The District at Soco

I’ve lived in these apartments for 2 years and absolutely loved my time here. Some of the concerns raised in the reviews are valid, but some sound like harsh angry tenants. I moved out to get closer to work, but personally would have loved to renew my lease for a third year.
I have never had to deal with dog poop in the hallway, but I have noticed that some tenants don’t pick up after their dogs at the park. The management has provided bags and trash cans, I don’t see why you can’t pick up after your own pets.
Both my apartments were courtyard facing, cant speak for the noise levels at other facings but personally I have never had any issues with loud noises. The fitness center has everything that you will need to stay fit. It’s not a full-​blown gym, and I don’t get why people have negative reviews about lack of equipments. I have used it frequently during my stay and overall it served its purpose well.
Pro’s
— Great Location with easy access to the best of Austin
— Folks at the office are very friendly and professional
— Friendly and efficient maintenance staff
— ²⁴⁄₇ fitness center
— Close to the airport (~15 mins drive) and it was a great easy access
— Multi-​level covered parking with easy access to each floor
Con’s
— The garage gate have had multiple issues. They’ve had instance where tenants have driven into the gates and sometimes its just faulty parts. But overall I feel the management needs to proactively address this concern
— The coffee machine has stopped working on multiple occasions. I know the machines were had it replaced recently, but they will have to figure out a way to stop this from recurring
— The side gates need key fob entry or at least a key entry. I am aware that the management is working on it, so I guess its just a matter of time.
Overall I’ve made some good friends and have great memories at this place. I will be on the market for a 2 bedroom apartment next year and will consider The District again for my future lease.

Good location. Young crowd. Staff is helpful. Dog area in back is nice. New management is investing into making it nice.
Bad: Construction was done poorly. My shower ceiling caved in one day. Just a big hole in the ceiling. Apparently happened to all floors above me too. Had a package for my newborn baby stolen from the office. Staff was no help. Key fobs for the door locks always have issues.

Here is another update: after I gave up on being accommodated, I encountered another incident and received another treatment from the office manager that was inappropriate. I complained to her manager.
Finally, the property manager stepped up and made an ok offer. He is definitely more mature and business oriented.

ITT: A bunch of whiney spoiled austinites with a strong sense of entitlement.
The living conditions are far less severe than what people on Unilocal are describing. They would have you believe this is a 3^rd world situation. After living here for a year I can say it is one of the nicest places I have ever lived in. The staff is friendly, trash service is pretty useful when you need it. Improvements are constantly being made.
They removed the coffee machines because people were complaining constantly about them being broken, but to be honest the stupid spoiled brats that live here were breaking them. The parking garage gates were broken constantly because of idiots running into them with their cars.
The location is obviously the best part, right across the street from Curras, HEB on the corner, soco burgers is amazing. if you want to go drink downtown the bus runs constantly on soco or you can just get a ride with Lyft or Über for a few bucks.
My dog loves the new dog park they put in, he is always making new puppy friends. Some people aren’t always picking up their dog waste but there is waste bins and bags available every 20 yards or so.
One thing I would suggest is to make all the gates on the permitter accessible via the key FOB so that people don’t feel the need to prop them open.

