This community has many apartments and I can't really comment on any other unit except the one that I rented. This is my true story.

Overall, the staff was professional from the time we walked in to view the properties to the signing of the lease. We liked the amenities of the community and we thought that the townhouse property that we wanted to rent was very spacious (Livingston model). The model home looked clean and the townhome apartments had many of the features that we were looking for. As a result, we decided to sign a lease.

We arrived at the apartment complex on the morning that we were scheduled to move in and received the keys to the home. On the surface, everything looked nice and clean and there was even new carpet. Within five minutes of performing our move-in inspection, we discovered what appeared to be bugs in the basement. Upon further inspection, we saw that they were roaches and noticed other roaches just coming from under the new carpet. There were some just shamelessly climbing the walls/front door in the foyer, some just climbing the stairs, and then we starting noticing them coming from everywhere. On the outside of the dishwasher, there was one hanging out dead and many roach droppings stuck to the dishwasher. The most alarming for us was the amount of little baby roaches. With the presence of roach droppings, baby roaches, and the many roaches walking around during the day (usually roaches come out at night), we just felt that this was evidence of roach infestation or a long-standing roach problem in that particular unit. In addition, if they were coming from under the new carpet, it didnt seem like the roaches would leave just by spraying.

Luckily, I had a ziploc bag in my daughters diaper bag, and we put five of the roaches in the bag. I then got my digital camera (carry it with me always in diaper bag to take pictures of daughter), and snapped photos of the little critters. We then called management, who sent the maintenance guy. When he came in the door, there were the same roaches that greeted him at the door. In addition, I showed him the roaches that were climbing the stairs, the ones under the toilet and sink in the bathrooms, the many baby roaches in the kitchen area, the ones climbing from under the carpet, and the ones that had been killed and left on top of the carpet by whoever was in the apartment before us (this was evidence that someone knew about the roaches before we arrived). We also handed him the bag of roaches that we had collected.

He sped back to the rental office with the evidence. When we arrived at the office, we were quickly hurried back to a private room where the manager apologized. We were still in shock because there were just so many of them! The manager told us that the lease would be voided and gave us our rent check back. She then offered us some other townhouses (not the same floorplan as the one we were going to rent) that would be available soon and said that she would call Monday.

On Monday, my husband went by the office to inform them that we didn't want to rent there at all because we had already been inconvenienced enough and just couldn't wait for those other units to open in a few weeks (manager couldn't give us a definitive time when the other units would be available). Besides, they couldnt offer us the same floorplan that we were going to move into.

On Monday evening, the manager calls to say that she is very sorry, however, because we didn't go through with the lease, they should have to keep the security deposit of $350 as damages since they could have rented it to someone else. We couldn't believe that they were penalizing us for their unit having roaches. Once I told her that our situation was an exception, that we were prepared to fight this to the fullest, and that we had PHOTOS, she agreed to refund the security deposit.

Overall, the experience at the end was bad for us because we had traveled from Chicago to Arlington, VA to move into the apartment on that day. In addition, we had all of the utilities connected (gas, water, electricity, cable, DSL), had purchased the mandatory renter's insurance, and had our mail forwarded. Luckily, we weren't going to ship our furnishings until later! We had fully intended to move into that apartment. For $2600 month, plus utilities, you would think that they would have been more thorough with inspecting that particular unit.

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