Please, don't be fooled by the beauty of the apartment homes when you visit the Aventine in Aliso Viejo! I can't lie--they are remarkable inside. However, the headaches of dealing with the people they have working in their front office is NOT worth the rental itself. The women they have working for them in their rental office will lure you in with niceties and sweet talking, but as soon as you sign that lease, they don't want to hear from you or see you until it is time to renew. The property manager Laura, is NEVER on site, nor is she ever available to speak with tenants regarding complaints or anything else. Violet is left in charge and has the personality of a spider. Claudette, Shealene and Terry are no better. To get maintenance, you have to be available Mon-Fri between 8 am and 4 pm. If you have a job, tough.
They are allowing really unsavory people to move in now, so don't be surprised to see drug deals from your balcony or hear fights involving other tenants on a nightly basis. There is always trash littering every part of the community because they refuse to provide trash cans to their tenants. You have one dumpster per apartment building (which houses roughly 20 apartments each) and the trash is picked up randomly every 2-3 weeks.
There are spiders and ants everywhere, and they make no attempt to fix the problem.
When I first moved into the Aventine in 2003, my fireplace wasn't working. It wasn't fixed until a year later and it still doesn't work properly--so don't expect to get timely responses to maintenance issues!
Basically, it is WELL worth paying an extra $100 somewhere else so that you have the option of dealing with people that truly care about your concerns. If you read this and end up renting at the Aventine anyway--you can't say that I didn't try to warn you.