I moved in Sept. 2004; rent for a 1BR is currently $695, plus I'm paying an extra $10/month for 1 cat. Very affordable, especially compared with several other places I looked at in PG County.

Water is the only utility covered; everything else is electric, including the rather old AC/heating units, and the kitchen stove. When I first moved in, I was advised that electric bills would be cheaper in the summer if I utilized the ceiling fans over the dining area and in the bedroom. This is all well and good, except for when the weather gets cold and you have to turn on the heat. The only AC/heat unit in the place is in the living room; when I moved in, this had a duct over it that was supposed to pump hot air into the bedroom. Except, of course, these heating units weren't designed to be set up like this, so at night (if you work during the day, as I imagine most 1BR residents do), you either pray that the duct actually catches some of the hot air, or you have to turn the heat up enough to actually warm the bedroom -- which overheats the living room when you stumble out in the morning, and leaves you with an $80 electric bill. After two months of this, they finally removed the cheap duct and installed a second unit (same model, just brand new instead of 20-odd years old) in the bedroom. Given my past two electric bills, though, I'm now paranoid about making sure I turn both units off when I'm at work unless it's bitter cold outside.

I haven't had the mold or roach problems reported by others. However, when I moved in I had some difficulty being able to open some of the windows. When I reported this, I'm not sure what, if anything, was done; but through the winter there have been noticable drafts in the bedroom. The bedroom, by the way, is on the outside corners of each apartment building, meaning two walls have windows in them, and so very little in the way of insulation. (Hence the aforementioned need to crank the heat up over the winter...)

The bathroom in my apartment is definitely showing it's age, but overall the older items don't give me any problems. The new lo-flo toilet, on the other hand, has a predictably weak flush, and every few weeks the chain in the tank gets tangled and has to be untangled if you don't want the toilet running for hours on end.

The kitchen is TINY. As in, there's barely room for one person who likes to cook to move around, yet alone two (as my SO and I like to do for health and financial reasons). Like everything else, the stove is electric. It's neither ancient nor brand-new; but it's a pain to work with simply because it's electric. The refrigerator is adequate and clean, probably no more than a few years old. The cabinets, however, are the biggest shortfall -- they're barely large enough for holding more than a week or two worth of groceries. I had to purchase a microwave cart because of the lack of counter space, given that one side of the sink is pretty well taken up by my dish drainer (no dishwasher -- no room for one!), and put some crates on the other side of the stove to store most of my other large items.

For a unit this size, I will say this: there are two large double closets with poles for hanging clothes, one in the bedroom and the other in the back hallway. Across from the second closet is a large linen closet; and on top of this is a coat closet (though it's not as impressive as the other three).

The parking lot is well-lit at night, but hardly adequate to the number of people trying to park in it. Not to mention, there are so many people parking on the street that coming out of the lot is a blind turn -- if there's traffic coming from either direction, unless you're looking before you get to the street, you don't know it's there until you're half-way out. There is also a school bus stop at the corner of my lot; not a problem in itself, but if you have to get out of the lot while the kids are waiting for the bus, they rarely have the sense to stop playing & running around, even if your car is running and you're trying to back out without hitting one of them.

While the lots are well-lit, I would have to cross at least one street and walk to a seperate part of the complex to reach the laundry rooms, which hardly seemed to have an adequate number of washers & dryers for the number of apartments that were supposed to share them. Given that I don't get home until 6pm, I personally would not feel safe making three trips that far after dark, and so have never used them. I feel safer, and more certain of reliable maintenance on the machines, doing my laundry at a laundromat down the street.

My biggest issue with the neighbors thus far is with the lock on the building door. In short, the lock is pretty regularly taped over with duct tape, or jammed with paper. In fact, the lock was broken in August when I first looked at the place; it was replaced just before I moved in, and by October the taping and paper jams had already started. The lock isn't broken again, yet, but it still gets taped, and sticks. Last time I mentioned it to the office, and they didn't do anything. It hardly seems worth it now.

My SO is currently living in another complex not too far from me, and compared to his place, mine isn't nearly as bad as far as insects and crime. But I'm definitely there by financial necessity rather than by choice.

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