Your Apartment Shouldn't Suck

Have you ever begrudgingly signed a lease for an apartment with a couple leaks, a water stain on the ceiling, a broken burner on the stove, and a landlord that called you back only when they felt like it?

Almost everyone has a story about the terrible apartment they lived in when they were just starting out on their own. You imagine that as you get older, advance your career, and move away from the youthful mentality of worrying about tomorrow another day, you’ll move into an apartment that feels like a real home. 

So you move into an apartment with a better paint job and a larger floorplan. But it’s still so – average.

Here’s the unfortunate truth. For most of multifamily history, your landlord has told you they’re offering something amazing, when all they’ve ever provided is a mediocre product. And you’ve been okay with it! We all have. Why?

First of all, the industry can still make a profit providing average living options. Secondly, residents still believe that crummy apartments are a fact of life, something to deal with on the way to home ownership. The traditional industry standard and our own ideas about the transience of apartment living have conditioned us to accept a poor minimum standard – and not to ask or expect anything more.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you should ask for more.

Ask for more from me. Ask for more from my company, Cortland Partners, and the amazing people who work at our community support centers and in our communities. Because, honestly, your apartment shouldn’t suck, and neither should your landlord.  

Cortland believes that we’re in the business of people – we just happen to create and manage apartment homes. Because we believe this, we’re taking a stand for a better quality of life for our residents. It’s why we invest in not just fitness centers, but in well-living programs with free instructor-led group exercise classes. It’s why we invest in our own people – hiring the best community team members and providing training so that when we improve, so does the quality of service for the people who call a Cortland community home.

We intend to set a new standard for the industry. Whether you choose to live in a Cortland community or not, everyone who lives in an apartment home deserves not only great amenities and a well-designed space, but also resident-first service.

At the end of the day, where you live is where you make your home. When you live in an apartment, the decisions your apartment’s owner and manager make before you move in and while you live there have a huge impact on your experience of home. So you should expect that your experience is driving the decisions your landlord makes. At Cortland, we stop to evaluate the impact every decision will have on our residents’ lived experiences in their home, from the light fixtures and sinks we install, to the finishes we use, to the partnerships we enter into.

You should be able to anticipate smiling, engaged community teams who know your name and your needs. You should be able to relax, knowing that if you have a problem, we’ll quickly respond and fix it. And you should enjoy the style and design of your home, and feel free to make it your own. We hope that one day soon, you’ll expect – and get – service like ours, no matter where you live. We believe so strongly in our service that we go so far as to guarantee key aspects of your living experience:

• 48-Hour Service Completion Guarantee: You don’t stop living in your apartment outside of “normal business hours.” When Cortland residents have a leaky faucet or a broken burner, it gets fixed within 48 hours or they live rent free until it does. This guarantee is so important to us that 90% of our service requests are complete within just 24 hours.
• 45-Day Move-In Satisfaction Guarantee: If you move in and the apartment or management falls short – fast – you shouldn’t have to stick around to find out how the rest of your year-long stay will go. Cortland residents can move on without a penalty. That means no termination fees and the return of their security deposit.
• No-Hassle Relocation Guarantee: One of the key benefits of apartment living is the ability to move when you need to. Want to be closer to family, or land an amazing new job? Your landlord should make that less stressful, not more. Cortland residents can move to another Cortland community, either down the road or in a new city, and we’ll waive all the fees associated with ending their lease early and transferring to another community.

If it sounds like we’re over ambitious, good. Future tradition is just innovation that sticks. And we intend to stick around.