My boyfriend and I are young professionals and we have lived at Gables for about a year and a half. We live in a 3rd floor 2 br loft. While there have been some problems we are both very satisfied with our apartment.

We had looked at a lot of apartments in the Gaithersburg area in our search and didn't look at Gables until the end since it was further away. Even though the rent seems high it's comparable to most of the nicer apartment complexes in the area and it's a lot more spacious. After looking at all the other complexes, once we saw Gables we were sold immediately.

The apartment is big and bright. The kitchen is big, open and has a nice color scheme and wood floor. It also has a gas stove which is great but hard to clean. The carpet is light colored, soft, and clean. The bathrooms are pretty big, new and clean though the high ceilings (which are great in the rest of the apt) can make it a little cold. The closets are again, big. The apartment comes with a washer and dryer which are full size, stacked and Energy Star approved which I like a lot. One poor thing about the apartment set up is that in our unit the AC exhaust blows directly onto the balcony. So if you have your AC on inside you don't want to sit on your balcony outside. Noise from other apartments is only audible if you are in the room right near the wall to the other apartment. While we can hear things from outside, there hasn't been anything that reduces our quality of life. We don't know any of our neighbors but they've never bothered us.

The 24 hour fitness center is wonderful. Our previous apartment complex only had a fitness center open during business hours which is useless if you work. The center has big windows and each piece of cardio equipment has its own cable tv. 1 of the two treadmills has been out of service 2-3 times since we've been here and management does take weeks to fix them. I have never used the pool. As residents of Gables you get Montgomery Village passes and so you can use the nearby tennis courts etc. It's also great to be so close to the Giant, dry cleaners, CVS, beer/wine store, etc.

The security doors are so-so. They are sometimes open but usually even if they aren't shut completely, they are shut enough that you need your key fob to get in. I've never felt unsafe in my apartment. I've never had a problem with parking. There is always plenty near my building but even if I had to park on the other side of the complex, it's a pretty small complex so it wouldn't bother me. There are issues with the trash/recycling area (mostly due to irresponsible residents I believe) but the rest of the complex is clean. As for dog poo, again some irresponsible residents don't pick up after their dogs (only in this one area as I've noticed) but for the most part there isn't a rampant dog poo problem.

As much as I love our apartment, we have had some problems. When we moved in one of our toilets was hooked up incorrectly so maintenance had to come fix it. One of the times I ordered a package and the tracking info said it was left at my door, it was no longer there when I got home. However, we've had stuff delivered many other times that made it no problem. One of our bathroom doors came off its hinges (we had put hooks over it for towels, etc - but most doors should stand up to that). We have had issues with the heating and cooling not working, but it was usually not so bad that we called it an emergency. Maintenance did come to fix them but it took a few trips usually. When our heaters were broken and it was cold, maintenance came the next day. When they couldn't fix the problem immediately they left us nice, big space heaters for the time being. We didn't need them but it was nice to have them. The most annoying issue has been the hot water. The water doesn't get nearly as hot as it got in my previous apartments. We've went down to explain the problem and maintenance has come to fix it by just turning up the water heater temperature setting. That hasn't fixed it and even after explaining that it hasn't been fixed. It gets hot enough to shower comfortably so it's not a big enough issue for us to fuss about, but we may try and talk to them again.

As far as management I've only really dealt with Kimberly. She was the one who leased our apartment to us and she's always been great. She also knows us well enough to know which apartment we're coming from if we need to pick up a package or anything. She has always been professional and kind to us. One annoying thing about the management is that if they are going to come into our apts for routine maintenance or whatnot, or if something will be closed, they usually only give us a day's notice. I can't say it's affected our lives much but a little more notice would be nice.

There have been a few bugs but nothing more than a normal apartment or home. I'm terrified of bugs and there haven't been enough to turn me off on the apartment.

Though there are problems, none of them are bad enough to outweigh the great things about Gables. No place is perfect but Gables was definitely the best we saw in the area. I wrote this review because I am moving out of the DC area and have used this site to help my apartment search in my new town. I wanted to get an idea of how to interpret the reviews so I read the reviews on Gables to compare to my experience. It looks like I should be taking most of them with a grain of salt since Gables has so many negative reviews yet I've enjoyed living here a lot.

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