Rent is cheap. That's the basics of it.

I had to move to the area a few weeks after Hurricane Ike to start a new job. I had very short notice to actually find an apartment, and this was the first place that actually had a room available.

First problem: For the deposit, they only took money orders. (If your rent is late, you also need money orders. Money orders are a pain. Really.)

Second problem: The day I was supposed to move in, they told me that my apartment was unavailable. The one I'd signed a lease for. And had signed up all my utilities for (they require you to sign up for utilities before you move in). Luckily for me, they had another apartment that they could stick me in, and they did give me the same rate for a larger apartment than I'd signed on for. But because of their mistake, I ended up having to pay fees to get my utilities switched around. I could not convince them that they should cover the fees because it was their fault, and eventually I gave up.

Third problem: The air conditioner condensate line was clogged, and the drain pan would fill up and drip into my shower every time I ran the a/c for more than a few minutes. I asked maintenance to fix it, and they just emptied the drain pan. I let it slide over the winter, but once summer started, it was a major problem. I had to do the research to figure out what was wrong, and even after giving them detailed instructions on how to fix it, maintenance still just emptied the drain pan again. It took several calls from maintenance before they actually did something useful.

Aside from some fairly inconvenient problems, the apartment is okay. I got one of the units with the new paint/carpet/kitchen stuff. But it is all poorly done. There are gaps between the windows and under doors that let air out and let bugs in. The windows are extremely thin. I can't hear my neighbors, but I can hear a detailed conversation outside in the parking lot. Sound can be a problem. There are a lot of shrieking kids in these apartments, and while it's great that they can play outdoors, it also sounds like they're all right in your apartment with you.

The grounds are kind of gross. There's dog poop all over the place, and there's one sidewalk that always floods, even on sunny days (probably a leak somewhere). Their solution: put a big wooden plank across it so you can tiptoe across.

I've only had minor problems with bugs. I see roaches now and then, but not too often.

There are laundry rooms, but you have to use a laundry card that you can ONLY refill in the main office during business hours. And half the washers don't work. So if you've used up all the money on your card because you had to run the washer twice to get the soap out, if it's a Sunday or after hours, you're out of luck.

The location is also sometimes inconvenient. This part of Bay Area Blvd can get extremely congested, and the traffic lights are poorly timed. Not a fault of the complex obviously, but if you think you're getting a place with convenient access to 45, just be aware. Especially with the mall there, for the month before Christmas, it sometimes took an hour just to get to 45 from my apartment in the evenings.

Overall, I would say that this is the worst apartment I've rented. But it's not that much worse than most other big complexes, at least in this price range. It is cheap. You won't find a better apartment in the area unless you're willing to pay $300 more a month. I complain, but after looking at reviews of other apartments in the area, I renewed my lease, because I just don't think there's much difference. Every apartment has a dozen reviews with the headline "RUN AWAY AS FAST AS YOU CAN" but where do they expect to go' I can't afford an $800 one-room apartment, and I don't want to move even further away from work, so there's not really that much choice. I haven't had any problems with security, and all the people living here that I've encountered seemed decent.

User Responses
From: magnus454	Date: 08/12/2009
Yeah, maintenance is the big issue, they half do a job, or don't do it at all. took 3 weeks of complaining about severla problems, before they finally came out and did something. What they did was half way fix the problem, and didn't even install the part right, I had to go spend 20$ on the right part, and put it in, plus fix what they only half way did with the other part. I wasn't going to wait another three weeks for them to come out and screw it up again.

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