Village Gate Homes

New places and extremely expensive

Village Gate Homes is a subsidy of UBC and is supposed to support UBC faculty and staff housing, which makes renting on campus more affordable and comfortable. However, I lived there for two years, and I couldn't wait to get out of it. I have now been moved out for several months, and I am still so angry at this company. I waited for a long time before I could write this review, because I am trying to be as objective as possible without my anger influencing me. First of all, it can take a while, and in one of our cases, it took more than one year to replace an appliance part. Our fridge is so old. When I asked for a new fridge, the maintenance staff told me that I shouldn't request for a new fridge, because the management office is so cheap they would get the cheapest and much smaller fridge to replace this one. However, our electricity bill was 40% higher than our previous place with a similar sized apartment. I then asked for a new seal for the door for the fridge because the old one is falling apart and breaking off. I suspect this made the fridge energy inefficient and caused the high electricity bill. Although we requested multiple times online, by email and on the phone, it took them over a year to replace the door seal, and our electricity bill dropped right away. Second, their maintenance staff is rude and lazy. When he is in our apartment fixing the appliance or anything, he will repeatedly utter the F words. I have lived in many apartment buildings. This kind of behavior has never happened before, and this is from an education institute property management company. I was really shocked but did not know what to do. I can't complain about him because I have to rely on him to fix our appliances. Third, their moving-out fee is a scam. We cleaned the place spotless with pictures sent to them, they still claimed they still used many hours to clean our apartment. When we first moved in, we knew the previous tenants. They were charged over $$$ dollars to replace the carpet, but they never changed a piece of carpet throughout the two years we lived there. As far as we know, they still haven't changed the carpet. When you move in, be prepared that your deposit will be at a loss. Fourth, this management company has not interest in maintaining the buildings in a good shape nor maintaining tenants happy. I worked as a property manager in the past, and one big part of our job was to constantly update our properties to keep up the value and keep our tenants happy so they stay longer. This company seems to have no interest in upgrading their apartments at all. It is because UBC faculty or staff cannot afford to live anywhere close to UBC with multi-million apartments nearby. Houses are out of the question. The more people move out, the more money they can get from the deposit. Plus they can move the long waiting list faster. My advise is this. If you are looking for a place to live because of your job at UBC, look somewhere else off campus.