I guess if you're crunched on money and want to pay minimal rent, there's no need to complain because it's somewhere to have a roof over your head, but other than that, I wouldn't recommend this place. Two of the biggest problems I had, which I hope changes for others, is the lack of communication that most of the staff has (there are a few exceptions), and the inability to control the cockroaches. Yes, there are roaches in Florida, but if pest control is returning time after time to the same apartment and you're still seeing more than a couple roaches running around day after day, someone's not doing their job right. To properly rid of roaches, doesn't all the apartments in a building need to be controlled, not just those that call' Some nights I would go to get a snack at night, and when I turned on the light, about six or more roaches would run out of the sick and other places. I felt nauseated and didn't even desire to cook anymore. Five months after we arrived, there were still roaches running around every time we turned on the lights. To contrast the apartment complex I now live in, I've been to the new place for three months, then two months into the lease, I saw "one" roach run from under the microwave, and I haven't seen any since, so that's not a problem at all...so yes, Florida does have bugs, but there's no excuse for seeing more than a few of them every day and not being able to adequately control them.

Okay, the communication is also not that great. We moved 1000 miles from our last home, and we called to make sure of how much money was needed to pay security deposit, etc to get in. We weren't told about everything. When we got there, we found out we had to pay the prorated amount plus the whole month's next rent, even though it wasn't even the next month yet. On the phone we were told about the prorated amount, but not that we would have to pay the next month's rent on that same day. If we didn't have a couple credit cards to get a cash advance from, we would have had nowhere to stay, and we wouldn't have been able to afford the uhaul truck for another day. The response from one of the office staff when we were shocked was sarcastic, "What did you "think" you had to pay'" People from Florida would know that you pay the next month in advance the month before, but from our old state it wasn't like that at all. And when we called to confirm how much to bring in a money order, we were never told of this.

After a while, we started looking for other apartments...even if we didn't move into them until the end of the lease. The place we filled out information for called to verify we lived there, and they wouldn't verify it because we they said we hadn't wrote a letter saying we were leaving. So we wrote a letter explaining that we weren't sure we were going to get in or when, but that we requested that they please verify that we lived there. They took it from us, read it, then we left. So when the new apartments called them back, they came up with another excuse. "There's no date on this," even though when they read it it from us they said nothing. So we revised the letter and put an approximate date. They read it again in front of us. The new apts called back and they said we still didn't have a date. So we printed out the same letter and turned it in. Then the new apts called back again and they came up with yet another excuse, "They haven't paid the termination fee." So they couldn't verify that we lived there. So we called up and asked what the termination fee would be so we could pay it, even though we had no clue if we were moving yet, which was dangerous, since we might not have ANY place to live. They said there was no termination fee and that we were responsible for the end of our lease which was like 9 months away. Okay, did it really require all those letters and calls for them to say that' They could've told us that from the beginning instead of sending us on a wild goose chase for no reason.

Also, when I was calling in as an anonymous person wanting to know how much you would have to pay to break a lease, the person tried to dig out of me who I was and what my apartment number was, which was rude because I could've been anyone calling in about the apartment. Then they snapped, "Didn't we already discuss this'" It wasn't rude in any way for me to politely ask how much it would cost' They could have just answered my question, but instead got rude.

Well, eventually, we talked to the property manager about the situation, and she kindly let us out of our lease, even though she said there was no roach infestation (I beg to differ) and we paid our termination fee.

Where we live now, we have very few, in any, complaints. I would definitely recommend where we live now, but Royal Grande needs to take care of the roach situation, and get their staff better organized and work on communication skills (again, there were a few exceptions.) If you are living there, I would suggest taking your problems directly to the manager or to someone that you feel will handle your problems correctly, because once you go through some of the other staff, your problems will not be resolved.

User Responses
From: synynzqueen21	Date: 04/17/2007
WHERE DO YOU LIVE NOW??? IM LOOKING FOR AN APARTMENT AND HAVING TROUBLE FINDING A GOOD PLACE, PLEASE EMAIL ME AT SYNYNZQUEEN@TMAIL.COM ID GREATLY APPRECIATE IT THANK YOU!! OR ANYONE THAT KNOWS OF ANY GOOD APARTMENTS IN FL
From: ladyluv347	Date: 05/23/2007
Hi, I would also like to know where you live now. I will be relocating to Orlando soon and these reviews of various complexes are really scaring me. thanks. Ladyluv347@aol.com
From: EmiTXFLGurl06	Date: 06/19/2007
Where do you live because it's impossible to find a descent reasonable price with good compliments about them EmiTXFLGurl06@aol.com

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