Lakeshore Apartments Most Affordable in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin

If you're moving to Beaver Dam Wisconsin and looking for an affordable place to live, you won't find anywhere cheaper than the Lakeshore Apartments, located on Lakecrest Drive behind Save-a-Lot.

However, if all you're looking at is price, I would suggest changing that philosophy.

Rents at the Lakeshore apartments are relatively decent. A two bed-room apartment costs roughly $500 a month, which is considerably less than many of the other apartment complexes around town. For that money, you do get a decent sized apartment (I would say about 600 square feet) that has the heat, water and garbage included with the rent and even comes with a dishwasher.

Despite that, I can honestly say I will never live there again.

When I did live there, the first year was OK. But, after that first year, the owners of the apartments decided against paying for someone to serve as an on-site manager and instead started contracting the work out to people who would only visit a couple times a week. That's when the apartments went down hill.

We had our air conditioner and dish washer break and waited weeks for someone to fix them. When we started getting mold in our apartment (most likely from the older roof on the building) we were told it was "just mildew" and to live with it. And, of course, there was the fan in the bathroom, which, when it got colder, would leak water. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal except it was located right over the toilet. Just try using a toilet with cold water dripping on your head.

And, that wasn't even the worst of it. Unlike most apartments in this town, Lakeshore Apartments did not seem to have standards about the people they would rent their apartments to; if you could pay the security deposit and were willing to sign the lease, you got an apartment.

The problem with this was they got a lot of people who did not care about the fact they lived around others. Assigned parking was all but forgotten about as people and their guests parked wherever they wanted (except on the two days the managers were around) and, even worse, there were people constantly working on their cars in the lot (something that wasn't supposed to be allowed) at all hours of the night. The thing that bothered us the most were the residents who didn't want to smoke in their apartments so they would stand in the hall way to do it or right outside the front door. We couldn't open the windows for fear it would set off our smoke detectors.

It wasn't even that easy to move away. The lease is for one year. After that year, you need to sign a new lease or pay an additional amount each month. So, you have to either have a place lined up right away so you can move out the day the lease runs out or you risk paying more money out of pocket.

The location of the apartments is also not very desirable because it's right off of a busy street (Madison St.). If you had to go to work or wanted to go to a store during the busiest times of the day, you had to plan on sitting at the end of Lakecrest Dr. for an hour waiting for traffic to clear. We used to give Save-a-Lot a lot of business just because we could walk to it and didn't have to cross that street.

If you're looking for a starter apartment that fits your budget and don't care about quality then Lakeshore Apartments are probably a place you would want to consider. But, if you're willing to pay a few dollars extra each month, there are plenty of higher quality apartments available and I would check those out first.