Well, we got off to a bad start in this apartment. The week of severe flooding in Northern, N.J. we called PSE&G to have our power turned on. PSE&G never showed up when they promised and when we finally did get a serviceman to our apartment he said that the power was not on in our apartment because of faulty wiring. He said there was power coming from the street to the meter, but not from the meter to our apartment. He also suspected that someone may have been stealing power from us because of a rogue wire going from our meter to someone else's. So a debate broke out between PSE&G and the property manager over who was responsible for getting the power working in our apartment. Finally, on Friday night at midnight the property manager sent an electrician who turned our power on.

Still, the outlets in our apartment are all labeled ungrounded and it's to easy for us to trip a breaker. There's also not enough outlets in this place. My roomate has one outlet in his entire bedroom. In the master bedroom there is only 2.

I think the property manager is making an effort to clean the place up. The landscaping is new and well maintained. They just redid the laundry facilities. I only used the laundry machine once, but I never had a problem with sediment like one renter claimed on another website. The property manager fired half of the maintenance staff, because they weren't doing their jobs very well. I do have to say the maintenance staff that's left is very nice. The office staff seems to be responsive if you have a concern.

My biggest problem is the neighbors. I've met nice people in this community, they just don't happen to live on either side of me. The neighbors to my right have surround sound. They listen to there tv and I wind up with a thunder storm of disorted noise in my house. Somehow they are able to pay $1325 in rent and don't seem to have jobs. There home all day and they make their presence known. Just this morning they had a loud fight and people having loud, public fights is not unusual in this neighborhood.

The police were here just the other day because of a fight that happened with the neighbors on the left. I didn't hear that particular fight, but I've been the unfortunate witness to other loud disagreements. However, I pulled open my blind and two police cars were parked right outside my apartment. The police asked a couple questions and left. When I went outside the neighbors doorknob was pulled off the door and the air conditioner was hanging halfway out the window. It seems to be a large number of problematic people living on Branch Brook Dr for some reason. However, North Jersey (except for the really rich areas like Montclair, Glen Ridge and Nutley) is a noisy place, with tough people.

Really, that's my biggest problem with this place, is some of the people who live here. Management needs to do a better job of removing people who are noisy and inconsiderate. It's a really weird place. I've seen total professionals coming home at night from work, and there's a large blue collar population, but they also seem to have a small population of (and how do I put this politely') street-wise, trashy families living here. I've seen families coming out of apartments (mind you that you only have a choise of one bedroom or two bedroom) where they seem to have six or seven people living in a two bedroom apartment. Which is weird, because we were screened to meet certain income requirements, when we applied for our apartment.

Anyhow, the lady next door has a small child. Wether the child is her biological son or not, I do not know. I've been appaled with the lack of supervision on her part, as well as the fact that they seem to curse freely in front or at their child. In addition, as said before they fight, and the word ni**er gets thrown around a lot. To put it blatantly, these type of people looked like they just walked off the scene of a rap video. However, they are only a small percentage of the population, and I don't know if you can avoid living around such types in North Jersey.

Other then domestic disturbances, I have not had a problem with crime here. People often go to sleep with the windows open and I have not had any break ins. However, I've heard people say that at one time there was a problem with break ins at one of the apartment complexe areas. I can also go for a walk at night here and not be afraid.

The inside of the apartment is done up really nice, however the walls are paper thin. I've never had a problem with the plumbing (knock on wood) so far. The water pressure in the shower is poor, but we changed that by putting on a new shower head we had brought from our last apartment. The toilet bowel could have a little more suction to flush. As far as bugs go, I've seen maybe three. And I have dry cat food sitting out on the floor for my two cats.

The parking situation is a little hairy sometimes. However, my boyfriend and I have always been able to find a space in the lot somewhere. One side note though, if you have more then two drivers living in the same household, they will only give out two parking stickers. My roomate though, has commented that they don't have enough parking spaces for everyone. And I have seen out of state license plates parked in the residents parking lot. I think they could do a better job of checking the parking lots and ticketing those who don't belong there.

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/14/2007
This was a very helpful and intelligent review, until I read that you see out of state license plates in the lot. It is absolutely possible and probably the case that there are people renting an apartment that have vehicles registered in another state. They could be students or professionals working in the area temporarily. The whole concept of renting and apartment is quite often a temporary thing. That is a very ignorant comment.

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