Crescent Village — Attraction in San Jose

If you're considering moving here, please take the few minutes to read this somewhat lengthy review...

Let's start with the worst. Some time back, my apartment was entered without notice by one of their third party contractors. The only reason I found out was because when I came home from work, I found my dog locked in a room, whining, left without food and water for about 8-9 hours. He was visibly shaken when I got home, and as you can imagine, straight to the water dish. Instead of owning up to their error, they shifted the blame to the contractor and had him call me to apologize. There was no reason for that, which I made clear to the worker, the apartment was entered with Managements authorization. My frustration was met with a blank look from the current manager. This was a complete invasion of privacy and has left me with 0 trust in anyone here.

And the second worst. FIRE ALARMS. I have wasted so much vacation days sitting here trying to get my dog out of the apartment while they do their bi-weekly fire alarm testing and fixing. These aren't just little beepers I'm talking about, but the end of the world sirens installed in your bedroom that literally make your ears bleed. If you have a dog, stay far away for this very reason. Also, they will leave you notice of entry nearly every two weeks for some pity maintenance that could just as easily be grouped together in 4-6 month intervals. You'll also likely only see this notice about a day or two in advance, making work scheduling very difficult depending if you have a dog or any sort of trust in this place.

Now from the beginning...

The first week or two had the following problems:

The bedroom stunk of incense and weed from the previous owner deciding to use the bedroom closet as their shrine. They offered to clean it with something not dog friendly, while leaving me homeless (due to dog) for several days (while still paying rent).

The carpet was filthy, though it was hard to tell on day one. I ran my carpet shampoo machine after week 1, and the water came out absolutely black after rinse, rinse, wash, rinse. Now, I shampoo every 6 months and the water is barely grey.

The drier pretty much destroyed most of my jackets/hoodies/shirts. It's like an incinerator. I try and stick to hang drying now as the promised replacement never happened after several requests. Back when Christina was here, she at least offered a gift card that covered about 1/5 of the cost of clothes that were destroyed.

And the misc problems you'll run into...

Things are broken more often than not, including elevators, security gates, front doors stuck shut, trash chutes closed with no notice. and the list goes on.

All the amenities they used to convince moving in have quickly disappeared. Package pick up/drop off, community events, etc... have all been axed.

The appliances and general structure inside is very cheap. If you have kitchen counter that hangs over the living room, take a peak under it, it's literally just a piece of ply wood with a thin laminate layer on top.

In Milano, pet rent is 75/month. What does it get you? Maybe dog bags, if there are any near, but other than that, nothing. You can add a human for free that uses the facilities all day, but dogs for some reason carry a price tag.

The garage visitor parking is 50% long term parking for residents that dont use their cars, many of which have been parked there for 4+ months.

I've actually reached out to the next level, through corporate, but again, was met with zero care/response. At the very least for the main problems, I'd expect at least some compensation, credit, or other offer of help, but at the very least, I will hopefully be able to seek outside help to at least get a clean break and move on from this disaster of a living experience.

Oh, and the ants... even with a spotless house, it's a huge problem. Confirmed this with a few neighbors as well. They offer chemical spray, but again... dog....

Hope this has been of help to others, character...

Lived here for over five years, mostly due to having a very large dog (adult newfoundland) and had limited choices. This apartment complex can be hit or miss, mostly miss. The apartments are fairly nice looking, but all of them have sliding glass doors from the patio to the master bedroom and a normal door to the living room, which means you don't get much privacy in the bedroom, especially on the first floor. In the Mirada building, the hallways don't have much airflow, which means when one person slams their front door, it creates an air pressure wave that shakes all the front doors in the same hallway. This being a fairly dense community this tends to happen quite often.

Additionally, in the Mirada complex, there are no stairs from the first floor to the parking garage, you must take the elevator, or go out of the building and through the garage entries, which are usually around the other side of the building. The elevator is extremely slow and due to the density of the community, can take more than 5 minutes to go one level down to get to your car (so you better not be in a hurry). Milano at least has stairs all the way through the building.

As to the parking garage, they used to be fairly safe, but since moving to Mirada, my car has been broken into twice in 6 months, even though it's a gated facility. Complaining to the management, they didn't seem to have done anything as far as I could tell. If you plan to move here, try to get a parking spot close to one of the parking entrances, not one deep in the complex where there are no cameras and it's easy for someone to hide out.

Maintaince seems quick to respond and fix issues most of the time, though my dish washer's heating element still doesn't work, and the shower's hot water tends to be either scalding for about 5 minutes, then cold, or takes 10 minutes to warm up depending on the day.

