The Metropolitan Tampa, tampa-fl

If apartment hunting were an Olympic sport, Ana at The Met would be bringing home the gold medal. From the moment we arrived, Ana was friendly, knowledgeable, and somehow managed to answer every question before we even asked it. She gave us a fantastic tour of the property and made what is usually a stressful process feel easy and enjoyable. The Met has everything a USF student could want—modern apartments, a great fitness center, study spaces, resort-style pool, game areas, and plenty of amenities that make it feel more like a vacation destination than student housing. It’s the kind of place where you can study for finals, work out, relax by the pool, and pretend you’ll start your assignment early next semester. The property is beautiful, well-maintained, and conveniently located near USF. But the real highlight of our visit was Ana. Her professionalism, enthusiasm, and sense of humor made the experience memorable. If you’re touring The Met, ask for Ana—you’ll leave with all your questions answered and probably a smile on your face. Highly recommend The Met and a huge shoutout to Ana for making the tour exceptional!

The agent, Annabelle, who me and my father met with today was absolutely amazing during my tour! She was so personable, welcoming, and genuinely helpful throughout the entire experience. She answered all of my questions thoroughly and made me feel really comfortable and excited about the complex. You can tell she truly cares about the residents and takes pride in what she does. The property itself was beautiful and well-maintained, and Annabelle made the experience even better. I left the tour feeling very impressed. I highly recommend touring with her!

If you value a responsive team to help with potential issues in your apartment, do not move here. Maintanence is very low quality. My sister moved in here and quickly there were mold problems which led to damage in the room, (45 days without fixing and still counting as of today) very unresponsive maintenence and overall the complex seems to be more of a cashgrab to house collegiate students near the usf campus than a "high quality living space".

Living at the Metropolitan Tampa for only one year has been nothing short of sordid and destitute. To begin, we signed at a rate of $1070 a month as we had signed later in the previous academic year and thought we were getting a deal as advertised by the management. To finally talk to other people that live at other complexes and finding out that we are paying $2-300 more a month for a complex that has lackluster amenties and subpar management is bonkers. Not to mention the $60/month parking and $50+ per month per person utilities on top of the $30/month allowance (INSANE and UNBELIEVABLE utility cost) Between trash juice and residue being left on the common hallways since move-in week in August to the point of floors being sticky (meaning no cleaning services have been employed), DEAD COCKROACHES found on MULTIPLE OCCASIONS in the hallways, and multiple doors and elevators being broken for weeks on end, I am nothing short of unimpressed with the management of this building. When we first moved in, the first thing I noticed was one of the 4 treadmills being out of service for over a month right off the bat. From there, 3 out of the 4 doors accessing the pool area have been broken for the entire year, one not allowing key access, another not even having a door handle on it, and the third being just fully broken and able to pull open by anyone who desires to access the pool. Furthermore, the mail room looks like it’s 1945 again and Hiroshima just went off. Packages strewn about quite literally all over the middle of the room and nothing is organized by name anymore, I’ve found my packages all over the room and on more than one occasion spent 30+ minutes searching for my package. There is stuff actually piled up in the corners, and I am not exaggerating when I say HUNDREDS of unclaimed packages. Frankly, it looks like a war zone. Additionally, as someone who chose to pay the extra $30 (THIRTY) dollars a month totaling to $60 monthly to be able to access the parking garage, the condition of the garage has been kept less than subpar. Trash is strewn about, nearly being hit by people driving through at 30+ mph with no consequences other than ‘Slow Down’ signs being put up, and the biggest and most exasperating concern is garage doors being frequently ‘stuck open’ with ‘maintenance working on it’ for MONTHS at a time. With this building quite literally and not satirically located next to a crack motel with multiple (MEANING MORE THAN ONE) midnight police raids experienced by myself and my roommates over the course of the lease, this is a MAJOR safety concern. In March, the garage doors were broken and stuck open beginning on 3/19. The doors were then not fixed and functional until 4/20, nearly a MONTH later to the day with little updates or communication other than an email that essentially said “We’re working on it”. At my time of move out on 5/11, the doors had again been broken for well over a week with no communication. From seeing homeless people sleeping outside my balcony on multiple occasions, to the consistent overflowing trash in the trash chutes and dumpsters that just sits and bakes for days on end in the Florida sun, I can understand why they repeatedly ask residents to resign for the following school year 3 weeks after move in because after living here for only 9 months I am thoroughly unimpressed by the standard of the Metropolitan Tampa. Absolutely foul!

This is a long review, but if you’re considering living here, it’s worth reading. The building itself is modern, the apartments are nice, and the amenities are great. If I were rating only the property itself, I’d give it 4–5 stars. Unfortunately, management practices are why I’m giving it 2 stars. 1. Extremely frequent apartment entries. During my one-year lease, management entered my apartment more than 10 times for quarterly inspections, annual inspections, fire alarm testing, sprinkler inspections, HVAC inspections, and other reasons. Many entries seemed repetitive, and some involved only a brief inspection before leaving. The biggest issue was how notice was handled. Instead of providing a specific date, notices often said they could enter anytime within a window of several days or even more than three weeks. In my opinion, that defeats the purpose of giving notice because you never know when someone will actually enter your home. One morning, management unlocked my apartment while I was asleep and then tried to unlock my bedroom door. I had to wake up and yell, “Do not open the door!” to stop them from entering my room. It was one of the most unsettling experiences I’ve had living in an apartment. 2. Fire alarm testing. The fire alarm system was tested far more frequently than I’ve experienced anywhere else. The alarms and voice announcements often ran throughout the entire business day, and these tests resulted in several additional apartment entries. 3. Air conditioning. Midway through my lease, management remotely changed the thermostat settings and locked the minimum temperature to 70°F, even though residents had previously been allowed to set it lower. 4. Mail and packages. The package room is overcrowded, and finding your package can easily take 15–30 minutes. The package app also frequently delayed sending access codes. I also had important legal mail that took nearly an hour to locate. Letter mails are delivered to management first then the management distributes them to the mailboxes I didn’t like this because i dont like my personal mail being handled by other entities than the involved parties in the delivery because they could easily deny responsibility or say they never received you letter mail which is very problematic. 5. Visitor parking. This was a major issue when I first moved in, although I will give management credit because it has improved. 6. Depending on where your apartment is located on the building you could easily walk a mile just to take out the trash.( there is no trash valet offered) Overall, the building itself is great. Unfortunately, the constant apartment entries, broad notice windows, repeated inspections, frequent fire alarm testing, and management policies had a much bigger impact on my quality of life than the building’s amenities. I would recommend asking management detailed questions about their apartment entry policies before signing a lease.