MAA Centreville — Local services in Centreville

Nothing but problems from day 1. First key they gave me was a copy of a copy, which didn't work. This happened to the lady next door nearly a year later, they had her call a locksmith. First pedestrian key fob didn't work, either. The gates failed any time the wind blew too hard, once wouldn't let people in for half a day, by car or on foot. Maintenance was unavailable, the answering service refused to contact anyone.

No outlets in $150/month garages. They replaced the garage doors, which looked very nice, but only accessible w/visor clip. Which can't be left clipped to your visor after you park your car. I was told initially that a 2nd set would be issued. That never happened, and was apparently misinformation. I was also told that I could purchase my own keypad entry. For the $150/month garage.

The guy next door slammed the door every time he went through it. The people upstairs rearranged their furniture every night. The vacuum at the car wash station eats your change without turning on. Smoke detectors go off any time you use the oven or toaster. Thought it was just my cooking until I heard it in other units.

After a month or two (fall/winter), the air handler leaked, flooding the carpet and there's visible water damage in the walls. They "fixed" it, ignoring my statement that there was corrosion and rust on the equipment, but left spackle everywhere and sent the flood techs and left me with a big, noisy fan. It flooded again several months later and they sent the flood techs and big noisy fan a 2nd time, but still didn't keep the black mold from growing under the rug.

I complained about lack of hot water for months before they replaced the water heaters in the entire complex. The upstairs unit was done before mine (wonder how long they complained), and the contractors worked past midnight, which kept me awake. Afterwards, several inspections were scheduled. I asked many times via email to be notified beforehand so I could arrange to be home, as my dog was likely to escape. I got a call at work on my busiest day of the week from the office confirming that she actually had gotten out during an "emergency maintenance check."

This "emergency" was an outside leak that had been previously investigated at least 2x, once the day before and remained a mystery until that day. The washer needed to be replaced, but first, they had to get rid of all the water damaged drywall. Black mold covered the back panel of one of the cabinets (which are tiny, btw), where I stored food. The new washer had a huge dent in the side, not that it affected me, but just one more thing. One of the many people going in and out banged the door handle into the drywall.

At some point during this, the ice maker in the freezer began to leak. When they fixed that, they managed to break a few things and put stuff in the sink with dirty dishes. This all happened right after the second air handler leak, and they couldn't seem to differentiate between the two.

After a bad storm, maintenance was replacing trim and left the scraps under the stairs of one building, with the nails face up, protruding from the bottom step. I have pictures. The "lifeguard" at the pool ate, talked about herself to the residents, texted, talked on the phone, even napped while 10 kids were there. I have pictures of that, too.

Since I can't omit the 1 star, it goes to the incredibly friendly office staff and maintenance crew, the nice landscaping & the relatively quiet atmosphere, even at the pool, which has the ambience of a library. Nice for adults, not so much fun for kids.

some nice amenities, still not worth the headaches for the $ or 10% annual increase. There's a $700 pet deposit, but only $200 is refunded, which I suppose goes to 3+ staff making sure your dog doesn't run out through the gate onto Lee hwy while you rush home in NOVA lunchtime traffic.

If you want to move here, there is at least 1 unit w/nearly all new appliances, hopefully new...

As compared to other properties I've lived in, this is actually a pretty good apartment complex.

Positives: This property is beautiful. They are cknsistent with landscaping, cleaning up the outside and restoring parts of the buildinfs. The complex is quick to respond to matinee requests. And staff are always friendly and answer questions well. We haven't had a matinenence issue be left open for more than a day or two which is always appreciated, especially because past complexes I've lived in there was little to no communication. The locks on the doors being keypads I can control from my phone is AWESOME. It gives me peace of mind. I loce that I can also see when matinenence uses their codes to enter and that the property has built in motion detection for the living room space. I generally feel very safe in the neighborhood. The fences around the property make me feel like I dont have to worry about people trying to sneak in as often. There are lots of nice green patches of grass to walk my dog, and lots of dog poop disposal areas that make waste clean up a breeze (not that anyone apparently uses them, which I'll get into later)