As many have mentioned here, fire alarms are tested regularly in the complex, roughly every 3-6 months, and they usually send out flyers for warnings about a week before so you can not be present during that time. The fire alarm test usually lasts anywhere from 1-4 hours starting at about 8 or 9am, and runs throughout the entire building for the entire duration. Recommend to take the day with your pets to a park or something during this time.

Do not recommend any first floor apartments due to people being able to look in, or being able to hear very loud conversations in the common areas (like right outside my office window). Would recommend a corner apartment, top floor lofts in Milano are very nice, and make sure the apartment windows are facing the south, east or west. North facing apartments can be as dark as some caves and will need constant light from lamps. Certainly wouldn't justify the outrageous rent prices for those units.

Community is generally pretty great, people take their dogs off leash in the courtyard (even through technically you're not supposed to, but they're all well mannered) and everyone's generally pretty friendly. There's a dance class that goes on, and people play volleyball, basketball, and tennis quite a lot. There's a kids playground as well where LOTS of kids go to play all the time.

Last issue is one of safety -- check the crime maps in the area. I had not known this until recently, but north san jose has very high crime rates, and the number of violent crimes has been climbing quite a bit. This combined with the fact there are no security cameras on the outside or in the parking garage, and there are very few security guards (who are very nice to talk to!) means I wouldn't let my girlfriend walk alone at night without at least pepper spray handy.

All in all, it's not a bad community assuming you're okay with some of the issues above and can take care of yourself. If you're looking for better community in the same area, try looking at the Epic apartments a little to the east, they're just as nice and a bit cheaper too, they just don't...

14/12/19 Updates: The fire alarm went off at 4am today, and then again, twice between 9pm -10pm. We had to leave the building and stand in the rain . Residential office blamed all the three alarms on people smoking inside. If you have babies or pets, think twice before moving in.

I have lived here for seven months and will be glad to stay for another year. Here are what I find satisfying: Resort like environment and facilities. Check out my photos. I live in Tesoro, one of the six apartment complexes in Crescent Village, and the pool and gym on site are very well maintained. All the six apartment complexes have their own pool and share three gyms. If you find the one near you is crowded (it never happened to me though), you can always use another one, as you have access to all the complexes. Relatively safe neighborhood in San Jose, compared with where most other rental apartments are located. Don't take my words for it, you can see for yourself on a crime map. Super responsive maintenance crew and residential office team. When I submit a maintenance request I always grant access for the technicians to enter without my presence (You certainly can choose not to), and they always show up within 1-2 hours, if not immediately. The residential office staff at Tesoro are also fast with emails and calls, and communicative with what's going on. Convenient location. Starbucks and a couple of restaurants on site, 5 min drive to Safeway and more restaurants in Rivermark. During my apartment search, I found Crescent Village had a really bad score on google and yelp, and I almost dropped this place because of it. Every reviewer should speak from their own experience, and here are my own on some of the issues people complained here. Pricing: I googled at least eight rental apartments in San Jose and Santa Clara, all in the so called higher end. Before I moved here, I visited three of the eight and lived in one for a year. Everyone agrees rental price in bay area is crazy, but in my opinion the pricing of CV is more or less reasonable within its targeted segment. The good thing is it's a huge community with six apartment complexes, all offer slightly different designs, floor plans and amenities, therefore what you get is a wide range of pricing. e.g. Two 2BR units could be priced in $500 difference per month. Fire alarm: I have experienced six big fire alarms for the past seven months since moved in, all happened during the day. When people complain about firm alarm here, we are talking about the HARSHEST, LOUDEST, not to deliver the message but to destroy your ears that kind of loud. It's not just in your own apartment. The thousands of detectors in every unit of your apartment complex will scream at the same time. When that happens you have no choice but to get out and stay far away. If I ever encountered a false alarm during sleep, I would definitely give this place zero star if I could. However, it never happened to me in Tesoro, don't know if I got lucky or the system has improved. According to the residential office, the first two big alarms I encountered were due to malfunction and testing. Then there were another four, and the explanation offered each time was awful people smoked in the building. All we know is the alarm system here is really sensitive. Consider almost four hundred households live in the same complex, I'd rather be safe than sorry; but I fully understand that for some people with babies or pets this could be unbearable. There must be something the management can do. The entire building should be emptied because one person smoke? Is this a protocol? The inside of the apartment buildings (garage and hallway) is not cleaned as...