Broadstone Atlas — Attraction in Santa Ana

I've been living here for over a year. I'm renting a 2BD2BA in Atlas. THE GOOD: love the design aesthetic, very hard to find apartments that are fully wood floors. I was the first person to live in the apartment. Samsung appliances. Facilities are new. Using the app to put in maintenance requests, responses are very quick, sometimes same day. The maint staff are amazing. Parcel Package system works well. I appreciate the keyless door entry. The apt came with two assigned parking spots as well. There are some good specials going on. AT&T and Google both have fiber access in the building. I enjoy cooking so gas stoves vs. electric have been amazing although the smoke detectors can be sensitive so make sure you are opening windows, and patio door. The entire complex is pet friendly so there are A LOT OF DOGS around. There is a walking/park across the street. Trash valet is handy although you pay for it in your monthly bill, sometimes they post these passive aggressive notices about not having the proper bin, but no one in Atlas was given these plastic bins, and everyone just puts the bag outside their door. (I ignore these sticker notes.). They have food trucks that come daily and they try to do some community stuff once a month. The community itself is quite ethnically diverse. The Atlas itself is still fairly empty so for the most part peace and quiet reign. They have private EV charging parking spots you can rent for an additional $150/mo.

THE BAD: there are a couple of major construction flaws - the air circulation via the vents is not well distributed, in one room it'll be blasting and the other a trickle. Maint has told me this is unfix able. This includes the exhaust fans in the bathroom, some blasting some not. Because of this black mold will grow on your toilets, so you need to clean them often. The floor/ceilings are almost entirely HOLLOW. Especially in the master bedroom. I have been dealing with an upstairs neighbor where i can hear their footsteps stomping around from 5AM - 5PM nearly every day. Their footsteps are so heavy that it actually shakes the walls and rattles the smoke detector on the ceiling. I've put in many calls to residence services but not much they can do when it's a construction problem. I wear soft indoor slippers to prevent that for my downstairs neighbor. There is also a weird small rectangle window that i needed to get a custom curtain for. The tiny window is just there for no reason other than to let additional light into the bedroom? Thankfully no barking of pets near me but i have walked past rooms where it seems the dog is just barking constantly. PLANES are constantly landing overhead. The noise is not a major problem when you have central AC going (i run an air purifier at night so the white noise blocks out the airplanes), but with it off you can definitely hear the noise. The agents will tell u they have "double pane windows" and you "can't hear it", but you can. It's VERY LOUD outside. It's not as bad now, but package delivery can be a nightmare because they will deliver to the wrong mailroom. TBF this is a problem of the delivery people, the office has put up notices for them to check it. Unfortunately when you have large items delivered to the wrong mailroom you have to cart them all the way to your place the apartment will not help you. Don't bother sending messages via the app, the resident services don't reply. Best way is to call before noon or just walk over to the office. After 2PM they almost never answer the phone. They can be very slow to fix facility problems. Their callbox system was broke for like 6 months until they replaced it. Some outer doors don't latch properly and are open. Walking outside around the apt you will enjoy the occasional waft of dog piss staining the sidewalks.

No apt is perfect, it's just a matter of deciding what's the dealbreaker for you. I personally can deal with all of this except the footstep stomping noise above me. When my contract is up i may look for other options or try to get the top floor apt so no one...

Thought I’d give an honest review of this place. I’m one of the first residents to live in this building and have been living here for over 2 years now. Is living here perfect? No. Is this by far the best rent price to amenity and quality ratio you’ll find in OC? Yes.

I’ve seen a lot of bad reviews of people complaining about a lot of basics so I’ll address those. Do you hear your neighbors upstairs? Yes, literally any new build apartment you move into will have this problem. Get used to it if you plan to move into any new apartment complex being built. Are there noisy neighbors who play music or have potential parties? Yes, welcome to moving into an apartment with young professionals. You’ll find loud neighbors in every neighborhood in America, stop blaming buildings for it. Will management address this problem if you happen to have it? Not to the level you would like, you’ll most likely have to take things into your own hands if you want something to get done about it. Keep in mind that the walls and windows block out sound great, but the front doors are terrible at blocking sound. So be mindful of the location of your unit, pick a spot directly in front of the garage door? Well be prepared to hear a lot of noise. Choose a spot facing the the nice pool, well expect a lot of noise. A lot of bad reviews come down to making bad personal decisions when it comes to common sense and logic about how basic things operate. Please think before blindly picking your unit.

