year.

I'll start with what I liked or what is not that bad. The fact that rent includes everything is great so you don't have to worry about paying for other utilities besides Renter's Insurance. The area is not bad at all, it's the main Temple campus with a lot of essential stuff nearby like a 7/11, a Rite Aid, a Fresh Grocer, the Cecil B. Moore subway stop, and a lot of food options. Temple is known for being unsafe but this is the slightly safer area, still be careful at night and carry your own pepper spray and such.

I also like that the staff at the office is super friendly and helpful, you can have your packages delivered to them so that they're not left outside. The buildings are secured enough so that you can't enter unless you have the mob. There's a small gym area and drink vending machines. Some apartments were recently remodeled to newer appliances and furniture so the kitchen is very nice (in my apt at least). There's the online self service website where you can pay rent and send messages or whatever. You can submit service requests and they're relatively quick to respond. They do roommate matching in case you don't know anybody.

Now to what I don't like (it's a lot).

I have been living here for soon-to-be three years and I wish I had moved out sooner. The separate lease/rent thing is a scam wherever you go. Absolutely do not trust that. You might feel safe to do that when you first come here if you feel like you can't trust the other person to put it their half of the rent, but the issue with that is that there is no control whatsoever about what your roommate does with their lease. I live in a 2bd 1bath and my new roommate applied for a shared lease, meaning that they could fit another person in her tiny room if they so wish to. They're terrible at providing the accurate information, she was under the impression that a shared lease would mean she was going to share a room with ME instead of having a whole room to herself and then maybe eventually have to share with another person. So thanks to the whole shared lease scam I might end up sharing the apt with two other people, while still paying $950 a month...

Speaking of $950 a month, that's just too much for what it is. It's overpriced. I started paying $850/month which I still think it's a lot for what it used to be. But then they renovated some things in the apartment and decided they would shoot up my rent. Fine, that's understandable, but this renovation was January 2020 and it's going to be one year since they have done it and there's still damages from the renovation. They left exposed cables in my room for months and still until this day, there's parts left unpainted in the entire apartment and a part of the floor without wood, which I had to cover up with a carpet. Not to mention that the furniture you get is dorm furniture. It's huge and heavy and doesn't really fit the rooms very well. It's not central AC, so you get huge AC units from like 2005, full of dust. The fiber glass in the shower is yellow. Just recently there was a leak coming from my bathroom LIGHT?! It's just not worth it. For the price, you can get a nicer place with probably even your own bathroom.

They lie to you. They tell you you have the option to store any furniture you don't want or need but when you ask them to they come up with some excuse as to why they can't. They show you the model apartment (the one in the pictures) and when you ask them to show you the real apartments you would be living in, they come up with an excuse as to why they can't (they told me the apartments were being painted), because they know that if you saw the real apartments you would NOT want to lease there. The actual apartments do not look like the mod