Rize Irvine — Local services in Irvine

FEB 5th 2025 UPDATE: Leasing office is pretending they aren’t breaking laws by not addressing the mold that I reported before making this initial review 5 months ago. They’re asking for $7,000 to break lease and are now asking us to leave due to me not being on the lease, which is something THEY said we had to do to get approved for the place in the first place. Crazy. Visible water damage and mold with health consequences, all documented, is 100% grounds for us to leave without penalty and full deposit back. Reminder it’s against the law to demand money back on a legally unlivable apartment. Wouldn’t be making such a fuss if it wasn’t effecting my health and bank account.

December Update: it’s now been 2 months since reporting the mold and someone has come by to look at it finally last week. When I told them they can’t just rip it up with all my stuff and animal in the apartment because that’s how spores spread and how I got sick in the first place and that im chronically ill. They were supposed to come by Wednesday with testers, then it was yesterday, now they’re 2 hours late so I’m assuming they’re prepping their lawyers for what is turning into a lawsuit. I’m at the point where I can’t sleep with the window closed and when I do (cause I have to due to high noise levels and MCAS being triggered by outdoor allergens) I wake up with a completely swollen face. I have an air filter running 24/7 and if I turn the fan down the VOC levels increase and PM2.5 and 10 particles increase within 5 minutes. I’m saving all pictures now for lawsuit but if you’re thinking of renting and need to see indoor air quality shoot me a message. I also have on record my lab results indicating mold has colonized in my system. After I learned this place is owned by GREYSTAR it all started making sense, but with how much money they make in a month between their dozens of properties I know they can afford to rehome us. I’m past the point of tolerance for this. I currently can’t go in the second bathroom to get pictures. I almost went into anaphylactic shock. I’m packing what I can now and getting out and sleeping somewhere I have no idea where yet.

It’s an old renovated hotel with mold everywhere. We were just staying in a 2 star the residence inn and that was nicer. I’m detoxing from toxic mold exposure from my last apartment, and this one is on par with the ones that made me almost die (literally). I’m moving out as soon as humanly possible cause I’m extremely sick now again after having 2 weeks staying at a friends out of a moldy environment where I started to feel better. And this is just after 3 nights sleeping here. They didn’t clean at all between residents, but they did slap on a coat of paint leaving parks everywhere so even if it were clean it doesn’t look like it. The amount of caked on dust, dirt, human waste, and mold on every surface was shocking to me, and a huge health hazard. I had to close off all my stuff in one room that took me 3 hours to deep clean so I’m not exposed to even more mold. My heart almost gave out so this is serious for me.

It’s funny too cause they even were like “yea we hate Irvine company” (where we lived before and how I got so sick in the first place) and gave us a mold discount. Lol nice trick guys nice one. I’ll be leaving with my deposit asap. And if they wanna keep it, I’ll go ahead and remind them of the laws which require you to take care of your units. Oh yea and the indoor humidity level is 78%.

Update: I’m so excited for the AI response for this one and for nothing to be addressed. Night one sleeping in my car was cold.

Update: no concerns were addressed. My air filter reads extremely high VOCs and they just came to caulk over the mold, no remediation, no removal, just spreading the spores so I got pretty sick again. Also, since this apartment is below cleanliness/ safety standards, I’ll be using the pictures above, taken immediately after moving in, to justify us getting our full deposit back, plus some for all the deep cleaning I had to do from the last resident. I’m not a...

We first moved here in the summer of 2022, and while the first month seemed great, it quickly went downhill after that. Here’s a rundown of what we experienced.

Fire alarms going off way too much. They even went off at 4am, which of course woke everyone up. Staff sent out a generic email stating they identified the problem, and were working to fix it. Come to find out much later after reading some of the reviews here, that it was in fact caused by someone’s car getting set on fire in the parking garage. I guess the staff did not think we deserved to know the truth of what happened.

