Berkeley Heights has the potential to be one of the best intown rental communities, but some key problems make for an overall average rental experience.

The building is relatively new, which makes for great initial impressions. Amenities include metal doors, real tiles, granite countertops, steel appliances, french patio doors and spacious floor plans. Construction isn't as excellent as the staff brags since the building was obviously put together a little too fast. Small cracks are beginning to appear due to differential settlement. Building materials seem to be of average or slightly above average quality. Overall construction is average: Not the best but far from the worst. Minor annoyances like improperly installed crown molding, wall/door placement and placement of doors relative to other fixtures show a slight lack of proper planning and construction. Interior finishes appear to be very nice but again they aren't the best, particularly wall paint and carpeting...cheap indeed.

Safety is another mixed bag. The property appears safe and provides a great false sense of security...I never felt unsafe or in harm's way while living there. Unfortunately, the staff is quick to brag that Berkeley Heights is a gated community, but the gates are ALWAYS broken. The parking entrance used to have both a wrought iron gate and another wooden arm gate to prevent tailgating. After the first month of living at Berkeley Heights, the wooden arm was broken and never replaced...tailgating has ever since been an issue as well as illegal parking. The wrought iron gate itself has been broken multiple times for up to a month at a time, leaving the entire parking deck (and subsequently the entire building) accessible to anyone. Doors are supposed to be locked and residents should enter with a keycard, but most doors are always unlocked and most many keycard scanners are perpetually broken. Some have been unlocked for my entire stay. Despite these safety problems, break-ins were not a major issue. They happened, but not nearly as much some other nearby apartment communities.

Staff is yet another mixed bag. Most staff members are very friendly, professional, productive and will do everything within their power to make sure your experience is a positive one. A couple of them don't care about anything...it's just another job to them.

Berkeley Heights was a pretty good value. Relatively low rent, overall nice looking (new) apartments and location made it a pretty good deal. Beware of serious rent hikes: Lease renewal for me required a $175/month increase in rent, while the next new resident must pay $425 more per month than I did. Also, beware of being socked with heavy damage bills after move-out. Berkeley Heights charges quite exorbitant fees in damages, even for normal wear and tear.

Bottom Line: If you have the money to spend, I'd recommend it. There are far worse places to live. Just know what you're getting into.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 09/23/2007
First of all, I think you're giving this place much more credit than it deserves, but I'd mostly just like to reply to your comment about moving out fees. I totally agree with high fees for normal wear and tear, but would like to add that all the nice new looking interiors are actually really poor quality so expect the carpet and walls to look like crap after a couple months of living there. Also, after less than a month of living there, the crappy craftsmanship left me needing major work done in my unit (it took a couple times to get it fixed right, by the way). Now that I moved out, I got charged extra b/c the condition of the repair was not good enough for management. It was their workers who fixed it! Charge them, not me. Of course none of this came up during my final walk through. But they are still "looking into it" but I'm not really expecting to get the rest of my deposit back. Management is really good at not answering or returning phone calls.

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