Samantha Heinz

Review of Northpark Apartments

Echoing other people comments on vandalism. We jus...

Echoing other people comments on vandalism. We just had our car stolen a week ago from the Sycamores "secure garage". Our bikes were also stolen and our car broken into at other times during our 3 years tenancy.

Check crime reports for this immediate area and you will see the majority of them are occurring in the North Park complex, including the Sycamores.

Also check out other review sites and its the same story over and over. No security, they just don't care because they are not responsible for stolen items. Even their responses to reviews are so canned and corporate its not even funny.

We are going to be moving out at this point. The apartments are not worth it and management does not truly care about residents.

This shows in many ways, but I will start with the nickel and diming on everything. For example, our move in experience was atrocious. We had to fight to have our move in date just a few days after it was listed as available.

The previous tenant moved out April 30th, 2015 and the apartment was listed as available on May 5th, 2015. To move in for the listed price online, you only get 5 days that starts the day after the last tenant moved out. We could only move in for the listed price until May 5th which was the day the apartment was listed as "first available". Those days after the previous tenant moves out are taken up by them cleaning the apartment for the next tenant so the apartment is not actually even available during that time.

We set up a move in date tentatively over the phone in March for May 7th. We realized the next day that we needed to move in on a weekend and thats when we were explained this "rule". Apparently we were given the 2 days "for free" because of their error, but asking to move in on the 9th was not a possibility. We were told multiple time that they were being "very generous" by letting us move in 2 days later with no extra charge. What this all means you have no possibility of negotiating a move in date at all unless you fork over a ton of money. To move in on May 9th would have been $55 more A MONTH, so $660 total a year for 3 days.

I really hope they have gotten rid of this policy, however, it was still a policy at one point with no wiggle room that we had to put up with and move in to the apartment in the middle of the week. The response from management on everything is constantly "we can't do this because Irvine says so. We have to wait for Irvine to allow us to do this. etc" which means NO flexibility on anything.

Besides that you will be paying out the nose for 15+ year old apartments that weren't even built correctly. The reason they are "renovating" the Pines is because they chose the lowest possible bidder and then sued them to fix it when they realized it wasn't water tight and the foundation was cracking/rotting. The balcony collapse accident in Berkeley that killed 6 people and injured 7 last year, that same builder built the Pines and the Pines has the same issues with water intrusion.

You seriously can get much better deals at some of the newer nearby apartments that seem to have actual security. Save yourself the headache and just avoid Irvine. They honestly were an amazing company a few years ago and greed and corporate policies seems to have taken over and ruined it now.