First things first. I lived there from Nov 2005 to June 2008. Two bedroom, 1 bath for $1175, a good deal!

THE GOOD:

1) LOCATION! 2.5 miles from Briones Regional Park, excellent jogging routes through very safe and nice Virginia Hills neighborhood, EXTREME convenience of TJ Maxx Chinese Restaurant next door and even Safeway AND Longs one block away.


2) The Complex: 70s era stucco complex with a smallish circle pool, laundry room, and lots and lots of stairs right off Alhambra/Taylor. Parking' Lots, but lots of cars, too. We had 1 covered for our unit. Noise' Rarely a problem, but yet there were some times that our downstairs neighbors would blast music, but not past 11:00ish. Maintenance/Manager' Decent guy, Don Wurst, manager. Not perfect maintenance, but ok. They worked reasonably fast, but make sure you know how to take care of yourself when it comes to clogged toilets, funny closet doors, etc. Grounds' Clean, but then again, there's basically no shared areas. Laundry room floor--should have been cleaned once in a while. =-) Laundry room...always busy, but I was usually lucky with that. Units--ours was remodeled, and cute. Crown molding, brushed silver lights, cute scroll door knobs, new linoleum in kitchen and bath. Glamour' No way. Homey' Yes.



THE NOT GREAT:

Of course, there was that smell of pot....our downstairs neighbors did 420 often at one point. Stinky. But the worst was when they BBQd and the SMOKE from the charcoal would suffocate us one summer. Even with the slider shut. That apartment was HOT in the summer and COLD in the winter, basically no insulation. Pillar candles (thick ones) melted on my shelf!! I would sleep in the living room hot (85 F) nights. Drafty. A tree would scrape mercilessly all night against my window during storms. The electricity went out in our neighborhood all the time during the summer peak times, so make sure to have a surge protector for your computer!! If you must be online, don't bother coming home on hot nights. There will be no power, take your studying elsewhere. The pool was drained for many, many months but luckly in service again just in time for summer. It was an eyesore. Our particular unit was slanted, and so my "sliding" closet door was a joke (and my bedroom door hung weird). Closet door came off all the time, I wished I could have hung a curtain rod with cloth (was told not to, but it would have worked better!) The cement mix wasn't that great when they made our 4 unit set, thus the stairs looked like they were melting, and our balcony looked a bit scary -- they appeared to be pulling off the building. There are hairline cracks around the windows, also indicated the building was settling on the foundation. We did have a few minor quakes (3.4, 3.7 if I recall) and I do remember being thankful I didn't use the covered space (below the units). Bad Northridge memories. So um, yeah.

Overall: Quiet...met nice people in the laundry room and neighbours. Not a wild complex by any means, but not the Ritz. Just a humble place to call home. If the price is still reasonable, I say DO IT.

Sadly, our deposit was mostly kept despite the fact we scrubbed the place totally clean and damaged nothing...but our deposit was only $500 for the whole apt.


Happy home hunting!

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