Pretty bad. Yes they are brand new, but the architect must have been drunk or didn’t actually pass school. There are some serious design flaws, so many things just don’t make sense and may not seem like a big deal at first but after living their for a year they really start to annoy you.
UNIT: Starting with the fact that we had the biggest unit, the 2 bedroom and our kitchen was TINY, practically no storage and the giant island was pretty useless.
BUILDING: Okay second, things are almost ALWAYS BROKEN and take MONTHS TO FIX. Like the garage door and other entry doors break almost every other month and it takes them a month to fix (is our rent not paying to secure our cars in the garage?!) that should get fixed ASAP. Also there are only three doors that you can get into from outside the building with a fob, this leads to people leaving the doors ajar when they let their dog out to pee/​poop and then the door gets messed up and won’t close ever, guess what there is always a door or more open for any stranger or vagrant to coe into the building and steal a bike or whatever they want.
COFFEE: Second small thing, they have 2 coffee makers, however they are almost always broken as well or out of coffee so if you see them and think oh sweet I don’t have to pay for coffee or a coffee machine… FALSE. maybe 1 out of every 8 times you try to use it, it will actually be functional, and then you’ll go to the other floor and they other may not work either, waste of time!
There are definitely more things, but this post is already too long.
STAFF: The maintenance staff is nice, but I don’t think they have enough people and the front desk people are friendly although I think inefficient and fake. We have not had a good experience and for the price they are asking they need to really step up their game considering we moved to an apt way closer to DT, that is also a new build, for the same price.
DOGS: Oh and to confirm other posts, I have also seen dog poop in the hallways for days. And they promised for an entire year to put up a fence in the dog park and finally built one, but it’s tiny given how much space is in the back, stupid.
GREEN: And my little pet peave is that this place claims to be the first gold certified green building in austin, but the management doesn’t try to keep this up with styrofoam cups for the coffee and water and ineffecient washer/​dryers.
Oh and in the winter don’t expect hot water, you’ll get decently warm water for like 5 min and then it gets luke warm, not fun.
GYM: small and there is no lat pull down machine or pull up bar
Almost everyone I know that lives there now is or wants to move out

I have been living here since June 2013. I’d say that some of the concerns on here are absolutely ridiculous, and I will explain below. Some are valid.
I’ve never had to deal with dogs pooping in the hallway. I’ve also never had issues with loud neighbors, ever. I live right by the McDonald’s, so not only was I often woken by them delivering food at 3am, they also decided using a power washer at 4am, and blowing leaves at 6am was acceptable. After I threatened to turn them in for violating the noise ordinance, they’ve stopped. It’s not a great view of the arch every morning, but I still like my apartment!
I’ve never heard howling in the hallways from my apartment, and are you seriously that lazy that you can’t walk 2 minutes from the parking garage to your apartment? I live at the furthest end, and it’s honestly nothing I’d complain about.
I wouldn’t say that the price tag necessarily matches the neighborhood. There’s been a robbery at the paint store across the street, an arrest was made just outside of my window last week for a guy driving with drugs (to be fair, he was pulled over while driving and happened to pull into our driveway), and I saw a ton of cops and ambulances whisk someone away this weekend at the ghetto strip mall across from us.
Cons: there’s never cups for the coffee machine, towels in the gym, paper in the printer at the business center, and the gym is tiny compared to many comparable apartment buildings… The garages are always, always broken. I’d say that in the entire time I’ve lived here, they’ve been broken the majority of the time. Including now. Even the entrances into the building from the garage are broken more often than not. Then there’s the ridiculous valet trash service that you’re forced to pay $ 22/​month for… I don’t want to walk by people’s trash in the hallway. I find it pretty disgusting, and I hope they’ll stop forcing us to pay for this service that I’ve never once utilized.
The apartment itself is wonderful. I’ve had no issues with anything breaking, and I love having a full-​sized washer/​dryer in the unit. It’s a great layout, huge bathroom, and plenty of closet space. The pool was never crowded during the summer, although it does tend to be a bit shaded due to the way the building was designed. Overall, though, my actual apartment truly feels like a home. I viewed some apartments that were brand-​new and the faux floor was already peeling (Post Lamar) or the small, cramped, carpeted State House apartments that were completely overpriced.

