This is going to be a bit long-winded, but I want to get it all in one place. Apartment Ratings was very helpful in me finding my apartment, so I want to return the favor :)

My then girlfriend, now fiance and I moved into Princeton Hill together as our first apartment out of college. We were really just looking for a basic, generally safe, generally comfortable place to live. We didn't care about too many amenities, just location (for work). Given those parameters, I'd recommend Princeton Hill.

LOCATION

First off, it's not really Princeton. I was there for 5 years, I'm actually not sure what town it technically is, it just uses Princeton's giant post office and has a Princeton zip code. I "think" it's Rocky Hill or Montgomery, but I can't be sure.

It's a couple of blocks off of 206, about 5-10 min drive to the center of Princeton, about 15 mins or so south to route 1 (then from rt 1, 5-10 mins south to rt 95 and 295, about 30-40 mins north to the turnpike/parkway). About 30 mins north, you'll hit rt 202, 287, and 78.

In the immediate area (within a 5-minute drive), there's the best Chinese restaurant I've eaten at outside of Chinatown (Ya-Ya Noodles), a VERY trustworthy mechanic (STS, 1/2 mile away), a small movie theater (mostly artsy stuff), a decent Shoprite, and other little basics like that (shopping center about 2 miles away).

SECURITY

There's no security in place, there's no gates, all apartments have private entrances (so there's no locked door just to get to your front door). There's no lock on the laundry rooms, there's no lock on the tennis court (which is really a basketball court at this point), when it is open, they're pretty strict on checking pool passes.

That said, it's generally a nice area, I never really felt the need for security. Well, other than the laundry room, but I'll get into that in a bit.

POOL

It seemed to not be open very often (it opened pretty far into the Spring, maybe early Summer, then was closed either by the end of the Summer or early Fall), but whenever it was, it was overrun by little screaming kids.

In 5 years, I only attempted to use the pool area once (when there were not little kids screaming), and within 10 mins, some showed up so I gave up and left.

So if you don't like screaming kids, just pretend you don't get a pool.

TENNIS COURT

The tennis court is basically converted into a makeshift basketball court (one hoop strung up to the fence, no lines). The poles to hold a net are there, but no net. There's sometimes a couple of people playing basketball, sometimes people kicking around a soccer ball, I never used it.

ON-SITE LAUNDRY

I'm going off of memory here (and am using the laundry room nearest to our apartment as a guide), but I believe there are 6 units per building, and I think 5-6 buildings share 1 laundry room, which has 2 washers, 2 dryers (as of the time we left, I think it was $1.75/load in each). So that's about 15-16 units per washer/dryer combo. As you can probably imagine, most of the time that you'd want to do laundry, it's being used.

The room itself is pretty dingy, there's usually balls of lint thrown around and things like that, there's pipes running across the ceiling about 6.5 feet from the floor (I'm 6'2"and I know they were very close to my head)

Also, the laundry room does not have a lock on it which stays locked all the time, so anyone can get in there. Combine that with a lack of windows and many times, people flip the lights off when they leave, and after dark, it was a scary place to go. My fiance refused to go in there.

I mention a lock which stays locked all the time because there is a padlock on the door which management locks sometimes in the winter with a sign saying it's too cold and the machines can't be used for fear of the pipes freezing. Now I'm not an expert, but I thought if you fear for pipes freezing, the correct thing to do is make sure water is flowing through them more often, not less often' I dunno, but they've been closed for days at a time (maybe weeks, I stopped keeping track). It used to be locked at night as well (and as far as I know, nothing changed on that policy), but it seems like it just isn't done anymore.

And finally, the washers seemed to do a number on my clothes (tore up a few shirts) when I did use them.

So with all that said, we pretty quickly resorted to going to a laundromat about 15 mins away (the closest one I found, right up rt 206 into Hillsborough). They have economy-sized washers which do 2 bags of clothing in one load. It's in a shopping center with a good Shoprite, a very good pizza place, Philly Pretzel Factory, Starbucks, and right across the street from a very nice little brunch place. So we would make a day of it, go throw laundry in, grab a bite to eat, move stuff into the dryers, go food shopping, scoop it all up, and go home.

So don't really factor on-site laundry into living here. If you do get a chance to use one here and there, call it a bonus.

GROUNDSKEEPING

Not much to speak of either way. Shrubs/plants/trees around routinely grow out to the point where they're blocking sidewalks, sidewalks themselves aren't extremely well-done, grassy areas are uneven, and they replaced the siding on the buildings around us.....but did them 2-3 different slightly colors so it looks very strange.

Again, just don't count on a pretty place to live.

MANAGEMENT

I see some reviewers with problems, I honestly didn't see it. Generally, if you communicate with management well, they seem to be quite reasonable.

MAINTENANCE

The biggest problem is that most of the people they have to do maintenance are not very good. The one guy, John, is the lone bright spot. He's good, he's fast, the problem is, he's the only one I can say that about in the whole complex. One guy can only do so much.

As you'll see when I talk about the place itself, the common theme is that we had some things we needed fixed along the way, called to have it fixed multiple times (sometimes they showed up to fix, sometimes they promised they would and just never did), and after a few tries, we just gave up and lived with it or fixed it ourselves.

