**Introduction**:

I lived in Knollwood Gardens Apartments for 10 plus years before moving out during the Summer of 2007. I believe I know all a likely tenant needs to know and Ill do my best to share it here on the Apartments Rating website. For those in a hurry I will give a quick summary of what I believe is most important to know about in KG. For those not rushed please read the whole posting.

**Summary**:

KG physically is in pretty good shape and was built in the mid to late 1970s which fairly new for rental complex in NJ so the apartments are a little bigger than average for Garden State garden apartments. The management onsite and at the Hensyn inc management office, I wont say they are indifferent to the tenants needs, but I will say they can be unenthusiastic about them. Most tenants (2/3 Id say) stay only a year or two and I believe managements attitude is no need to kill ourselves with great service as most folks wont be around for very long anyway. Doing enough to get by seems their modis operandi On the other hand if a person wants to live in Middletown without buying their own place, KG is an affordable option (by NJ standards!). There are nicer complexes in Red Bank but the rents are higher. And more affordable deals with more attentative landlords, say a mother/daughter apartment or a duplex are around, but not so many they can be easily found on short notice. So if a person needs a place to rent in Middletown and is budget conscious and has time constraints on their search, KG might be a place to settle for. Taking all my experiences over the years into account I cant recommend leasing an apartment there, however I wont say dont ever rent there either. It all depends on the perspective renters circumstances and if KG meets their needs then go ahead and rent there and be ready to take the good with the bad. One last thing though to keep in mind before signing on the dotted line, most people living in Knollwood Gardens, it seems they would rather be living somewhere else!

**The Lease**:

Anyone a mind to break the lease before the 12 month term is up, then KG is absolutely not for them. Also forget month-to-month when the lease is up, for some reason this is categorically not allowed. But back to breaking the lease, per NJ law landlords don t have to let tenants out early, and KG/Hensyn Inc does not. If you want to leave early you must pay a one-month administration fee (this is relatively new and is now a rider to the lease) and all the money owed until the end of the lease if they don t rerent the vacated apartment. By law they must make a reasonable effort to find a new tenant and they generally they do make the effort and eventually find someone, but the former tenant is on the hook for any difference in rent until the term of the original lease expires, plus finding the new tenant can take management a month or two and during this time the vacating tenant is fully responsible for the per month rent as specified in the lease. So figure at least two or 3 (or even 4!) months rent to break the lease. And dont plan on just splitting as Ive seen done by some of my former neighbors. Hensyn Inc will get a default judgment in Renters Court in Freehold and (rumor has it) sic a collection agency on the tenant. But not just a collection agency to worry about I think the default judgment can adversely effect the ex-tenants credit rating and ability to rent elsewhere in the future even years down the road. Hensyn Inc believes in holding tenants to the letter of the contract as far as the length of the lease, and this is their legal right, so just know going in, they wont cut any breaks in this regard.

**The Apartments and Grounds**.

As I said, the KG Apartments are large and newer by NJ garden apartments standards. The buildings are in good shape and in no way deteriorating outside or inside. The appliances are modern and in pretty good shape. The laundry facilities are adequate. The grounds are pretty well landscaped and the grass is cut regularly. The biggest problem is some tenants lack knowledge of good civilized behavior and are litter bugs: cigarettes; coffee cups; candy wrappers fast-food wrappings; etc are often to be found discarded on lawns, walkways, stoops and parking lots. Once a week a maintenance worker is dispatched to police the grounds, but this is not enough attention that is needed. Also some tenants if the dumpster nearest their building is full, they just toss their plastic garbage bags in front of it instead of going to another dumpster (on weekends its not unusual to see this happen). To put it bluntly, there are slobs living in Knollwood Gardens!

The complex is well equipped with lighting of the walkways, apartment entrances/stoops and parking lots, but at any given time 10% to 20% of the lights are out. Requests to replace specific non working lights are sometimes dealt with in a timely fashion and sometimes not. As far as noise coming through the walls, floors, or ceiling from other apartments, reasonable noise isnt so bad but you will hear some noise even normal level conversation sometimes. Id say the sound proofing between apartments about average or slightly less than average (unless neighbors are abnormally loud more on this later).

**Maintenance**.

1. General.

Calls for repairs inside the apartments are sometimes taken care of right away, and sometimes not depending on the urgency of the problem and also the level of difficulty. Leaking pipes or things like broken stoves/water heaters such issues are usually taken care of pretty quickly. Also simple things like a shorted out overhead kitchen light or new knob for the shower, new filters for heating/AC units these things are also usually taken care of with-in a day or too. But if its not something real easy and not in managements opinion particularly urgent it can take a long time. Some of my own experiences as follows.

