If you were to take a look at Corcoran Management's website for this property, you would be presented with a picture of luxury - landscaped grounds, excellent sports facilities and modern apartments in a beautiful secure community. While this is true on paper, the reality is slowly diverging from this ideal. The head office obviously looks at this idealistic view of the property when setting rents and relies on customers to do the same when signing their lease. However the property is becoming less and less worthy of the rent with each passing month and certainly with each annual rent increase (of about $80-$100 per month).

Corcoran claims that these properties were "renovated" in 2000 - only the reception area in each building was renovated. They did not renovate the apartments themselves.

The Grounds / Shared facilities :
Faxon Commons has won awards for the grounds that it meticulously keeps up. However to acheive this status, they start work early. 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday for example with the leaf blowers and lawnmowers. They also have their work cut out to keep up the plants and bushes that are trampled and littered by the residents who couldn't care less about how their surroundings look. Perhaps their funniest decision was to erect 3 Corcoran Management flags in the driveway to the complex - they lasted all of 24 hours before one was broken and two more were stolen. Rain or shine, their water sprinklers go off starting around 4 a.m. as well.

The tennis courts are almost impossible to get on to. There is a group of people (some from the building closest to the tennis courts, some who commute from other areas of town) who work on a rotation system so that they can remain on the court from 8am until 10pm or whenever the floodlights go out. When they are not in use by these enthusiasts, they are used as a daycare facility for children on tricycles whose parents do nothing to stop them running down the nets. When the management recently told everybody not to do this, they moved instead to the parking lots where the children cycle obliviously past your reversing car.

Getting your car scraped by a passing bicycle is the most likely event that you will experience in the parking lot, however being blocked in by other residents or having your car vandalised and even towed is not at all uncommon. There is supposed to be a night security guard - not that you would know it.

The gym is a nice idea, but they have put a number of workout machines in a poorly ventilated room and assume that people will clean the machines after each usage. The room smells musty at best, has piles of dust in the corners and the machines are usually dripping with old sweat. When I saw that this was the attitude they took with the gym, I didn't dare to swim in the pool (in case I got a mouthful of water).

The buildings / hallways :
Corcoran recently put a lot of money into renovating the shared areas in each building. Unfortunately they did not put enough money into planning and design for the follow few simple reason : They did not put any ventilation in the hallways or elevators. As a result the hallways smell musty, the elevator is like a sauna (and smells like one too) and if you live on a floor where residents do not clean their house after each meal, you get to enjoy the lingering smells of their kitchen each day.

The laundry facilities in the buildings are a no go. They are more expensive than the local laundromats and nowhere near as reliable. The washing machines are never cleaned - so unless you can navigate your clothes in and out without touching the sides, you will end up with dirtier clothes than when you put them in. The driers work 50% of the time. When they don't work, you have wet clothes, which most people leave in their closed apartments to dry (see musty smell above).

The apartments themselves :
These are really whatever you make of them. They have a decent amount of space - if you have new appliances in them you can't complain and the maintenence is pretty good in general.
The staff / management :
The "managed property" is a euphemism for "We have sales representatives in our office whose prime objective is to get the empty apartments rented". They have posted hours of 9 to 6 - but if you return home from work after 5:45 you will often be out of luck - the best bet for picking up packages or seeing someone in charge is to take the day off work. The number of people they have working on a given day (and hence the additional burden their wages put on your monthly rent check) is not justified by the work that gets done. I have yet to see anyone from the management office enforcing any of the rules that are clearly outlined in the 15+ page lease.

Community / Neighbors :
The lack of action by management leads nicely into the actions of fellow Faxon Commoners and the reasons why you might want management to take action (just occasionally).

The majority of the people who live in Faxon Commons are peacable, friendly and respectful. There are a lot of children and a diverse spectrum of cultures represented here and this creates a positive community spirit. However there are enough people who are disrespectful of their neighbors that this community spirit and community safety is often lost.

It is not uncommon for items such as newspapers and packages to go missing from hallways. While the security doors are hardly *secure* - you have to wonder whether the people who take these items broke in or whether they pay their monthly rent checks to the same management office. Despite suggestions by management that adverts should be placed only in the laundromat, the hallway is reminiscent of a college notice board with papers taped to the woodwork. Frequently, the sales circulars are emptied all over the hallway (as if it were a contest to reach the circular at the bottom of the tub) and in the absence of waste bins in the lobby, people deposit their waste - McDonalds boxes, unwanted junk mail on the table (which is screwed into the floor to stop it walking). They can't screw the flowers into the lobby, so any flowers are normally gone within 24 hours of arrival. And if you were hoping to get in a good nights sleep before the lawnmowers wake you up bright and early, you are often disturbed late at night by residents showing off the engine in their car on the road that circumnavigates the tennis courts. Add to this the things you expect to see such as shopping carts, discarded sofas by exiting rentors and you have a pretty good picture of how a potentially beautiful complex can be turned into a very overrated one.

If Corcoran Management could return it to its former glory, then I'm sure that this would be a place to be proud of living. But at the rate it is deteriorating, it will soon feel like Presidential Estates across the street! (See the opinions of that property and you'll understand why this comment fits).

One last thing - in the winter time, it really does not matter what you set your thermostat to, really, because the heat is not regulated too well. (It's actually hotter indoors in the winter than it is hot outdoors in the summer most of the time). But, with Corcoran paying for the heat - it's no wonder why they raise their rent so high with each lease renewal.

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