When we first viewed the apartment we were very impressed with the size of the unit, and that it had a fireplace and a nice little back yard.
It hadn?t been cleaned up after the last tennant yet but we were assured that it would be "restored" from top to bottom before move-in.

For the price we thought it was terrific (it was the dot com rent crunch then) and we snapped it up.
The week we moved in we started to notice big problems.

These apartments have terrible insulation and the windows leak badly. Seems most units have major drafts blowing through them.
The furnace would run constantly in winter trying to keep up and it was still too cold to stay downstairs. Reverse the scenerio in summer. To add to the problem the heating/cooling units are over 30 years old, very noisy and generate enormous energy bills.

The drainage is also bad. Usually at the end of a shower the tub would be about a quarter full and when a neighbor was running water we could hear it throughout the whole house.

The water heater itself could only provide enough hot water for about a ten minute shower before going cold, and the bathrooms had dirty, outdated wallpaper that must have been re-glued because it started to peel after a few months.
We asked that it be replaced to no avail. When we asked if we could replace it ourselves we were told it would cost us our security deposit.

The carpeting is of very poor quality, is not well cleaned and is almost never replaced. In almost all units we visited I noticed it bunching up and/or rotting in places, and its not safe to walk on in bare feet as you will step on nails that poke through.

The new resident managers at first were very keen on addressing these problems and even got funding approved from the building owners, but SPM (the property management company) and it?s maintainance staff refused to spend the time and money on improvements. Defeated, the managers can now only take complaints in stride.

It really seems a shame, with very little updating these places would be dynamite (there must be tax breaks or incentives) but no amount of decorating could overcome the obvious comfort and energy use issues.

After a few years of trying to make it work we moved this month to Ygnacio Village Apartments though they are much smaller. Lots of our former neighbors seem to be doing the same.

All that said we would move back in a heartbeat if they had units with new HVAC, water heaters, windows and carpet, etc....and didn?t punish tennants by raising rents to pay for what should have been maintained all along.

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