Review for Four Seasons Estates Apartments

Pros: On-site management is friendly, courteous, attentive and remembers our names. Maintenence requests are usually followed up on in a timely manner. Probably more retirees than kids.

Con: To being with, We moved into our apartment having been told that the carpet and linoleum in the kitchen would be replaced. The doorjamb was broken and the bathroom trashed when we did our walkthrough. We were assured that all of this would be fixed. I guess we're at fault for taking these assurances at face value, because about the only one of these promises that was realized was the replacement of the carpet. The linoleum in the kitchen was still stained (although it had been cleaned). The apartment had not been painted (there was writing on the kitchen wall). The door jamb was still broken and took nearly a month to repair as they had to order a new jamb (we were given a free garage space for our trouble in this regard). The shower had terrible mildew stains (again, it had been cleaned but still looked dirty). We found a mound of dirt in one of the closets. The tracks of our patio door had cigarette butts in it. When we brought this to the onsite management's attention, they were very apologetic and told us that all maintenence requests had been cancelled to put two total apartment remodels at the top of the priority list. When we agreed to extend our lease, we requested that our shower be regrouted as part of the extention agreement. This was another promise only partially delivered - the tile guy felt that the stains weren't "bad enough" to warrant a full regrout.

Our storage closet was full of junk when we moved in - junk that belonged to the property manager's daughter. It took her almost as long to empty the closet as it took to get our doorjamb fixed.

Both winters we have lived here we have found our heat has not been turned on when it starts to get cold. Both winters we have had to call emergency maintenence to have this problem taken care of.

We find ourselves randomly without hot water (and without water at all!) at all hours of the day, seemingly for no reason. We are never given any notice that this is going to happen so I can only assume that there are plumbing issues and that the outages are not planned. I HAVE to assume this, because aftewards we are never given an explaination. This has happened multiple times. During the summer the lawns are watered with a frequency that would maintain a putting green, EVEN ON DAYS WHEN IT HAS RAINED ALL DAY. The sprinklers run without regard to the local watering schedule and without regard to what it does to the water pressure in residents' apartments. My boyfriend complained about this and the onsite manager seemed surprised, but nothing changed. Forget about trying to take a shower while they are watering with all of the sprinklers running - you would be better off outside on the lawn with a bar of soap.

This building is infested with centipedes, as well. BIG ONES. I have never seen centipedes so big. While this gives my cat plenty to do (hey, they allow cats!), it creeps me out to turn on the light in my bedroom to be greeted by a creepy-crawly thing longer than my hand. I even had one fall from the ceiling onto my head once when I opened my bedroom door. Gross. We had a problem with ants a while back and they sent someone up to spray; this seems to have corrected the problem for now.

As far as the neighborhood and security goes, it seemed all right when we moved in. It's in a residential area that is fairly quiet and the complex is right next to a bike trail. We didn't realize what kind of problems were going to come with this, namely that people park their cars in our parking lot while they walk or bike on the trail. Because we don't have parking stickers or permits, there isn't really anything that can be done about this. My boyfriend's truck was vandalized recently (shot with a BB gun) and the locking handle on the "secure" entry door keeps breaking. I suppose that doesn't matter all that much considering the kids that live in the complex frequently block the door open with trash cans so that they can come and go without keys.

I don't know who the fault lies with here. Is the management company to blame for being too cheap to do necessary upgrades to plumbing and security systems? Is the friendly, attentive staff who remembers our names just really lazy? WHO KNOWS. The important thing is, in nine months I won't have to worry about it any more because I will be moving.