Apartment Review for Franklin West Apartments Shadyside - Pittsburgh, PA

I loved Franklin West for the most part. Great, intelligent, friendly, helpful and respectful staff. You can't find a better management company in terms of maintenance, nor can you find a sharper, well-kept apartment in Shadyside. My only troubles were with the increasing rental expenses and the security deposit. If you are on a budget, you may want to re-think FW. It is standard for rent to increase ~3-6% annually. However, FW started to increase the cost of parking spaces, storage spaces, etc. without notifying us. I was shocked to get a bill for these additional costs. I'm sure they squeezed it in the renewal somewhere, but intentionally never pointed it out. Read the small print & ask questions. We extended our lease by only 9 months instead of 12, moving out in April instead of July. Before leaving, we followed instructions completely and cleaned thoroughly. Charges to our security deposit were outrageous and insulting. FW hires a cleaning crew who rip them off, and you pay for it. The crew said the floors weren't vacuumed and the bathtub wasn't sufficiently scrubbed, both of which were done thoroughly. For those 2 things, we were charged 10, yes, TEN hours worth of cleaning. To top it off, we were charged a 50% cleaning increase b/c we moved out a different month. Again, read the fine print. We called about 6 times to refute these charges and not a single call was ever returned.