Pros:
–Nice apartments
–Apartments are spacious for the price compared to other complexes
–Awesome gym
–Awesome pool
–Responsive and friendly staff
Cons:
–Can hear people ordering McDonald’s while I am falling asleep
–Oltorf is apparently an ambulance thoroughfare
–Trash day means an incessant beeping noise right outside my window as the garbage truck pulls off some sort of olympic maneuver getting out of the drive (the dumpsters are in the back)…at 5 – 6 am.
–Just general loud noises caused by machinery outside my window.
–Security gates and doors to the garage seriously never close… there is probably one open at any given time. If the air pressure in the halls is greater than the garage, the doors won’t even give the illusion of being closed.
–Efforts to improve security have mostly been token.
–Despite the fact that their security is awful, they want more money from me to sign another lease.
–They charge $ 4 for the bill. I will repeat that, you will be charged for the privilege of knowing how much money to give them.
–Living on South Congress is like living next to a touristy landmark.
There have been people complaining about the fact that the coffee is never stocked and stuff about the business center… I honestly never use those services. I can’t imagine anyone living here that can’t afford to have a computer, printer and coffee pot, so I suspect that’s people complaining for the sake of it.
As far as theft goes, them’s the shakes of an apartment complex in a gentrified area. Proceed with caution, especially since physical security is so bad here (I would say 90% compliance is reasonable for an apartment complex… it would be optimistic to say they reach 50%). Best advice for any place you live at is to familiarize yourself with who your neighbors are and be mindful of who you see.

I have been living here for about 6 months now. Everything has been great and the management has always been helpful and quick to respond. The location is awesome. The HEB is old but has the same products as any other HEB. Yes, there’s a McDonalds next door so if you don’t like their food then don’t go there. If you don’t want to look at it then pick a unit on the other side of the complex to live in. I have never not been able to get a cup of coffee from the lounge areas. I have never had a problem with the business center minus the printer being out of paper one time. I use the business center once a week and the computers have always been operating properly when I needed to use them. The garage gates are open from time to time but the last time was because of an issue involving severe storms and they did their best to fix the problem as fast as they could. Parking is definitely a problem sometimes. Some of the cars that park in the resident parking of the garage don’t display «SoCo» stickers so it’s hard to tell if they are actual residents.
HANDICAP PARKING is up to ADA’s guidelines and there are PLENTY of spots and available on all levels of the garage as well as elevators for those who have trouble using the stairs. I noticed someone in an earlier comment said that «douchebags» who don’t need it take up the spaces but one thing they don’t realize is that not all disabilities are visible to the naked eye (judgemental b*tch). No one should ever question a person’s disability PERIOD.
A few other drawbacks… Nobody tends to pick up their dogs waste and often I find pet waste in the middle of the hallways and not to mention I step in it on a weekly basis in the grassy areas. There are noisy dogs but you will not find a place in Austin that doesn’t have an annoying barking dog and it doesn’t help that the empty concrete hallways amplify the noise. The trash system is a little off and I don’t quite understand why we can’t just take our own trash to the dumpster if we want to. They don’t let you use oversized trash bags either for the valet trash pickup and trash tends to build up in the waste area pretty quickly making it unsightly to visitors and residents pulling into the garage. There have also been a few break-​ins and some concerns with that but you won’t find an apartment anywhere in town that hasn’t had similar incidents.
OVERALL I have had a great experience living here. The location is great, everything is super convenient, the staff is friendly and there have been no problems.

This place is too expensive for the location. Amenities are really nice, but if something needs to be fixed don’t expect them to do it. I have called maintenance time and time again to fix things and it has taken weeks. A friend came to visit me because she was interested in moving in but once she saw the filthy hallways she was completely turned off to the idea. Unfortunately, the District staff doesn’t have high standards for keeping the place clean.

