Whenever I look at reviews for something, e.g. a restaurant, I always sort by worst and see what they say. If it's some dealbreaker like "I found a rat in my food", then I'm outta there. If it's "the service was slow this one time", I can live with it.

I don't pay any attention to the positive reviews at all, except just for the number of them.

yes, I’ve found a pretty reliable approach for apartments is if people are complaining about the fees in the 1 star reviews, it’s probably a pretty good apartment.

Other places have 1 star reviews mentioning mold, pests, break-ins, etc.

I use a similar approach for amazon reviews. If all the 1 star reviews are telling the same story then it’s bad. If there’s not much consistency then it’s probably fine. That and the percentage of 1 star reviews. generally I aim for <5%