We lived at the Park Regency for almost two years from September 2003 to June 2005. The place was recommended by a friend for the low rent, nice pools, easy walk to BART and proximity of a childcare center right outside the gate.

We rented a very nice two bedroom/two bath unit at a very affordable price. Everything was fine for the first year that we lived there while our son was still a baby. We liked the apartment, the fireplace, spacious bathrooms, loved having the washer/dryer right out on the balcony, the easy walk to BART or bike ride to downtown Walnut Creek. We didn't have a car for the first year we were there and managed to get by all right without it due to the location.

We never had any problems with the management office or maintenance and we knew several of our neighbors, made friends in the pool. Everything was hunky dory. The only things I wasn't too happy about were the rickety climbing structure in the tot lot that really needed replacing (the wood was starting to rot out back then) and the fact that on weekends the trash room would invariably overflow because people weren't being responsible about what they were putting in the trash and the chutes would back up resulting in trash backflowing out of the chutes on all floors. We did notice that the walls and floors were thin: normal walking around in shoes in the unit above us sounded disproportionately loud and when our upstairs neighbor was walking around making dinner in the evening or getting up to get ready for work in the morning, it was vaguely annoying but since it was just normal moving around, we never complained about it.

Things went bad after the people below us moved out and we got a new set of downstairs neighbors who were incredibly sensitive to the slightest bit of noise. They didn't ignore the regular daily traffic they way we did for our upstairs neighbor and started complaining constantly. Granted, we had a two year old in the house who liked to run to the door in the evening to meet his father coming in and he'd jump up and down when he was excited. However, none of this behavior lasted for more than a second or two and we were teaching him to walk quietly and only jump on his bed. He also had tantrums, but this is normal for a kid his age and we would put him in his room up on his bed well away from adjoining walls and the floor when he go upset to mitigate any noise problems. On top of it all, we were only ever home on weekdays from about 7:30pm through the night and until 9am in the morning since my husband and I both work and our son went to daycare. Some of the complaints made against us were made during times /when we weren't at home/ or that we were making noise in the middle of the night /when we were all asleep/.

The complaints kept coming though and regardless of what we said to management they ignored us and only listened to the other neighbor and started threatening to kick us out. I was commuting to San Francisco to work daily and expecting our second child at the time and it was hugely stressful having to face the thought of being evicted if I didn't stay on top of my toddler's slightest movement in the unit. They wouldn't even let us move into a ground floor unit until the lease we were already on was up. So ultimately, we moved out.

Overall, we actually /liked/ living there and didn't want to move out, but were forced out by the management. They're heartless and only interested in their bottom line, not in keeping happy tenants. So while I'd recommend the place for childless professionals, I'd say it's probably not the easiest place to be for most families, even though I know there's a /ton/ of families living there.

User Responses
From: fudgesickles	Date: 01/07/2008
I think this is sort of ridiculous to post about a community you lived in three years ago. A lot can (and I suspect has) change(d) in 3 years. Also, you mention things went bad when new neighbors moved in downstairs... so wasn't it their complaining that "did you in"? If the previous tenants stayed in the apartment below you, it is possible they never would have complained, understanding you had a young child living in your apartment. And yes, when management hears that your child is making too much noise (whether the other tenant is being truthful or not), they have to bring it up to you, and if it seems that you are doing nothing about it, they have grounds to evict you. I'm not saying it is fair, but put yourself in the manager's shoes, someone who does not know what you know, and then see what you would have done with all of the complaints. Aside from the fact that this was three years ago. I hope you found a great community for your kids where they can now enjoy themselves without the worry of getting kicked out.
From: Anonymous	Date: 01/14/2008
The management seems to have problems with people that stay over one year. I look at this place as mainly a money maker that nails you; on move out, fake late charges, towing kickbacks, false noise complaints by flippers (ie lifers that live in community for 10 yrs on the w-ll----system), early lease terminations, apt and car break-ins by staff. As a single professional that lived here at PR for a few years I heard, witnessed and saw many of the games mgmt, etc played with other renters here. It is a same as it seems the local courts and such do not care.
From: renterma	Date: 01/26/2008
Why is it ridiculous to write a review that includes commentary on things that don't change about a place, such as the location, proximity to BART etc.? I'm also not disputing that the management didn't have a right to bring up noise complaints, only that there didn't seem to be anything we could do to work with them, reasonably to amend the situation. Our son wasn't making an outrageous amount of noise, just the usual noise that a child that age makes and additionally, we /were/ trying to teach him to be ... much more quiet than any two year old is really physically capable of being. Mostly I was trying to provide a balanced view of positives and negatives about the community from our perspective as a young family. However, the fact of the matter is, that if you allow children in an apartment community, you have to expect a certain level of /reasonable/ noise during daylight hours (kids playing outside, a little bit of brief running until the child is reminded not to run indoors/until they're old enough to remember every time). However, the complaints leveled against us were being reported after quiet hours, between 10pm and 6am, and management said that they were occurring at 4am - when every single member of our household was usually fast asleep (barring the odd illness). While our son had the odd incident of night terrors (common at that age) where he screamed for half an hour at 11pm, no one in our unit was jumping up and down at 4am which is what the claims were.

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