Review for Olivewood Apartments

My husband and I moved into Olivewood in 2002. At the time it was very nice. The apartments themselves look a bit dated, but they're well constructed and we loved having a private entrance, private patio with garden space, and utility room. In 2002 the management was fantastic, and maintenance was really good.

Then things started going down hill. They fired the entire staff and brought in all new people, and it hasn't been the same since. Then EPM bought the complex, and it just got worse. A month ago we finally moved out. Here is a list of some of the complaints we made to the district manager:

Sidewalks are not cleared of snow until at least 24 hours after it stops snowing. Sometimes they aren't cleared at all. This year there was at least a week when there was no salt on the property at all, so the sidewalks got very bad then, but instead of going and getting some salt they just waited until their normal delivery.

There is a public street that runs through the complex. The public sidewalk that runs along that public street is never cleared. Neither are the areas around the mailboxes (this won't be as big of a deal now with the new mailboxes that face the drive, but we risked injury every time we got the mail before that).

It seems that a lot of messages don't get to the property manager. Either that or the manager is ignoring them. I can't even tell you how many times I would speak to the manager about something I had left a message about before (either on the answering machine or with the other woman who works in the office) and she had no idea what I was talking about.

Some maintenance issues are ignored. Some issues take months to get fixed, and then they are only fixed because a corporate inspection is scheduled. Some things are never fixed properly (our gutters didn't work right the entire time we lived there, eventually leading to some panels falling out of the eaves, leaving them open for birds to nest in, which still wasn't fixed when we moved out)

Memos were sent out regarding pet waste, threatening fines for pet waste that was not properly disposed of. 2-3 months after the threatening memo there was still a lot of dog feces that was never cleaned up.

Another memo was sent out threatening that any garbage found NOT in the dumpsters would be opened up to find out who it belonged to and that tenant would be fined. That's all well and good, but the dumpsters were ALWAYS overflowing, and it was often impossible to get your trash IN the dumpster. They needed more frequent pickup.

Noisy neighbors were never properly dealt with. After living there for 5 1/2 years and never having a complaint about noise from a neighbor we suddenly had a family move in behind us who's children made noise every moment that they were in the apartment and not sleeping. When it wasn't a school night this could mean they were banging and jumping and pounding until 1am. Management didn't do anything about it.

The last straw was when our lease renewal came up and they wanted to raise our rent $50. In the 6 years we were they our rent hadn't gone up a TOTAL of $50. To raise it that much all at once was completely out of line. So we left.

It is our opinion that, while the units themselves are nice and the amenities are nice, the management is horrible and they make living there fairly miserable. That they expected us to pay $50 more per month for less service just demonstrates how completely out of touch they really are. 3 years ago we were recommending Olivewood to friends. Now I wouldn't recommend it to my enemies.