3/5 Stars. I'll explain why.

Having lived in this complex for 9 months now, and reading the reviews of this place I felt the urge to write a fair review. Note that I am a current resident with a lease that is about to expire, and I have lived in many Avalon apartments in the past.

PROS
*Physically, this apartment was build quite nicely. Right next 101, a lot of trees and "green space", including a beautiful pool, sauna, adequate gym equipment and even a basketball court. They did a good job building this place.

*Easy access to 101, and the units are quite nice, spacious and the actual buildings are relatively new

*It is quiet here, with occasional poolside and house parties, which is awesome

*The Yoga teacher is great, and free lessons in Yoga, Salsa and Martial Arts are available.

*The residents are friendly, albeit, there many families. There are pockets of cooler single kids but much less than in the city.

CONS
*Everything that is great about this complex has nothing to do with the current management. It is true about the previous reviews: they shafted me, even regarding the referral fee when we first moved in, citing "we can't change it in our system". One time, our toilet flooded and facilities barged into our apt at 5am in the morning to clean up the water. The next day, I requested a further cleanup as the floor is still dirty and the response I got from the facilities manager was, "we don't do that sort of thing, you should call a cleaning company".

*The reception girls, Lindsey, Rachel, etc. are nice to look at and are generally eager to help. However, they usually don't have authority to make decisions that really matter, i.e. lease terms, rent, facilities calls. These decisions usually go to Artoro or the management inside the building. Arturo is a nice guy once you get to know him and understand his situation. However, he has been known by residents to be a hard ass (others have called him worse names), but though I understand his view point, I have to agree. He frame is more of "how can best grow the apartment with the holding company's interest in mind" versus "how do best help my residents." To this extent, the management is annoying because their focus is not on the "end user", and coming from Google, it is annoying to experience this in my living space. Sometimes you really do get the felling that management doesn't give a F*** about you, except when you are signing a lease or renewing a lease.

Conclusion:
This is great place to live, if you are kind person who can take care of yourself, and usually don't deal with management

If you are the kind of person that requires reassurance and like people to people genuine service, make sure you meet with the management team and see if you like them. They are great at selling you, but once you become a resident you have to be ok with the fact that 1. They usually care about themselves more than you 2. Although nice, the girls/leasing agents do not authority and can at times be incompetent in fulfilling CURRENT RESIDENT needs.

P.S. I have nothing gain from this, just wanted to write a fair review. I am actually quite disappointed at the management team. This place has so much potential. They are racking in tones of cash, which is maybe why they don't care about current residents as much. But in terms of Long Term strategy, this is not the way to go. Eventually the word will get out and the parent Avalon company will replace the management staff. While management does play games with pricing / luring as indicated by the previous reviews, replacing the current management with more resident-focused people will ultimately lower turnover rates and increase profit margins.

People are willing to pay a higher price on genuine service. This is how good restaurants and any service-based business prospers.

Other Avalon apartments, especially on the east coast are managed with much more skill, probably because they face higher competition/less population growth than the Bay Area.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 01/13/2008
great review

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