There is no such thing as an objectively perfect property. District isn’t one, but dammit it checks a lot of the boxes and the service is outstanding.
I looked at a lot of places before choosing this one right when it opened. If interior quality is important to you, this will top the list compared to its competitors. The materials are just chosen with more attention to detail. I always get compliments on the distressed wood vinyl flooring. It also COMES WITH washer/​dryer and not just connections like at most places, where you’ll be paying another $ 35/​month to rent a pair.
It’s also a neutral look that can go both ways – traditional and modern. My furniture is more traditional, cause dammit i like to be comfortable when I’m sitting. It seems like all the other newer buildings try too hard to look modern, and the older ones like Cityview and State House are just crappy looking cause they were built in ’99 or something.
SERVICE is AMAZING. I couldn’t be happier with the front office staff. One time the manager of the whole ship walked over to the HEB across S. Congress to grab a new propane thingy for the gas grill by the pool. The amenities are fantastic and not over the top, as this isn’t a huge property for a modern mid-​rise, more quaint at about 200 units than most new ones that are at least 300 units these days.
Big plus is the large grassy pet area in back. It’s not fenced in, but a large tract of land behind the parking garage complete with pet stations.
It’s not right in the middle of SoCo, but it’s a better price than the much older spots that are. Personally, I like to have a little space to decompress after work (my office is downtown) before I go hit up SoCo, instead of constantly being inundated with the scene… I like to follow the «Don’t sh*t where you eat» philosophy.
There have been a couple of break ins here, but there are at most properties. The mgmt at least keeps us informed of what happens, and one of the break ins was when a person left their door unlocked during a weekend vacation – you just have it coming at that point. People forget that S. Congress 10 years ago was kinda sketch, and the gentrification is still trickling down to Oltorf today.
To me the only real drawback is the lack of balconies for a lot of floor plans. Why? It’s the only thing I dislike about my unit, but if it was too big a deal I wouldn’t have selected it in the first place.
Overall, it’s a classy new building that doesn’t try hard to be too modern and is in a pretty chill location on the precipice of the hip spots without being smothered by ‘em. Props to the mgmt for being cool.

Great management!

This place is break in city. Just last night we had cops blocked the main entrance and exit for a good 2 hours looking for god knows what. (a gun? a thief?) Now, today they have a notice to tenants that another break in happened… For a place boosting some level of security this is a joke. It took months to get cameras installed and it only happened after enough tenants complained.
The pool is shaded too much, if that’s possible, due to it being completely enclosed. People don’t clean up after their pets… so don’t bother walking in the back. The automatic door that was broken took weeks to fix… (Among other things, which still are not fixed…) And my personal favorite, the little messages I get about my trash being piled up too much… If you offer a pick up service for trash, pick it up, don’t wait 3 –4 days then write me a note about how bad it is…
To play a little devils advocate here, the rooms are really nice and have good energy efficiency. Balconies are well sized too. And the people who work there are nice (and enjoy throwing around the fact they have a Starbucks coffee machine). But at the end of the day living on a gentrification line turned out to be a very, very, poor choice. Maybe in a few years this place will be somewhere worth living, but for the price and location you should look elsewhere.

I looked all over the 78 704 to find a good place to live and am SO happy I found this place. At first appearance you will notice the brand new apartments that you won’t find anywhere else in the 04 with all the nice amenities, (washer/​dryer in unit, pool, etc). The apartment itself has a great layout and fits a lot into a relatively small space (I have a 1 BR). The reason I chose it was because of these things and because it’s a $ 7 cab ride from downtown and within walking distance to all my favorite places on Soco and South First. However the reason this place gets 5 stars is the EXCELLENT service from the onsite team here to include John and Tiffany and the maintenance crew. I can’t get over how good these people are at their jobs. Due to past experiences, I tend to have had low expectations for Property Managers because I’ve gone weeks without airconditioning or whatever else can go wrong in an apartment. Not here. I email them with one little thing I’d like fixed or looked at and I will get a response within the hour. I even had an incident happen in the parking lot over the weekend and both John and Tiffany checked in on me to make sure everything was taken care of and I was OK. I couldn’t believe it! They live onsite and really do care about our little community and making it the best place to live in Austin. I really can’t say enough good things about this place and feel so lucky to have found it. I’ve lived here 7 months and it keeps getting better and better!