As mentioned in other reviews, the maintenance people WILL come in without warning/approval and aren't exactly subtle about it. Pretty much every time they showed up, they create a mess wherever they worked, leave tools behind, and even after being told about it, never come back to pick them up.





GET TO THE APARTMENT ITSELF ALREADY!!!!

The apartments themselves are quite large. They're just not in good condition. Judging by my former apartment, the paint job was poorly done, the floor was laminated very poorly (globs of laminate were around a few places), appliances/cabinets were VERY old and when given new ones, seemed to be bottom-of-the-barrel.

So there are many things which either he does not do or he starts and other guys finish, poorly.

I only had heat outages a couple of times for short times, but it was apparently a big problem since every time it was cold out and I called for any kind of service, I was told there would be a delay since the staff was working to restore heat to one place or another.

If you're on the 2nd floor, expect the place to ALWAYS be about 10-15 degrees hotter than it is outside. So if it's over 70 outside, expect to need to use the AC.

Noise is really pot luck, the walls/floors are very thin, so if you're lucky and have quiet neighbors, it's fine. If there's noise, you'll hear it. One neighbor below us snored, and I could hear it.

Want more details' I'll give ya all the rooms:

LIVING/DINING ROOM

Big, open area, one slot for an AC unit. They provided us an AC unit, it technically worked in the sense that it blew out cold air, but not even close to enough to cool off that size of a room. We resorted to putting a very large fan on a chair right in front of that AC unit pointing upwards and that helped circulate some cold air, but generally, if if's warmer than about 80-85 out, there is absolutely nothing you can do to cool those main rooms. During those hot days, we hid in the bedrooms.

Some chipped paint, we called a few times when we first moved in to have it fixed, they just painted over it (instead of scraping the chipping stuff off first), so it just chipped again quickly.

KITCHEN

Old appliances, we quickly learned that the oven was VERY uneven (both in heating temp and physically not level), cabinets were very old and falling apart, and someone wrote "For a good time, call..." on the wall, then it was painted/laminated over, so it was stuck there for good.

There was also no AC in the kitchen, so when it was very warm out, it was basically impossible to cook anything at all.

MASTER BEDROOM

Huge bedroom, large closets. One of our closets had a panel that wasn't quite put in place, so there was basically a hole into the attic. If you look at the right angle, you could see outside completely.

There was an EXTREMELY old AC unit they provided. It cooled the room but was extremely loud when it kicked on so sleeping with it took a lot of work. Also, it rattled loudly, to the point where we had to buy 5 bricks to put on the unit to keep it from shaking so loudly that it was impossible to sleep or hear anything through.

SECOND BEDROOM

Small bedroom, there was something strange about waterflow when it rained, the water dripped from the roof loudly onto the metal wall slot for an AC unit, which made sleeping through a rain-storm tough.

There is a 1/2 bath in there, which was pretty useless. The toilet was like playing roulette. You know the hose in the tank where the clean water flows in from' It's supposed to be clipped in so the water goes down and not up or out. That clip was missing and replaced with the finger to a rubber glove (yes, we're sure it was that). So every now and then, it came loose when you flushed, which sent clean water spraying out the sides of the tank.

The sink in that bathroom was EXTREMELY tough to turn on to the point where it was basically useless.

There was a sink right outside of the bathroom as well, which ran very slowly.

We reported all 3 numerous times. We were told every time that it would all be fixed (and that the extra sink would be removed). Nothing was ever done.

FULL BATHROOM

The shower had what I called the rubber-band effect. You get the shower to 1 temperature, then suddenly, it will shoot either very cold or hot for a couple of seconds (I learned to dodge out of the way when it started to happen). If it went hot, then after a few seconds, it would then go very cold, then kind of hot, then kind of cold, then back to normal again. All told, maybe 5-10 seconds, but would happen 2-3 times per normal shower. I assume it would happen when neighbors would turn on the water.

The toilet was a manual. You had to hold down the handle until it was finished flushing or it wouldn't flush. Then after it was done, you had to pull the handle back up or it would never stop running.

The sink would not put out more than a very small trickle of cold water. If you wanted any amount of water pressure, it was only extra-hot water.

Towards the end of living there, there was a problem where the drain from our bathtub was leaking into the apartment below (which is pretty gross if you think about it). They decided there was enough wrong with the place to replace the whole bathroom.

The tub was replaced with a very low tub which was basically impossible to use to take a bath, the showerhead replaced with a very low-flow shower head (was promised to be changed, never was). The toilet replaced with a low-flow toilet which worked well. The sink-top was kept the same (and was chipped when taking it out/putting it back) and the slow cold water issue was still there.

The bathroom was mostly finished, but it was a mess, some tools left behind, and some tiling still needed to be done, and we were told that since it was in working order now, they needed to get another job finished and would be back next week.

I called next week, they said it would be 2 weeks from there.

3 weeks later, they never came back, never called, never gave a written letter. At that point, I knew we were moving out very soon, so we just never bothered. They never said another word about it (I think it was another 3-5 weeks after that before we moved out).

SECURITY DEPOSIT

After all was said and done, we got our security deposit back, bonus! :)


CONCLUSION

Really, this may all sound bad, but if it's your first place and/or you know what to expect, it does the job. Just be ready for what you're getting into.

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