I have lived in a first-floor Normandy apartment since August 1, 2003. If I were not leaving town to attend grad school in fall 2004, I would probably stay in my current apartment.

Good things about the Normandy/my apartment:
* This building is VERY quiet. I hear my neighbors sometimes, if they're moving furniture or talking outside, but it is consistently in a low-level, non-intrusive way, and most of the time it is close to silent in my apartment.
* On several bus lines
* Excellent and full-size kitchen appliances (refrigerator and full oven/range)
* Excellent, responsive maintenance team. Problems were fixed within three days of my reporting them.
* Good condition of apartment - plumbing non-problematic, extremely clean when I moved in
* Secure building and safe neighborhood

Cons:
* Windows (at least mine) should really be replaced. In the ten months that I've been in my apartment, my windows have broken twice (not the glass - these were problems with the frame).
* Poor ventilation of the apartments (or at least mine). Because there is only one window, there is really no good way to get air from outside to flow across the apartment. I am a fairly tidy and clean person, and I have had times when my apartment has retained unpleasant odors for days on end.
* One management staffperson has been consistently inconsiderate about showing my apartment. I was under the impression (I'm not 100% sure of this) that landlords and management companies were required by law to give a tenant 24 hours' notice prior to showing an apartment. The staffperson in question's version of "notice" has been to leave notes stuck between the frame of my apartment door and the door itself on the day prior to showing my apartment. This would work as notice if I were home 24 hours of the day - but since I, and presumably the other tenants here, work or go to school, this can mean VERY short notice of upcoming showings.
I was out of town for a week awhile ago, and I left a message for the management staff requesting that my apartment not be shown while I was away. (I am on the first floor, and so, because I had unplugged all electronics in my apartment before leaving town, I was worried about the possibility of being robbed.) My message was ingored. (I found many notices jammed into my doorframe when I returned.)
So recently, I did not bother to request that my apartment not be shown while I was away - again for a week. Again, I returned to a small snowfall of apartment-showing notices...one of which informed me that my apartment would be shown at 10, 10:30, and 11 AM on the following (Saturday) morning. I requested that these showings be changed to another efficiency apartment, and my request was denied.
I know that landlords can be notoriously incompetent at informing current tenants of showings of their apartments - so I know that my situation could be far worse. But I also think that any prospective Normandy tenant might like to know about the possibility of a situation like mine prior to moving in here.
* If you do not have a car, and if you sometimes like to stay in downtown Madison past the time when the Madison buses stop running on weekends, you may end up - as I did - paying a lot of cab fare. This apartment is not, at least for me, within walking distance of downtown Madison. It is about four miles from State Street.
* In the late winter and early spring months, lots of box elders - a type of insect common in the midwest - made their way into my apartment. For several weeks, it was routine for me to come home in the evening and to clean up multiple bug carcasses; they tended to come into my apartment to die. They're non-problematic bugs in that they don't bite or sting, and they don't seem to be lured by food so much as by light - so many of them killed themselves in my lamp. I found this (the bug problem) somewhat stressful, though. I asked management staff if they could help me with this problem, and they said that there was nothing they could do. My impression is that this is accurate; these bugs are so small that it is easy for them to get in through any openings, however small, in a building. Plus, the problem has solved itself as the seasons have changed.

Your thoughts? Post a response to this review. Display my response: with my username anonymously Responses appear below reviews and one response per user is permitted.

   Free estimates on moving trucks      Find apartment share/roommates