West Towne - Student housing center in Ames - 4720 Mortensen Rd, USA

Tricked me by showing me the showroom for what the studio room i would get and it ended up being a lot smaller. Literally not worth the $800 a month for studio. They say they do inspections and cleaning but they are lying. When i moved in my apartment looked like a mess and all they put in the unit was a cup to make it smell good and say it was “cleaned.” I would not recommend this property quite literally at all. To get your place cleaned, you literally have to beg them. And even then they don’t clean anything, and it will be the same as before. They won’t really help for these kinds of issues you have. They will do anything to get you to sign. They act like they’re your friend, but please don’t fall for it and due diligence. If I had a 1 time use for a “-1000 star” rating to reduce the rating of this company on google reviews in my lifetime, i would literally use it on this one. You might think i’m exaggerating just a tad, but make no mistake, i am not. I have been in and out apartment complexes my whole life and I have never experienced something like this before. There are far more photos than these but these are some:

WORST APARTMENT COMPANY. Would give zero stars. Charged my roommate and I $900 dollars after move out (not including our down payment. In total we lost around $1,100). We scrubbed and cleaned every inch of the apartment and still found absurd charges that they refused to dispute. Even though we moved in with tons of damages and the apartment was disgusting (mold in the toilets, sinks, and shower, oven burners were stained black, light bulbs were out, windows were never fixed, the carpet was filthy…. The list could go on). They are great until you decide to move out. Then they are money hungry and decide ripping off college students is the best way to go due to the vulnerability they have. Do not recommend signing a lease at this place. Property manager is also no help. All they want is every cent you have.

This is going to be a long review, but I promise it's worth the read. I've lived in West Towne for the past two and a half years. They have friendly front desk staff and some friendly maintenance staff, the apartments are affordable for how nice they are, and the amenities are great. I'm only giving them two stars, however, because of two incidents that occurred in my last apartment and the one I'm in now. I'd like to start by sharing that my parents own an Airbnb, so I am aware that managing a property isn't always easy and that issues occur that affect tenants. This review isn't based on what happened, but rather on how Haverkamp delt with the issues. The first incident was a maintenance staff member breaking our fridge and not returning to fix it, leaving over a two hundred dollars' worth of food going bad. We were told by maintenance to just put our food outside until they could fix the problem. We received no apologies or compensation. Although this was frustrating, I'd rather spend more time typing about the flood in our apartment that happened this past August. My roommates and signed for a three person flat. One of my roommates and I spent a whole Saturday moving into the apartment. I had to leave back to my hometown, and my roommate went on a quick Target run after we moved in. She came home welcomed by a pool of water leaking from under the apartment door. She entered to two to three inches of water covering the floor of most of the apartment and someone from maintenance standing there. The water heater had broken while no one was home and flooded the apartment. The flood was completely out of our control. We had just moved in, and most of our belongings were on the floor. Long story short, all Haverkamp compensated us with was around $87 dollars for the electricity to divide between the three of us after they cleaned up the water and ran fans to dry the apartment. I had mold in my room to which a maintenance staff said, "Oh, that's not that bad. Just vacuum it up." My roommate had several things ruined including books and furniture. When she emailed the property manager Brooke, Brooke said that what happened to us could happen to anyone, that's why we have renters' insurance. They didn't pay for any of our water bill because it "matched the average". I have no idea what average they're even talking about. No one was able to live in the apartment for over a week, and only two people were living in the apartment the week after the flood. The water payment would have been well below average if the flood wouldn't have happened. Brooke claimed the water was clean even though it stained my roommate's rug brown. We had to pay to get it cleaned. They didn't compensate us for any rent even though the apartment was uninhabitable for a period of time. My roommate had to live in an overnight unit for over a week, and Haverkamp kept pushing back the time she could move back into the apartment. Of course, when I came back to Ames, the apartment was magically ready for us to live in, probably because they didn't want to deal with finding somewhere for me to stay. Again, we got $87 dollars from Haverkamp and an overnight unit for one of the tenants even though our apartment flooded due to their failure to properly check our water heater. They didn't pay for any of the water, any of the damage, nor any of our rent even though the incident was their responsibility. Brooke was not helpful, and the maintenance staff was not helpful. No one checked our apartment for mold or water damage. After nearly three years of living in West Towne, I encourage anyone against singing with Haverkamp. Update to their response: we did share our damages to our insurance even though EVERYONE we told this story to said we should be getting money from Haverkamp since it was their fault. And clearly you failed at performing the inspections because our apartment flooded. We already shared our frustrations with you and you don’t care because you did nothing to help us, you’re just saying that because you got another bad review.

