Day Fifty-One: Does Intuition Really Work?

In apartment hunting today, my mom came across a complex that has a lot of available one-bedroom units for well within my price range, in a nice area. "Why don't you look at those?," she asked. There's a perfectly good reason why I won't look at those. Of the 82 reviews on apartmentratings.com, only 23% of them were good. Why? Maybe it's the reported exorbitant rent increase, automatic lease renewal unless contacted within three days with a written letter, showing an apartment and then renting a unit that is ten times more worn down and used, housing a pedophile without notifying neighbors, pending lawsuits for ridiculous fees demanded of tenants that were not their responsibility, and taking three weeks to solve tenant maintenance issues might have something to do with it.

My mom did bring up a good point: "Maybe they just had sour grapes. Go and see a place and make your own judgements about it". In all respects, this may be true. People are a lot more likely to write a review of something if they had an unhappy experience and either want to vent, or warn people. Most people are not likely to say anything of somewhere they are happy living, because they are merely experiencing what they feel is expected and right of the establishment. It's the same reason a good employee may never get feedback from a bad boss -- if they're doing what's expected of them, they feel nothing needs to be said.

But still, with this firm logic in place, I can't help but just have a bad feeling about these apartments. Of course a lot of people could have had bad experiences -- they may have been bad tenants. Even as a first-time renter, anyone who rents a place without seeing exactly what they are paying for is making a really dumb decision. It's like buying a used car based on test-driving the same make, model, and year that has never left the lot. And of course, maybe the person concerned about the pedophile was an old lady who once saw the man walking in the park with a niece or nephew and got ideas in her head. And maybe, the people who are suing the management for billing them ridiculous fees for apartment damage actually damaged the apartment, and are bitter about having to pay, so they wrote a bad review.

But still, I have a feeling in my gut that this is not a place I want to be dealing with. It could be just bad impressions, which is entirely possible, but I have bad feelings about large complexes in general. How far should I follow my intuition? In this particular case, I think it's safe to say my intuition is correct. But should I rule out looking at other apartment complexes owned by large management companies just because I have a bad feeling about them? I think that's probably not a grand idea. But it really does make me wonder. Maybe I'll follow my intuition for awhile and see how far it gets me.