RH
Reid Heckel
Oct 16, 2025
I moved into The Barlow in 2022 because it’s close to the area of town I enjoyed and had friends in the complex. If it weren’t for amount of friends in the complex, I would have left sooner. Before choosing this apartment complex, take a look at the reviews, including this one.
If you choose to live here, pick a top floor like I did. Anytime I would be in friends apartments on lower floors, it would amaze me at how loud the neighbors above them would be. This goes for at least 9 different friends, so it’s not just one bad neighbor. The infrastructure is not great. Which brings me to the roof of the property. In the three years I lived there, about 28 months of it included scaffolding around the building with workers fixing leaks around the building. Fortunately this never affected my unit other than working from home and hearing the construction all day (see photos). Ask the management to show you the ventilation when you do a tour because I’d almost guarantee there’s units with mold. The downside about living on the top floor is that the elevators are constantly breaking. They have three in the building that were all out of inspection code for a year before they finally had someone come out (picture was taken one year past the previous inspection due date). I knew of multiple people to get stuck in the elevators but in my case it would get annoying to have to take my dog out in 95+ degree Florida weather in the staircase because the elevators were out. Which brings me to another problem… when inspecting the building, go into the stairwell, and I mean walk the entire stairwell. They don’t ever clean them. Dogs will poop and pee in them and never get cleaned… along with homeless people as it’s easy for anyone to access the “luxurious” building. There’s always spiderwebs between rails and wasps nests on the ceilings. The community would report this and they’d send texts saying it’s been cleaned but it wasn’t.
As for the homeless comment, we had squatters on multiple occasions in some of the first floor units that were street side. This never concerns me much until people started sleeping on the couch in the commons area. When I brought this to attention, I was told “they’re typically gone by 6 in the morning, what’s the big deal?” As I feel for those people, that’s not the response you want to hear when you’re paying what it costs to live in “luxury.”
If you move in, buy the parking garage pass as there are break-in’s often on the vehicles that park on the street as well as some flooding in hurricane season (see pic). While it’s a great area going into historic San Marco, on the other side are some sketchier motels in which you’ll see people roaming in and around the Barlow. Keep your doors of your unit and car locked. I had a man try to open my door a few weeks ago around 2AM that eventually got arrested for harassing people in the lobby (picture).
See if you can find out about the Crime Scene Unit vans that have been on property as well. There’s been a handful of them either at The Barlow or at The Exchange in my 3 years of living there. You’ll see a good bit of patrol cars as well, but since it’s never involved me or friends, I won’t speak to that.
Also in my 3 years there, we’ve had 3 different property managers. There’s zero consistency and they are never around. The last manager to take over didn’t even share their contact information with the community. While trying to break my lease, it took me three weeks to find someone in the office that could help. Granted I’d only go down once a day, but when I’d see the temp that was working there each day (nice guy), he wouldn’t know where they were at either.
With all this said, they do some things well! Their maintenance team is quick to respond to requests. They have a different food truck come most Wednesdays. It had stopped for a while after the third management changed but I think it’s back on. I enjoyed my unit because my bedroom was on the corner so the staircase was on the other side of the wall. Any other unit, I’d be out.