Negatives: the pest issues, the garbage area is overrun with rats. There's dead serious a colony that lives there and if you dont want to come face to face with them, take your trash out during the day as much as you can. They're scared of sunlight I guess. There is the occasional roach and you can definitely tell they are trying to get rid of them in the area due to the many dead roach bodies you see lying around on the paths. The gate for the community is mostly for show because it doesn't work. I've lived in this area for over a year and have lived in this complex a few months. The gate has never been closed and is usually always open. It would be nice if it closed, but I do think it at least provides a false sense of extra security. Some appliances have definitely seen their better days. We had a washer that was probably the same age as my mother and flooded our laundry room a few days after moving in (but they did switch it out fir a new unit which is wonderful) but they still have our dryer as an older unit. It works pretty well all things considered after matinenence came by to clean the lint trap. The dog park is (excuse my french) ass. No one picks up their dog poop, the ground is gravel which freaks out my dog, i don't know who's decision that was. And there isn't any shade so taking my dog in the summer to go stand on hot gravel in what's essentially an entire area of brown landmines isn't great. That being said despite the insane amount of dog clean up areas there is so much dog poop EVERYWHERE that its insane. I have looked at dog poop left literally a step away from a clean up location filled with bags so many times that its infuriating.

In conclusion, I'd recommend this place to live if the negatives dont bother you as much. The rats dont bother me as they are generally localized by the trash compactor which we do not live that close to. I see a bug/roach usually once a month. While gross, its better than a months long ant infestation I had to deal with at my last complex that staff did nothing about. The gate being broken honestly doesn't make me sweat much, the fence itself does a lot in terms of helping with the feeling of safety, people rarely walk in and out of the big gate.

I've been here 3 months and haven't had any major issues. We love our apartment and don't plan on leaving any time soon. But if these are problems you can't get past you might want to...

Very nice leasing and maintenance staff and nice neighborhood but not worth paying near $3000 a month for an apartment and the gates are always broken, and almost everything in the apartment is so old it breaks. And good luck getting anything fixed. "Emergency maintenance" has never actually showed up in response to a call as I've made 3 calls for broken AC off hours and nobody came out till 10am. My apartment is 80 degrees right now at 1am, and the emergency maintenance staff seem like they couldn't care less as they are clearly reading a script in monotone voice without the slightest effort of even pretending to actually care.

In the one year I've been here so far, the water heater leaked and filled the walls lining the mechanical room and wall adjoining the bedroom with mold, outlets died near the router so I couldn't use the WIFI I was paying for, kitchen cabinet doors fell off, AC died, fireplace dampers broke (filled apartment with smoke and set off the smoke alarms, they NEVER got around to fixing it despite the emergency maintenance request. I just don't use it now) and getting someone to actually come and fix anything is almost impossible without constantly pestering the office with several emails and calls for the same issues.

On another note, the gates are open 99% of the time and the number of people who aren't residents who come in and rev their engines or trucks or slam on their horns in the parking lot during the hours of 10pm-5:30am is so often I had to install noise-blocking curtains throughout my entire bedroom.

This apartment is nice to live in if you never have any issues, and if you have issues, at best they are unprepared to deal with them, and at worst they couldn't care less about resolving them.

The staff is also very bad about giving 24 hours notice before anyone enters your apartment, as I've had unknown people enter my apartment several times unannounced and have had to use my Ring Doorbell to find out and call the leasing office to find out who is in my apartment and why.

Also, the heating system works very poorly in the winter whenever temperatures outside reach below 40 degrees. I have seen my apartment temperature dip regularly dip below 60 degrees in the winter with the heater running constantly and had to buy several space heaters to be able to live in my apartment during the winter.

Having to deal with all of this for almost $3000 a month is insanity.

UPDATE; For my broken AC, with my apartment being 80 degrees, yesterday they never sent anyone out despite telling me they might have a technician coming out, having me wait hours for nothing, and today I have made a call at 7:30pm for the same issue with no reaponse, about 12:30am with no response, and then again at almost 2am, and they are asking me the same stupid questions I answered during the last 3 calls that they have records of, and WORSE they can't even get the address right by my 4th call. I've been waiting for over 6 HOURS so far with no AC and they just keep telling me "we are sorry to hear that" in the most monotone voice and telling me to keep waiting. What an...