Gables Dupont Circle - Washington, District of Columbia

Kay Schleckser

Really like our new apartment. The front desk staff are thorough, kind and very helpful. The property manager bent over backwards to make our move-in as easy as possible. She handles any issues very quickly and effectively and is a pleasure to work with. All maintenance staff have also been very prompt, courteous and knowledgeable

Randi Rubinstein

The location of Gables Dupont Circle is great. It is a short walk to the Dupont Circle metro and also various restaurants, bars, and grocery stores making it an ideal location to live. I have consistently worked with Kayla Green in the leasing office and she has been incredible to work with. She is my go-to person for any question or issue that I may have and has exceeded my expectations in every respect. If you need to work with someone in the leasing office I definitely recommend Kayla as she has helped to make our time living at Gables Dupont Circle very enjoyable.

Anthony Tufo

I have lived here for over 3 years now and my experience has been average enough not to endure the pain of moving. The main positives have been the maintenance team, the daytime concierge, and the location. With the building's water infrastructure being the main negative.

Pros: 1) The maintenance team (especially of late) has been great. They are always fast to fix an issue, and recently when all of my floors had to be replaced they worked with me on a schedule, kept me updated on the process, and replaced all the flooring with minimal disturbance to my day. Their work was much appreciated. 2) The daytime concierge is always incredibly helpful and kind. 3) The location of the building is obviously great being in Dupont Circle.

Cons: Water has always been the main issue with this building. Other reviews go into plenty of detail, but I will just note that in the 3+ years I have lived here the building has averaged a water incident (either all of the water is shutdown, or there is no hot water) once every 18 days. Management has noted that this issue is being resolved through recent repairs, but that has not come to fruition yet, with the most recent hot water outage being two days ago.

Like I said above the experience to date has been average enough not to endure the pain of moving, but the recent experiences stemming from the water (detailed in other reviews) might make me reevaluate that math.

Jess

Been a VERY disappointing experience to live at Gables DuPont Circle. From problems with having reliable access to water every month, to an insane amount of dust in the units to unreliable communication from management, I cannot recommend living here.

One time the fire alarms started going off both on our floor AND in our unit and did not stop for like 72 hours. We literally had to stay somewhere else for those nights.

On top of all this, Gables corporate/management has given absolutely no compensation to residents for these unacceptable living experiences.

If you want to renew your lease, they’ll likely increase your already staggering rent by 20%, as they did for us.

Plus, Gables is currently being sued by the DC Attorney General (along with a few other big management corps) of colluding to inflate rent prices for residents. The one redeeming perk of this place is the fantastic team at the front desk and its wonderful location.

Bottom line: From my 1+ year of living here, I personally recommend you save your money and live elsewhere.

Bernie Desrosiers

The Gables has redeeming qualities. I’m not saying it doesn’t. I left a positive review here three years ago. Location is great and the building is fairly quiet. But I’ve lived here for some time and noticed that in the last year it’s gone downhill and quickly. Read the reviews on Google and Yelp. The water problems have been persistent. Every day for the last six days…every single day…we have had hours with no access to hot water or water in general. Sometimes it’s five hours. Other times is 20 hours. The fact that this continues to happen is problematic. The fact it happened over Thanksgiving made it worse. The property manager has been out for five days leaving the part time front desk to deal with the problems. When you ask the Front Desk to call the property manager you are told they don’t have the number for anyone to call other than maintenance. When you ask if you can speak personally to maintenance you are told “they won’t talk to you…you have to talk to leasing office.” But leasing is out and has been for the last five days so it leaves the tenants feeling like they don’t know where to turn.

As much as it hurts, I recommend you find someplace else. I pay a premium to live here and don’t feel that it’s worth the extra price anymore. No water flowing and no hot water isn’t a small issue. It’s a large one and the tenants do not feel that the issues are being adequately addressed.

Update: hot water out all day Thursday 12/14/23. Got it back Friday afternoon. Lost it Saturday, still out Sunday. Luxury complex without hot water. Saga continues.

