Chestnut Hill village has been a disappointment from the start. While the apartment is roomy and comfortable and the leasing staff is friendly, this is a case where the surface appearances look fine, but below the surface is a poorly-run, and potentially uncaring operation. The amount of mice on the property is overwhelming, the management lacks communication skills, amenities that I pay for do not work as advertised, maintenance staff is careless, and you never again deal with the leasing staff - rather you deal with a separate management staff, who are nowhere as easy to work with or as congenial as the leasing staff.

The most distressing thing about CHV is the mice. We have caught 4 mice and
found a 5th lying dead in the living room. The response from management about
the mice was unsatisfactory - Maintenance and management initially told us to
wait 5 days before an exterminator could come and then the exterminator's
intervention was inadequate (laying down 2 glue pads). The management told us
that the number of mice throughout the property was a "big problem". After several weeks of complaining, management mentioned, as an aside, that they had hired a second exterminating company (management didn't inform me of this until I complained several times). The 2nd exterminator was more responsive than the first, but we still had mice parading through our apartment at various times after that. Judging from my experience and the other reviews, you should expect to have mice in your apartment if you rent here.

We are paying for amenities that we are not able to use: for example, after our kitchen sink backed up twice, maintenance told us that our garbage disposal was "not powerful enough for eggshells or lettuce" and that we shouldn't use it at all. Our elevator has been out of service for more than the scheduled 8 weeks and no updated schedule has been provided (generally this is not a problem because it is only 3 floors, but when we buy a lot of groceries, it is frustrating to bring them up the stairs - and I'm paying for a building with an elevator). While maintenance staff is friendly, they appear careless - on 2 occasions when maintenance has fixed things they have broken other things. Dryers on site occasionally blow only cold air and do not dry clothes - management's response was to tell us that the laundry equipment was contracted out and if we wanted the equipment to be worked on, we should contact the contracting company (management would not contact them on behalf of their tenants).

Finally, the company has a policy of charging $300/month if you ever need to go
to a month to month lease - I am moving out of state a few months after my
current lease ends. In trying to work out the best lease option with management for these extra 2 months, they said that I can either sign a year-long lease and break it, paying a large fee to break the lease, or I can pay a higher monthly rent and an additional $300 per month ("month-to-month fee"). They told me it was company policy and would not consider other lease options.

It has been a frustrating year and if I was staying in the Philadelphia area, I
would find a new apartment. uWDgQKY3Vkv8FKIsB8Ax

User Responses
From: Anonymous	Date: 06/13/2007
You're right. And on top of all the management problems, I am also very, very sick of the low-life fraction of the renter population who drags this complex down for the quiet, hardworking majority. This place is already torpedoed by bad management, and then these idiots make it worse. Why oh why did anyone ever think that using subwoofers, both in buildings and in cars, to vibrate everything within a half-mile radius makes them cool? Oh, you're so admirable for ruining everyone else's quality of life, you loser. We're so impressed by all the noise you make. Maybe instead you should stick to just blaring your car horn repeatedly after bedtime on an almost-nightly basis, or letting your wailing-siren car alarm go off on false alarms 5 times a week, day or night. Or you could just spend 2-3 hours per day loitering around the building entrances, smoking $4 packs of cigarettes that you can't really afford to be wasting your money on, blocking the doors open to defeat their intentional self-closing, self-locking hardware, because, hey, why NOT let a mugger, thief, or rapist into the building? Then after he attacks YOU, you can whine that it's not your own fault for propping the doors open and breaking the locks. Thanks for making the stairwells stink like a dirty ashtray! Don't forget to drop pieces of food on the carpet to further encourage the mice population explosion. You're so smart and classy! Maybe you can call up the clown-college students who had to be kicked out of here, and have a beer-swilling party that's too loud! There's no sense in my calling the cops about it in this town, when the cops are too busy rushing from murder scene to murder scene each day. It's laughable for them to spend time on noise and nuisance calls. Other low-lifes keep them busy with more serious crimes! You could just CHOOSE to act right, instead of needing other adults to parent you, but that plan wouldn't cost any money to implement, so I guess you'll continue being an idiot and I'll just move to get away from you.
From: Anonymous	Date: 07/19/2007
Every time you get a dead mouse... march it over to the managements office and drop it off for them... on THEIR floor..... see how they like it.... thats what im about to do... after I caught my 6th one 2 days! Hate this place.. BIG MISTAKE.... cant waiiiiiiit to move out!

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