I have lived here for about 3 years and can say that Archstone is a step up from Oakwood when it comes to professionalism and maintenance etc. But that doesn't say too much. When we first moved in there were stains all over the carpet and we were told they would be steam cleaned... ofcourse they were not, so we had them come out and do it after we had moved in but they managed not to clean a single stain, so we steam cleaned it ourselves from one we rented from giant and it worked wonders.
Everything in the apt. is cheap, the sides of our kitchen cabinets have FAKE wallpaper taped to them with tape you use to wrap a gift.
We are on the 1st floor so when there is a leak problem anywhere above us we take the brunt of it. There was a large woman living above us for a few months who loved taking baths and it got to the point where the ceiling above our shower was cracking and the paint falling off from it leaking. They fixed her leak but not our ceiling.
There have been several other leaks that have occured in other apts. that have shown up soaking up through our carpet in random spots around our carpet.
At one point they thought it was our washer unit so they replaced that ( it had to of been from the 80's ) so at least we got a new washer, but it turned out not to be the source of the leak.
At one point last winter a bird made it through an airway/pipe ' and into our dryer(underneath section). We couldn't get it out ourselves so we called maintenance to help and they sent a guy who couldn't really speak any english nor could he really even fit into our laundry room. He wouldn't believe us at first that there was a bird in there so he decided to turn the dryer on despite our protests and there was a loud noise of the bird being jostled around violently, to its death, and then he believed us, and got the bird out... a bit too late.
In the winter you can get about 4-5 minutes of warm water for your shower, so thats fun. We keep the fan on in our bathroom almost all of the time but it still gets moldy/mildew.
I will sum up by saying that I believe the neighborhood is pretty safe, I have never had a single issue, well my boyfriend's car window was broken by a rock in the parking lot, but we don't know who did it etc.
The square footage of the apt is pretty good for the price. The location is great, and the shuttle to the metro is convenient.
Just have low expectations and decorate your apt. so you cant see all of the holes cheaply patched up and you'll be fine.

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