When a leaking roof (the roof was repaired quickly) caused unsightly water damage to the paint on two walls of my bedroom it was at least six weeks before the walls were repainted.

My apartment was on the second story and all such apartment have a light over the stairs that can be only reached by a full size (not step ) ladder. When this light burned out it took several calls over an eight week(!) period to get the light replaced.

The apartments are equipped with both door handle lock and dead-bolt which use the same key. The door handle lock for my apartment ceased to function and the then superintendent basically told me to not worry about it and just use the dead-bolt exclusively instead.

2. Squirrels.

Squirrels are the bane of Knollwood Gardens especially for those who live in second story apartments. For some reason they are constantly getting into and nesting in the attics and once they are up there their scurryings around and the like cause quite an annoying distraction. When the squirrels moved into my attic for the first time the maintenance workers made several half hearted attempts to get rid of them, finally after a couple of months and several calls the squirrels were removed with traps in the attic itself. But I had to keep calling and calling and sometimes management acted like I was bothering them over the issue. Let them try sleeping with the tree rats running back and forth across their ceilings! A few years later more squirrels returned and this time after a few weeks of renewed aggrevation by the little critters and a couple calls to management by me, they were again removed. It seems there are always squirrels in one attic or another at KG, and if its your building you must keep on management to remove them because the maintenance guys if given the chance will just throw up their hands and hope the tenants stop calling.

**Tenants**.

It is a diverse place KG, no doubt about it. Ill tell you what I know about some of the groups but I dont mean to cover all the types of people to be found living in KG. As I write this about 10%-20% of current tenants are In di ans working at AT&T on temporary work visas and their families. The company AT&T has contracted with to supply such workers I believe sets up KG for their housing as part of their employment package. Most of these folks are OK and fairly friendly (a few are arrogant though and they have their litter bugs too) the only negative Id say is sometime the odor of curry and dont expect to talk Mets'Yankees with them!

As I said before about 2/3 of the tenants live in KG for 1-2 years and the rest longer. Among the longer term residents are some single people who are best described by their employment status which is professional. These folks are generally friendly enough, quiet, well behaved and good neighbors to have. Also some run of the mill American suburban type nuclear families live in KG among the longer term tenants, what I said about the professionals as neighbors applies to them also.

Unfortunately among both short term and long term tenants there are some less affluent and even almost down-and-outers and not always so well behaved people. If one has an apartment next to them then noise (loud music and loud sometime screaming at each other voices) can be a problem. Occasionally yelling matches occur between cohabitants that lead to the intervention of the Middletown PD, but such extreme examples of bad/noisy behavior are rare.

Also common in KG are some divorced moms and their kids, sometimes these kids are OK but some of them can be bratty.

All and all chances are more likely a new tenant will have quiet neighbors, but if not then its an unenviable situation to be in.

**Security**.

KG is a pretty safe place. There are no thru-roadways so no one really passes through by car or on foot, generally the only folks there are residents or their visitors which I believe helps cut down on crime. Ive never known of any female residents to be attacked or accosted inside or outside of their apartments. Burglary isnt much of a problem but Ive heard of it happening every so often, but I myself or the various residents I knew over the years, I never knew of any break-ins of our apartments.

**Parking**.

There are plenty parking lots and space to park at KG. Parking is banned on the main roadway into the complex as it is considered a fire lane but some tenants park there anyway. Some tenants have inoperable junkers which I think the lease bans but if so the rule is not enforced. Also some tenants abandon unwanted automobiles when they move out and management waits about a year before having them towed away. So its not unusual to see some eye-sore vehicles in the parking lots just gather dirt and grime, but overall not such a big deal unless a person cant stand looking at junkers. One parking lot has a big industrial size dumpster for the maintenance crew and tenants to dispose of large items such as furniture and big appliances and maintenance trade detritus . Sometimes its a bit messy around this dumpster with abandoned articles laying about around it.

**Snow and icy weather**.

The Maintenance crew does a pretty good job snow-blowing and icing the walkways. The parking lots and roadways are usually plowed pretty well. One thing though after a particularly heavy snow-fall sometimes cars get plowed in especially one parked in the corners of the lots so best to have your own shovel for such occasions.

User Responses
From: brandnew1	Date: 11/25/2007
Thank you for your input it was helpful. I am signing the lease today and plan on only spending a year here. I will question a few things today. The price for the size apartment is cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for. So I will have to tolerate it for at least a year.
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/26/2007
You have the perfect attitude to live in KG.
From: Anonymous	Date: 03/22/2008
Attention! Not sure why all the blank lines have been removed, I added asterisks (*) to try and mark the different sections of my review.

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