Katie Karp

Dorothy was incredibly helpful when it came to solving problems regarding a difficult move-in. She and the whole staff are incredibly kind and great at their jobs!!!

Lauren Wetzsteon Tufo

Extremely disappointed in the experience we’ve had here. The building has severe and persistent water issues. We have had outages every day for the last five days, preceded by on and off outages at least monthly for the last two years. We often come home from the gym to no hot water and frequently have maintenance in and out of our apartment during the workday, making it nearly impossible to work from home. We have tried to exercise patience and understanding, at this point it seems negligent on management’s part that we are still dealing with these issues.

Over the summer, the maintenance team accidentally turned the wrong switch while power washing the building and sent the water through our HVAC closet, flooding our apartment with standing water. And again just two weeks ago, we came home from a vacation to standing water on our floors, once again. Our floors are now warped with serious, visible damage. To replace the floors will be a six hour process in which we and our two dogs will need to leave the apartment, and go where I’m not sure. Again, an issue that could have been avoided altogether by proper care and management of the building.

Management has been “fixing” the issue for months, with things only getting worse in the process. During this time, they have offered nothing of substance to remedy these issues with tenants or make up for the serious disruptions that constant outages and maintenance cause — especially when working from home. For example, they could offer decreased rental rates or an opportunity for term modifications, but nothing. Other tentants have begun to file reports with the city and encouraged others to do so — it’s getting difficult not to join them.

This is not a “luxury apartment” nor is it managed like one. If you’re considering a lease here, I strongly recommend against it.

UPDATE: per the below, I’ve spoken to the manager. I was told they could do nothing to rectify the issue (e.g., discount rent). We were told that after an extensive “water system repair project” these issues would go away. In a surprise to nobody, the issues continue to persist 2 months later with at least 4 outages impacting our unit since then. Do not move here.

UPDATE #2: It's now April 20, and I came home from a workout to no hot water. Despite managements continued comments on these reviews that they are "investing in the necessary updates" and despite them saying all the updates are complete, we still have regular water outages.

Brooks Watson

This place is so overpriced. I paid $2,900 for my unit and it wasn’t worth it then. Now, they’re trying to charge $3,400

I have lived here in a 1b/1b for around 12 months. We pay almost $3000 on rent alone, and yet we are constantly dealing with issues in our apartment and building. No wonder Gables is one of the real estate companies being sued by D.C. I would seriously think twice about living here.

***New Note: They increased our rent by $400 in the renewal offer, so do not live here if you want a place for more than 15 months.

I will say that the front desk staff has been amazing and are always as helpful as possible. Maintenance is usually responsive, but I’ve had a few issues (like my hvac breaking) that required them to make multiple visits and even call in an extra contractor. We’re in an interior unit facing the courtyard and Brookings Institute. It’s a fairly quiet building (when you can’t hear the construction)

On average, we’ve had our water cut off or lost hot water nearly twice a month. They are constantly shutting our water off for maintenance, but clearly using cheap contractors because the water still has problems. It’s also constantly coming out gray.

My girlfriend and I are fairly allergic to cats and dogs. Given the carpet in the bedroom, we asked two weeks before move-in that they deep clean our carpet since we could tell from an earlier visit the previous tenant had a pet. Guess what? When we moved in, we couldn’t put anything on the floor without it getting covered in someone else’s pet hair. We asked them to really clean it, but then they just sent the in-house cleaner to our room with a vacuum and brush. Only after we complained a third time did they send people in to replace the carpet, but by this point we had already moved all our furniture into the basement. Also, our washer and dryer were full of this person’s pet’s hair. Really really gross.

Our HVAC has broken several times. I’ve never lived in a place with more dust in my life.

There is also persistent construction going on and little to no communication from management. At one point, the glazed the tub in the unit below us without warning us This created an intensely chemical scent within our unit. The front desk had to call the building manager to learn this and let us know it was safe to be in our apartment. Our street is occasionally shut down for city events, but we’ve never been given a heads up in an e-mail.