When we first moved in we were extremely disappointed as the model unit was extremely clean and our apartment was a disaster.

The carpets were/are dingy and matted, the apartment wasn't cleaned properly. (we found pubic hairs in the bathroom from the previous tenant. This was really gross.)

Just recently I went to clean the stove and as usual I pull off the knobs to clean behind them and found about a years worth of gunk behind them, that was gross too.

We had all kinds of tiny issues, we documented approximately 2 pages of problems on their move-in sheet-- Stuff like the bottom fridge tray that sits above the vege-boxes is cracked and broken. Doorknob loose on the porch. Matted carpet. Stains on the walls. (some of which won't come out.) mismatched paint in some areas and sloppy paint work throughout. Our water heater is rusted, and they didn't even have an A/C filter installed, we had to go back and get one. And tons more.

When we brought the sheet back to them they were "shocked" and wanted to do a walk through of the apartment. They claimed the cleaning crew was new and they did "seem" interested in taking care of our problems.

A month later though and they never came to do the walk through and we ended up having to fix stuff like a loose doorknob (this door led to the porch, so it was a big security issue, and they never came to fix it) ourselves. The screen door for the sliding glass doors comes off it's track and might as well be unusable.

We requested a copy from them of our move-in-issues sheet, and never got it. Not that it matters much as we documented all of it ourselves and took pictures of the entire apartment before we unpacked.

The walls are super-thin. I mean, so thin you can hear the people upstairs vacuum, and it sounds like they're in YOUR apartment.

The living room is too big and has a lot of unfillable space, and the bedroom is too small.

Speaking of the bedroom, it gets really HOT during the day, VERY POOR insulation, and the huge door in the bedroom that leads to the patio doesn't help at all. (really bad design feature here. You really don't need a sliding glass door AND a regular door to access the porch in 2 different rooms. To me it just adds to the security risk.) If it's 73 in the rest of the apartment it's 83 in the bedroom around 4pm in the afternoon. Seems like a bad design on the A/C ventillation system coupled with very poor insulation.

Plumbing: Our kitchen sink, when water is turned on full blast, makes a ton of noise like very old pipes might make.

There also seems to be a big roach problem out here. we realize that this area is considered "country" even though it's only 30 minutes from downtown Orlando, but it's really bad none the less.

The trash compacter doesn't get emptied enough. So the trash is usually piled up outside the compacter within 3 days of it being emptied. (needs to be emptied 2 times a week.) The trash compactor is however located away from all of the buildings, so tennants don't have trash piled up outside their door.

Parking is OK. Not great. we can usually find a spot but occasionally we have to go searching. This is fairly typical for apartment complexes out here.

Management staff was ok. We haven't tried to use any of the amenities yet. We felt that more attention to detail by them could have saved us a lot of trouble. If they had followed up with us and gotten these issues taken care of (or not let them happen in the first place) They'd get a better rating from us. We're willing to believe that it was an honest mistake on their part, and will give them another chance in the future to work on these isues when we have time to have them into the apartment to take care of some things. -- They do seem to be a bit understaffed, another person in the office might be all they need to eliminate some of these issues.

We're not sure about the maintenance people yet as they never came to fix the stuff we put on our move in sheet, and frankly we haven't had time to keep following up on it.

Also if you get the grey-carpeting, chances are your appliances will not match (they will be cream colored) and there are no handles on any of the cabinets, which is EXTREMELY annoying.

They do have a lot of "events" it seems like. They had a pool party catered by Chick Fil-A recently. We thought that would have been nice for the kids, if we had any.

Overall a lot of small things could have been over-looked by us. The staff did not seem hostile towards us at any time, but they could have done their jobs better by following up on our issues. (for that matter they could have done a walk through of the apartment after the cleaners 'cleaned' it and found a lot of this stuff themselves.) We feel like if the staff paid more attention to detail, and perhaps the maintenance crew were friendlier, most of the stuff would be livable. (Our old head-of-maintenance guy was extremely polite, always waved and stopped to talk to tenants and was extremely efficient. The maintenance men here seem a tad on the anti-social side.)

It's not the worst, but it's not the best either. The location makes up for some of it, but not all of the issues. If the staff worked harder to make things right, and to take care of issues before they cropped up, we would recommend this complex.

For $875.00 a month, every apartment should come with an alarm system. Which these do not. All of the other places we considered came with an alarm system for this price. Unfortunately none of them had vacancies in our time frame. To be honest, our first choice was empirian @ gateway.

Finally. The demographic seems to be largely late 20's to 40's. There's not a lot of college kids or young people living here, so that removes some of the problems they tend to bring with them. We've had one or two neighbors say hello to us, and we appreciate it.

Addendum:

In the defense of the staff, a previous review stated that they let "non tennants" use the amenities while hassling actual tennants. I'd like to know how that takes place when you need a key-card to get into the pool/workout/basketball court area. And while we haven't tried it yet, we've been told that the Big-screen TV room is available for after hours use, we just have to let them know about it before hand.

Though we agree, the amenities area should be open 24 hours a day. Since it is located away from all the apartment buildings there is little chance of annoying tennants who are trying to sleep unless someone tried to have a huge pool party or something.

We did feel that they should have offered our $150.00 security deposit back, for the hassle.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 03/09/2007
wow this is accurate, office is dumb though. It seems they send out alot of stupid notices, yet fail to control dog crap, commercial vehicles, and tailgating thru the gate. The gate is useless! The apts. are not soundprofed at all. They dont let service companies in yet solicitors tailgate and get in no problem!

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