We are a working couple who have lived at Villa Serena for over nine months now. Recently, we began getting notices to renew our lease after the year is up, so we talked to Management about our rate. They were going to be nice enough to offer us our initial rate if we selected an eight month to a year lease. However, that is not going to be enough to keep us here.

During the course of our stay, we became good friends with two other tenants that live on the same floor in our building. Their apartments had received new carpet, faux marble texturing on their countertops, and colored paint on their walls as upgrades prior to their move-ins only two months following our move-in. For their upgraded apartments, they pay over $100 less per month than we signed our lease for. So we thought it was fair to ask Management to offer us the same, or at least the current rate for the 2-bedroom, $950. They declined. We are now in the process of searching for other apartments, because there are plenty of places to go to save money in the short term while trying to buy a house at the opportune time.

Other than Management's refusal to lower our rent, our other complaints about Villa Serena are again, their fees. Even before the rent-reduction-refusal, the first incidence that infuriated us took place after the complex Manager verbally told us on our golf cart unit-tour in May 2008 that pet rent was only $20 per month with no deposit. Ridiculously, we believed her and happily marched into the office three months later to pay our pet rent once we got our dog. "Oh no, it's in your contract that the Pet Deposit is $400 and Pet Rent is $25 per month." Damn, should have read the excessively long contract with tiny writing word-for-word. Please learn from our mistake and don't make the same one! IF YOU HAVE A PET, DON'T TELL THE MANAGEMENT ;)

Overall, Villa Serena is a nice place to call home. The grounds are beautiful. One of the main reasons we DID move to Villa Serena is because of all the green grass and the trees. On the other hand, that could be bad for allergy sufferers :-/ The grounds are cared for every week, and most of the time, tenants are considerate enough to pick up after their pets. During the winter, the grass in our courtyard was over-watered and grew soggy and died in patches, but now that it's warming up, the grass is looking nice again. We haven't used the pool except once, because it's fairly small. When used, it was at night, the lights worked, the pool was clean and the water was warm. We haven't had any issues with receiving our mail. Also, the community is safe as far as we know; I only saw a police unit on property once in the last nine months. Our vehicles and property have been safe and we don't feel threatened by anyone we've seen in the community.

Our apartment itself was in good condition and was thoroughly cleaned prior to us moving in. We carefully made a thorough inspection and jotted notes on our move-in checklist of everything that was sloppy or wrong, and necessary repairs were made quickly. There are minor blemishes in the drywall in most rooms, and the caulking along the tubs was messy; these are just things I could imagine being universal among all units. However, all doors were in place and all appliances were clean and efficiently operating. The walls are sufficiently insultated, as we don't hear our neighbors to the side or behind us. We do sometimes hear the people talking downstairs though. Voices can also easily be heard outside through the windows and sliding glass door, or through the large crack along the bottom of the entry door. By the way, bugs get into the apartment that way. During the summer, tons of bugs are everywhere, but they can also crawl right into your apartment under the 1" crack beneath the door. Hopefully you keep a clean house and they won't have anything to snack on while visiting :)

Lastly, from our experience, the Maintenance staff is OUTSTANDING! Kevin and Jerry are the nicest guys, and they make you feel comfortable with them being in your home. We have filed maintenance requests every time something needed to be fixed, and each time, our requests were responded to promptly. Even when things failed after being fixed, like the entry door handle sticking, they returned promptly to replace it until it worked smoothly. Honestly, we will miss Kevin and Jerry when we move to another community!

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