Urbanest Carlton Student Accommodation / Scape Berkeley 1

I stayed here for about a year and the experience was very good. Rooms are well equipped with very efficient uses of space despite its compact footprint. Common areas are a good place to study and contactless payment for laundry means you don't need to hoard coins. I highly recommend urbanest, you do pay a premium for this, but rent is all inclusive, staff are responsive and the environment is inspiring. If you are looking for purpose built student accommodation, look no further. I transferred to SHA and they are sketchy. I wish I could come back to urbanest

The management is really understanding. I had to go home due to the situation and they let me shorten my contract free of charge. The staff are really friendly, and the facilities are well taken care of.

It's a great building and real close to the University of Melbourne. The staff are the best part of the experience, Ang is great with all the under 18 residents, Tom is very knowledgeable and helpful and Jess is always so warm and welcoming to talk too

Highly recommended

Having been living here for nearly a year, I’d rather probably not choose here unless I find any other alternative accommodation, which should be at least better than here with the same price. The advantages are: Easy to move in - Ask the staff at reception or online regarding your requested room type in advance. Once they agreed, sign your agreement and you will be guarantee a furnished room very quickly - just one rent with all your water, electricity, internet bills included, free gym, party or game held by management every once in a while, 24 x 7 support, asking staff if you encounter any issues.

Apartment building is with great location to campus within a walking distance, in particular to Law and FBE faculty, merely 3 mins walk.

Nevertheless, more and more hassle and annoying things has arises with my stay: Frequent false fire alarms around start of semesters because of new residents’ ignorance of in-room smoke detector! You get awakened at 6: 00am in the morning or 11pm at night. Noise insulation is bad, I could always hear what other rooms are talking loudly, or alarm clock set up by residents in other room at 5-6 o’clock in the morning, and lift’s noise as well. Also I countered several issues during my stay: Disconnection for internet for half a month in July last year; Water leakage from my neighbour upstairs has made all my room’s carpet soaked wet with very bad smell. Despite I requested for carpet drying service, no one offered me any help until when I headed for the counter over and over again, and eventually one staff came to my room and steam-cleaned carpet. Also there seems to be a bar downstairs near the Elizabeth St, from which I could hear subwoofer noise from 11pm-1am almost everyday. I made several complaints but it never helps.

Most students are short-term residents, living here for 6 months just for one semester then leaving, because paying relative higher rent than the market for a very compact room does not seem to be a rational choice - You can have a lot better accommodation with the same price or same quality with a better price around the campus - as long as you do some work for accommodation prior to your arrival.

If you want to leave earlier before your agreement terminates, two options are in front of you: Paying all the rest of rent until the end date of your agreement, or, try to transfer it to someone else. But this not seems to be practical or very likely, on one hand, price is so high that almost no one would consider unless having no choice; on the other hand, only registered students with CoE are eligible to live here - other residents are not allowed.

BTW, reception and management staffs change frequently - I’ve seen at least 3 or 4 batches change since my arrival. Now all faces seem new to me.

It would be nearly impossible for me to be more dissatisfied with my time at Urbanest than I currently am. I’m a current resident here, and my experience has been marred with disappointment, incompetence, and gross negligence. My room has needed multiple repairs, all of which took weeks to get done. The vent above my stove, which is a fire safety mechanism, broke at the beginning of March. I filed a complaint, and as of today (May 28th) it STILL has not been fixed, putting me and my roommate in danger. Add to this the other problems we have had with the room (our door mechanism has malfunctioned 7 or 8 times, our bathroom door broke, our blinds cord wasn’t installed properly), and it becomes an unacceptable level of service. This isn’t even to mention the countless events they’ve had that have been laughable in their incompetence. They consistently offer free food to both buildings, which usually means they’ve invited a few hundred people, and then serve an amount of food to feed maybe 10. They offer free fruit and muffins that are pretty much never available. Anytime I complain about any of this to the staff, I get apologies but nothing changes. The price I paid to stay here is not nearly worth the abysmal service I have received. If you’re going to pay this amount to stay somewhere in Melbourne, for the love of god, stay somewhere with staff who are able to do literally anything helpful.

The time I spent at Urbanest was okay. But when it was time for me to leave and obtain my bond money was when this place caused me trouble.
They wanted to charge me over $400 for a mattress that had the slightest discolouring. Honestly, it was my fault to NOT have scanned for issues with a magnifying glass! I wouldn't have any issues paying for the damage had it been my fault.
After countless mails back and forth, I finally got them to reduce the charge to $95. Although quite a sum, it is no where close to what I was initially charged.
In retrospect, this place is EXPENSIVE for no real advantage. Student accommodation has to be more affordable. Lanudry isn't free to use. And you get just 20gigs of free internet a month which is not sufficent in any way.
The rooms made me claustrophobic. They are tiny and the window opens out just 10cm to let in fresh air. If you're given a room on the inner half of the bedroom you have no access to a window.
So in all, my experience at this place was miserable.

Staff is super-friendly! My move to Urbanest was really smooth. The rooms are well architectured and very comfortable to live in. The pricing is the only discouraging factor with cheapest option at $280 a week.

Clean, pretty new student apartment. They have paid laundry, common area for movies, table tennis, meetings, several free Macs with wifi. Large studio rooms are clean, bright, complete with basic utilities. No gym.so yo'd better run around Carlton Garden, rather quite at night, yet only 5 minutes walk to Victoria Market (start of the free tram ride)