The Collier Companies apartment complexes across Gainesville tout slogans such as, “We love our grad students” and “Welcome to the good life.” A series of outrageous pool parties attempt to appease the masses and instill a sense of utopia.
The Collier Companies, also known as Paradigm Properties, enjoys a monopoly in Gainesville, as it owns properties such as Hidden Lake, the Enclave, Gainesville Place, Museum Walk, the Landings at Biven’s Arm and the Crossing at Santa Fe — to name a few.
After spending the last four years in a complex managed by The Collier Companies, I can tell you that it’s not always a fun-filled party in the sun when dealing with the managers.
While each complex offers its own incentives to lure students to sign leases, there are no real incentives for apartment complexes to culture a bond with their residents after the signing process. Gainesville has a transient population of students, where every four years, roughly 50,000 students will come and go regardless of how complexes treat them.
Apartment complexes know that they have power over this market, and I recently discovered firsthand that they abuse it.
Like many students in Gainesville, I found myself in need to sublease my apartment at Hidden Lake for the Fall semester since I was graduating early. The leasing manager made it very clear that she would not help at all with the sublease process.
What an understatement.
After finding tenants to sublease my apartment and walking them into the leasing office, the leasing manager claimed that they would have signed anyway, and that I would still be held responsible for my lease. I later discovered from the tenants the leasing manager had tried to tack on extra fees onto the lease, which persuaded them to live in a different apartment at Hidden Lake.
Hidden Lake then claimed that in order to sublease my apartment, I would have to find tenants to sign a lease longer than my original contract.
Infuriated and confused by the situation, I sought help from Student Legal Services at UF to write a letter to the complex.
Are all these hurdles really necessary to restore common sense and morality?
Although The Collier Companies boasts about having a property manager on site, it makes it as difficult as possible for you to voice your concerns. The office staff is trained to run interference by saying, “He’s busy with meetings all day.”
They will under no circumstances hand the phone to a manager.
You have to call The Collier Companies’ headquarters and get them to forward your call to the property manager.
When I did this with Hidden Lake, the property manager seemed apathetic toward my situation but did make time to laugh about spelling errors in the lawyer’s letter.
This is the type of management that The Collier Companies employs at Hidden Lake.
From a resident’s perspective, it seems as though the managers are blinded by the bottom line, and once you sign a lease with The Collier Companies, they no longer care about your concerns. There is an inherent conflict of interest when subleasing with The Collier Companies.
Why should leasing managers help you sublease your apartment when they can just lease new apartments and get a new bonus?
Every time you sign a lease with The Collier Companies, you feed into this mentality and become a number in a massive apartment complex.
I urge the thousands of students who will be looking for apartments to avoid living at massive apartment complexes managed by The Collier Companies.
From my experience, the managers at smaller complexes are more accommodating to their residents and easier to communicate with.
Just make sure you hit up The Collier Companies’ pool parties and drink all of their beer.
Blake Darby is a materials science and engineering grad student at UF. You can contact him at opinions@alligator.org.