Do the elevators break? Yes all the time, there are other ones you can use and the parking structure ones don’t seem to break ever. Most are fixed fairly quickly.

Is there dog shit everywhere and does it smell like piss? Well it depends where you live, the community park, dog park, and dog spa are all located on one side of the building so naturally that side of the building and the main elevator get the majority of the foot traffic of dog owners. If you live on the red hill side of the building you don’t have this problem. Is there dog shit outside and sometimes inside? Yep, some asshole dog owners here. Not much management can do about that but residents should be holding each other accountable.

Amenities are fantastic, well maintained and up kept. Do they break on occasion? Yea sometimes but so does everything in life, there’s 400+ residents here so anything will get wear and tear just like your car, shoes, and everything.

Safety, this neighborhood is very safe. There’s no random people roaming the hallways. Do packages get stolen on occasion? Sure. If you sign up for the lockers it’s not usually an issue. Do delivery people just toss your package into a corner out in the open? Yea they do and that’s a problem with the postal company and not the building. It’s the people here who don’t use the lockers that get their package stolen, there’s lockers for a reason just like there’s a lock on your door for a reason… common sense folks. Car broken into? Sometimes, most of the ones I know were cars that were left unlocked. Once again… common sense folks. Don’t blame the buildings for your own mistakes.

Resident services/ maintenance, yes they can at times be slow to respond or repair something but they try. If they don’t answer call them again in 20min, usually don’t take me more than two tries. Most of the employees also live in the building so they want things to operate well just as much as you do.

This building is primarily business professionals between the ages of 25-40 and there’s no kids who live here. If you want to move in somewhere full of opportunity to meet people, enjoy awesome amenities, and have the chance to feel like you’re part of a community then this is the place for you. If you want peace and quiet, go to an Irvine company property. I’m friends with 30-40 residents in the building, it’s an amazing place to live if you choose to make it amazing. If you want perfection you won’t find it anywhere you move, but this is by far one of the best rent prices and quality of amenities and communities...

Overall great community with nice enough amenities, but if issues arise, then it becomes a nightmare as Resident Services (RSC) seems to be allergic to calls and email. In person visits are the only way you'll ever get ahold of someone.

My nightmare is that I have a water leaking from my a light fixture on the ceiling (reported to the emergency maintenance line on Sat, March 29th at 6:42pm) and was told that emergency maintenance will take 1 to 2 hours to respond. Emergency maintenance responder did not have any sympathy and sounded like they were reading from a script.

Update: Bumped up a star for the amazing maintenance responder, Luis Rodriguez, who got here quicker than expected and is doing everything possible to help with the situation. He's made this difficult situation much better. Industrial fans have to run 24/7 to prevent mold growth and they are not quiet, but have gotten used to them (or I'm losing my hearing).

Update# 2 (Mon 3/31/25 11:49am) - Team came in at 9am to take some more infrared imaging and said the Restoration team would be back to begin the process of cutting the drywall. However, they have not returned yet since then and RSC did not pick up my 7 calls or respond to my email that I sent yesterday. Roommate had to physically go into the office to get an immediate response that they will check and get back to us.

Update# 3 (Mon 3/31/25 12:31pm) - Have not heard back from RSC yet, but Luis was able to find out that they will not be returning today, which makes it easier for my roommate to plan his schedule. Big ups to him for pulling through and helping again. Hopefully will hear from RCS soon.

Update# 4 (Mon 3/31/25 2:28pm) - Finally got an email update from Angela at RCS (in response to my roommate stopping by in person, since she responded to my roommate's question about rescheduling the drywall replacement a different day - the initial email I sent yesterday and the voicemail I left this morning still has not been responded to). Anyways, she said they have to come tomorrow to work on it immediately to prevent any mold growth (which is why we thought they would come today, the first business day since the incident, but okay) and will be giving us rent reimbursement (yay!). I'm glad my roommate could be home today because who knows if we would have gotten an update if he did not go in person. I also asked for electricity credit (for running the industrial fans nonstop) since we pay for all utilities, confirmation that the outlets/light fixtures in the leak area are safe for use, and that any damages from the leak does not affect our deposit once our lease ends. Hoping this will come to...