First, a bit about myself...
I have been renting most of my life.

I was never late with my payments or broke a lease. I lived in Escalon for the full duration of my lease, was never late with my payments or violated the lease agreement in any other way.

I paid about $900 a month for 2 bdr/2 bth apartment plus a garage. That price reflected the "preferred employer" (PED) and some other discounts.
So, above are my credentials.

Here is my opinion about Escalon - living there was one of my worst experiences ever.

I will try to be as objective in this review as possible, but some of my experiences were of course subjective.

There was one major drawback that made living at Escalon intolerable - poor insulation and thin walls.

Combined with disrespectful, noisy neighbors that made living there simply unbearable.

I have moved to a different apartment complex now and even though I now pay only somewhat more compared to what I paid at Escalon - the difference is huge. The comparison, of course, is not in Escalon's favor.

There was no insulation/soundproofing in my building at all. Actually, if anything, I think noise and vibration were only amplified, making it easier for the noise to propagate throughout the building structure. Sometimes it felt like living inside a giant drum.

I was unlucky with immediate neighbors. I lived on the 3rd, - top floor. There was a black woman with three little kids (3 to 5 years old approximately) constantly present in the apartment below. The very next day after my move in she had a huge fight with her boyfriend ( or whatever the relationship was that black male had to her) that went through the classic scenario - throwing his things out from the balcony; he, in his turn, locked her out of the apartment, then the police was called, etc., etc... The whole 9 yards...
The rest of my time there, their behavior was not much different.

My initial multiple complaints took no effect. As it turned out later an office assistant had been sending the lease violation notices based on my complaints to a wrong apartment! Wasn't that great'! I imagine how innocent people felt getting those notices... In any case, it did them no harm. It looks like it is impossible to be evicted from Escalon.(Which may be an advantage for people of a certain sort). After that mistake was cleared - the lease violation notices were routed to the right apartment - with no effect whatsoever.

My neighbor from one side was apparently fond of throwing wild parties until early hours of the morning. That happened on several occasions. A couple from the other side had their bed very close to my bedroom's wall - with all the consequences...

Soundproofing was so bad - you could hear every word people were saying in adjacent apartments without straining your ears. My apartment was constantly shaking because of the kids running around in the apartment below. Those kids were 5 years old at most, weighing what, - 50 pounds each at best'
Gives you an idea about the quality of the construction.
Noise was also coming from 620 as well as from the sides and the back of the apartment complex where there is a lot of construction going on now. There were also a lot of @#$%! with powerful sound systems in their cheap cars. When a @#$%! like that drives around the complex at midnight you can feel and hear everything in your apartment rattling.
So, if you still not sure at this point whether you want to rent at Escalon, read on... I will try to summarize the rest of my experiences:

OFFICE STAFF
Usually did not even try to conceal that they could not care less about you or your problems. Worse than pretty much anywhere else I lived. By the end of my lease office staff was completely changed. Do not know if the change was for the better of for the worse. After my initial experiences with them I tried to limit my communications with the leasing office to the minimum.

SECURITY
From what I gathered the police knows its way to Escalon very well. Security is a joke. Escalon is supposed to have a courtesy security officer on site. Tried to call that number couple of times when my neighbors really got to me - both times was connected to a VM saying: " we will call you back in 24 hours".Left them a message - never was called back.

MAINTENANCE
Average at best. Some small problems took as many as 5 visits to fix.

DEPOSIT
What they don't mention at the lease signing - is that they will automatically deduct for the carpet steam cleaning out of your deposit when you return your keys. They definitely got this apartment back from me way cleaner after I moved out than I had gotten it when I moved in. It has been 5 months since I moved out of my apartment at Escalon, still have not received what little was left of my deposit (after all of their deductions) back. Placed at least 5 calls to the office, and everytime I was promised to be called back, and I NEVER was.

PARKING
Do not know myself, I rented a garage - but from what other tenants said parking was a nightmare. It probably was, because way too often I would find somebody's car blocking the door of my garage. My garage proved to be a constant source of problems. At first, for more than a month they could not find me a remote. So the garage was pretty much opened, since everybody could open the door manually from the outside. Then, there was a problem of remote not working. As it turned out the batteries needed to be changed and the receiving antennae lengthened. It took two months to sort that one out. Then there was a problem of someone else's remote working with my garage's door. On several occasions I found my garage door wide opened, even though I was absolutely sure to close it before I had left. At one point the garage stayed opened about 6 weeks while I was abroad. They had to reprogram the remote.
Not sure what I was paying for at all with this garage. Could have just rented a covered parking instead of a garage. Would have been the same thing, since for the most part anybody could have entered my garage anyway.

NEIGHBORS
Already wrote about my immediate neighbors. Overall, my impression was that there are too many people of lower than average cultural level living there. People who would tread through mud and then drag all the dirt on the staircase, people who would throw cigarette butts all around, people who would let their garbage pile up in front of their door for weeks, and so on...
There are only two dumpsters there, one of them actually belongs to a sister property - Avendaro.
Both dumpsters are very inconveniently located. Most people have to drive to the dumpsters. Untold number of times I would forget in the morning about having to dispose of trash and drive around town with a trash bag on the roof of my car.

CELL PHONE COVERAGE
I am with Cingular, and like to keep my cell phone as the only line of phone communication. Coverage in my apartment and on the premises was just horrible. Every second call was dropped. The phone would usually show only one bar. (Talk about raising a bar here...) Talking on the cell phone was just a torture both for you as well as for a person on the other end of the line. Constantly breaking up, garbled sound... My phone works just fine where I am now, so it was unlikely to be a phone problem.

ELECTRICITY
Electric service there is provided by "Pedernales Electric" - $100 cooperative membership fee, $60 of which is non-refundable. My electric bills were unusually high all of the time compared to the other apartments I lived in Austin where Austin Electric was the provider. Moreover, I was out of my aparment for weeks and even months at a time travelling. I would turn !everything off!, completely! before I left. Still, that did not have much effect on my electric bills for that period at all. Their billing system remained a mystery for me.

GROUNDS
Grounds were usually fairly well-kept, but with tenants like I have described - that was not always the case.
Apartments look OK during the daylight but very poorly lit at night.

That concludes my review.
If you managed to read till here - the best reward for your patience will be not renting at Escalon.

Take care.

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