Review for 422 E. Merry (Greenbriar) Apartments

When I compare my apartment to what I see and read about on the Internet, I feel so lucky because it is brand-new (I am only the second renter) and all the furniture and carpet is clean and all the appliances work well. The apartment has nice wood trim and big windows, although I wouldn't recommend a north-facing one if you want to have plants! There is TONS of storage space in the apartment overall but no drawers in the kitchen! The few times I have filed a maintenance request (once because the bathtub drain was clogged, which I later figured out how to fix myself, and once because I didn't have the broiler pan that was supposed to be there when I moved in), someone has come within two days to deal with it. The building is five minutes on foot from the BGSU union, so there's no reason to get yourself into the headache that is on-campus parking.

Having said all that, the people who live here and in surrounding buildings are mostly beasts. I am a grad student and spend most of my time studying or writing, but I can hear pretty much everything--like people talking--from the apartment below me. On weekends the music sometimes gets so loud that my couch vibrates and I can't even watch TV at a normal volume. Recently I have taken to playing my own music to counteract theirs, but obviously I'm losing study hours. Earlier in the school year I also had a problem with someone in an apartment down and over one--not the people below me, but the people on the other side of their wall--playing extremely loud music in their bedroom from 2-3 a.m. when I had to get up at 7. That stopped after I finally left a note on the person's mailbox (and I thank them for being so gracious), but just be aware that the walls and ceilings are very thin and if you end up surrounded by discourteous people you could have a major noise problem. Also the ground-floor apartments with patios across the street on the north side (not owned by Greenbriar) tend to have lots of parties with loud drunks on the weekend (starting Thursday). If you're going to live here but want to actually study, I would invest in a good noisemaker (white noise machine) as I have done. Note that the building is right on the train tracks (as is much of BG), but I don't mind the trains nearly as much as the music and yelling.

Other complaints: when the people on the other side of my kitchen wall smoke, I can smell it in my apartment. Most of the dryers in the laundry room (actually a separate building in the parking lot) have some kind of black tarry substance (former gum?) that I wouldn't want touching my clothes smeared on the inside. Many residents leave their bags of trash outside their doors although this is against the terms of the lease (you have to carry your trash to a dumpster on the edge of the parking lot). Also people leave their litter in the hallway, the stairwells and on the grounds because apparently they think that the guy Greenbriar hires to mop the hallways is their personal maid. So basically the common areas look like a dump a lot of the time, but once you enter your apartment you forget all that.

Final verdict: I love the apartment but hate the noise. This is probably one of the best places you can find in this price range ($450/month this year for a nicely-furnished one-bedroom), but if you are a serious student and can afford one of the nicer places with soundproofing and 'mature students,' go for it, even if it means driving or taking the shuttle to campus.

P.S.: I recently graduated and moved out, and Greenbriar returned my entire deposit, which even I didn't expect (they said they would charge for carpet cleaning and for nail holes in the wall, but they didn't).