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| - Stay away from Brookside Apartments and from any apartments managed by the same company. I called Brookside to inquire about available apartments after looking at their website and I am SHOCKED! From now on I won't even call let alone go see a complex that is managed by CAM Properties. The Brookside Apartments website lists the rent for a studio apartment at $455/month. Nothing is mentioned about there being any add-on's to that amount. So I called the complex and spoke with a woman who quoted me a studio apartment rent of $608/month!!! She gave no explanation with that amount, so I asked why it was so much higher than what was shown on their website. An assertive type with no customer relations skills, she told me that the rent advertised on their website did not include tax, water and trash charges. I then asked her how the complex calculates the water charge and she said it is a certain dollar amount that she gets from the "LRO". She could not tell me what the LRO is exactly, but when I asked if it is something tied to the money market, like the credit card companies use, she said yes! She told me the LRO changes daily and she prints it out daily, so if I wanted to lock in the monthly rental price she had quoted me today, I could do that by paying $150!!! Otherwise tomorrow or any other day that same studio apartment could be a different amount! The whole approach is ridiculous and, for example, they want to charge $153 above the advertised rent for tax, water and trash. Rental tax is 2% of $9.10 and that means Brookside is charging a studio tenant $143.90 every month for just the water and trash pick-up. Tenant would still have to pay their own electric, too.
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