We got $0 back from our security deposit after moving out with our roommates. We left the place spotless, replaced lightbulbs, oven drips pans, etc. Carpet cleaned all the carpets with our own carpet cleaner and spent over $50 on cleaning supplies and replacement supplies. Our “charges” conveniently added up to exactly the $500 deposit. This is only part of the many issues I had living here for 18 months.

My boyfriend lives here and has for the past 2 years. He moved into a one bedroom this year and has had numerous problems since, and it's only been 2 months. He has had his closet fall out of the wall, ice maker didn't work when he moved in, and best of all, bugs all inside his apartment. We have went to the front office and their words were "I apologize there's nothing more that our office can do". They wanted him to live in his apartment with bugs for almost 2 weeks! My boyfriend called the pest company they use, on his own time, and explained the situation and got them out here within 3 days as opposed to another week and a half they wanted him to wait. They refused to reimburse him for buying his own bug spray (that they told him to do), refused to put him in another apartment temporarily unless he subleased his first, and didn't offer to take some rent off when he moved out for a week because of the bugs. Not to mention the first night they started coming in, he spent over an hour vacuuming them up and emergency maintenance said "You called me for bugs? I'm not coming out there for bugs." He has put in numerous maintenance requests for them to seal the space between the trim/baseboard and the floor, and they come up with every excuse possible to not fix it. They mark it as completed and it looks exactly the same every time. "The trim is only held with a few nails so it won't do anything." Also, on the attached photos, you can see a hole that the bugs are coming out of. We watched multiple crawl out of that hole. We showed them these pictures and it made no difference to them. He has now been soaking up rain water the last few days from the space between the floor and baseboard, as well as vacuuming more bugs nightly since they are still coming in. They act like all they care about is your satisfaction but in reality they can't actually satisfy you if it doesn't satisfy them as well. Honestly would rate them 0 stars if it was possible. Edit to add: I knew they'd reply with the "We don't have anyone under this name" because they know we've been in multiple times to discuss this matter and they haven't done a thing to help us! I'm more than certain they know exactly what the residents name is, and if they don't then that's a whole other problem since it was a lot of bugs! Not to mention they replied like they want to help out, but every time we have went into their offices, they have done nothing but tell us "i'm sorry our offices can't do more". They will reply to these reviews like they truly are willing to help and willing to provide the best service for their residents, but that is far from the honest truth.

bad bad bad!!!!! I am compelled to share my incredibly disappointing experience with Haverkamp Properties. My time as a tenant with this company has been nothing short of a nightmare, and the handling of my security deposit has been a prime example of their lack of professionalism and accountability. Despite providing Haverkamp Properties with a valid mailing address well in advance, I have yet to receive my security deposit, even though it has been four long months since my tenancy ended. Each time I call to inquire about the status of my deposit, I am met with excuses and assurances that it has been sent out. However, these claims have proven to be nothing more than empty words, as I have not seen a single cent of my deposit returned.

When my roommates and I moved in, the apartment was completely disgusting. The toilet in one of the bathrooms was rusting, the blinds in my window were broken, mold on the wooden panels by the window. I thought the cleaning crew cleans the apartment completely after a previous tenant? It seemed like our apartment was abandoned. When it came close to moving time, we all collectively started cleaning all parts of the apartment all the way up to our move-out date. We cleaned TOP to BOTTOM. You could basically eat off the floor. We got 1/3 of our deposit back. We even know people who didn’t get their full deposit back even after intense cleaning and replacing. Disappointed.

Social West seems much more trustworthy right now than Haverkamp. SW at least asks you to sign an addendum in order to make a change to the lease. Haverkamp properties is forcing an addendum to the lease to charge us 14 dollars a month for insurance coverage, even though we did not sign off to any changes to the lease.