Seeking Advice [Apartment is killing me.! NEED ADVICE]

Hey,

This is a little complain/advice seeking post, so please hear me out and advise me on what can be done regarding my situation.
To start off with I'm in college and moved away from home for the first time in mid-August. I now live in Baton Rouge and attend LSU. I was excited to move and have my own place and I thought to have found that perfect place. "Voted Baton Rouge's most luxurious apartments 2005" at least that's what the sign read. They look REALLY nice on the outside and they are really close to the university. The apartments in question are SouthGate Towers.

Well me and my parents came and toured them thought they were really nice, diregarded some minor issues, because they are BRAND NEW and still needed a few things to add-on and what not, so we saw a DEMO apartment (2 bedroom 2 bath), VERY NICE, and we signed a lease for a year (Rent is $1300/month). I never got to see my acutal apartment until the day I moved in. The first excuse was "they currently have tenants living there", so I was like ok, no problem, then a few weeks later it was "we're fixing everything up", next it was "we're redoing the floors", so now I was starting to get a bit pissed, but still no problem I was excited to be moving.

Well I move in and what do you know, the first thing I notice is a HUGE 12*12 rug imprint in the living room (no carpet, hard dyed cement floor), it was that rug residue you know what I'm talking about? Well right then I got a little pissed because the last reason why i couldn't see the apartment before I moved in was because they were "REdoing the floors".... Well that wasn't it, they had a crap load of other problems (door knobs not working, busted base floor boards, fixtures out of place, marks on the walls, chips on the wooden cabinets, doors not closing, dirty bathtubs, among other things....). I'm not a picky person, but that is a lot of problems, and I mean it's not liking I'm moving into a rented fixer-upper ya know? Well still I move in, start school, report all the problems.... Some of them were addressed, but then some other problems occured.... A leak from the apartment above whitch messed up my cordless phone (not that it worked all the time, because half the time the phone line didn't work either.), gave a bronze color to the wall it trickled down and busted up the floor baseborads in that area, it was reported about 2 or 3 months ago since it first started happening and still nothing has been done about it. Another time the dishwasher just malfunctioned (it really wasn't my fault, i did the same thing I did everytime, but this time it just started flooding) it was reported and nothing has yet been done about it, the rug imprint still hasn't been taken care of, the door knob that doesn't work properly still doesn't work properly, fixtures still out of place, and day by day more little things continue to happen. Like I've said I've reported this MANY times and sometimes I feel like a pest because I'm in the office so much reporting problems, but they never get taken care of, all I get is excuse after excuse.

I want to know what can be done (legally or just anything else) because this is not what I imagined my first apartment being like. I feel as if they're taking advantage of me because I don't know what CAN be done in a situation such as the one I find myself in. So please anything is more than welcomed as I have NO clue as to what can be done.

I was thinking about asking for another unit since I'm having so many problems with my current one. I know that not paying rent will not help any, so I'm not eving bothering with that one. ANy suggestions/advice/comments are welcomed.

Thank You,
J Fontestad

--Happy now Ms. Colleen???

 

IMO contact an attorney who specializes in rental disputes in your area, many lawyers will give free consults....

 

Wow, hrbl, congrats on getting through that. He could of used some paragraphs or line breaks to make it easier to read, that makes me not wanna read it.

 

Yeah it was a bit difficult to be honest...
Reading the debate threads though it doesn't bother me as much as it used to

 

Thanks jfontestad, for the line breaks. Going to read it now.

 

Another thing you should do if you haven't already is make your request in writing and start putting everything in writing from now on. You will be glad you did later on.

On another note, changing apartments won't help. Your root problem is not the apartment. It's the building management. Good luck!

...and remember... Document Everything.