The parking garage gate is left open 24/7, meaning literally anyone can walk in off the street (which is probably how a resident’s car got set on fire). This is not safe at all. We’ve already had a homeless person using the clubhouse, and possibly other amenities. And we know that person was homeless because my husband saw her sleeping on the street in another part of town.

Extremely rude neighbors. The worst part for us has been our terribly rude upstairs neighbors. They let their kids run and stomp 24/7. It’s so bad that it causes our ceiling fans and light fixtures to shake like there’s an earthquake happening. It scares my toddlers, and wakes them from sleep, it’s that bad. We can’t even have guests over because the noise is so loud and thunderous. It’s like a herd of elephants running across the entirety of our apartment ceiling. We’ve called security multiple times, but they either don’t answer the phone or if they do, they don’t bother to show up. They are useless. I’ve emailed management about this problem several times as well, but nothing is ever done. I’m always told they’ll be speaking to the neighbors in question, but it obviously does nothing because they keep doing the same behavior. These neighbors are terribly disrespectful and rude. They don’t care, and neither does Rize. This, coupled with the lack of concern from Rize, has really ruined our time here. We have been essentially left to fend for ourselves in this matter. Rize doesn’t care about their residents at all. If you’re looking to move into apartment 1132, my advice is don’t. The upstairs neighbors will make your life miserable.

Packages will get stolen. While I never had a package stolen from my front door, I did have one stolen from the mailroom. I gave specific instructions to leave said package at my front door, but the carrier ignored that and left it in the mailroom with a picture of where it was placed. I was already not happy about my instructions being ignored, only to find out when I actually get there that the package was in fact not there. I looked everywhere, and it was just gone. It was baby food and formula. So if you know how bad the baby formula shortage has been, you know this wasn’t good at all. I had to scramble to find food and formula for my babies, because a carrier couldn’t be bothered to follow simple instructions, and a resident decided to steal what clearly didn’t belong to them. Even after they presumably opened the box and saw what was inside, they still didn’t feel the need to return my package. Tells you a bit about the character of some of the people living in this building. It took me over a week to receive replacements for what was stolen from me.

-The manager Darbie is extremely hard to get ahold of. When my husband needed to talk to her about the problem with our upstairs neighbors, he was told to call at a certain time which he did, and Darbie did not answer, just ignored him and never called us back. She stays in her office a majority of the time hiding from the residents. In fact, one time I was so frustrated with the upstairs neighbors and their horrendous noise, I went down to the leasing office instead of calling. Darbie was there with Jonathan, and she had the nerve to look as though I interrupted her. She seemed put off that I came down in person to speak with her about this ongoing issue. Very unprofessional in my book.

TLDR: if you’re looking to move to Irvine, don’t...

Update on July 10, 2024 Ingenious Managment under Darbie’s lead added so much Chlorine into the pool that it burns any exposed areas, especially the eyes. One of my neighbors had to take their child to the emergency room after swimming at Rize. Practically no one uses the pool since it feels like a toxic waste dump.

We have new development at Rize. Since management encourages nightly use of the apartments, you can find Keyes on the entry gate, see the photos, the homeless people started visiting the complex. The main elevator smells like a wet rancid homeless people; it really is nauseating. Specifically the homeless apartments are on the 4th and 5th floor - that’s where I’ve seen them get off the elevator … unbelievable

Review written on August 20, 2023.

The response from Rize for comments is an automated message. I appealed to Darbie on an occasion when I was charged extra $ for the lapsed renters insurance or when I was charged penalties since new Managment transitioned to a new payment system and autopay didn’t execute or when we were negotiating a renters rate for the next year.

Current manager continues to make this place unliveable. Most of my neighbours whom I met 4-5 years ago are moving out because of the unbearable unsafe conditions.

See photos for the key boxes at the gate for “night use of the apartments”

Police comes her on a regular basis, at least once a week, for various misdemeanours and felonies.

I lived at Rize since 2019 and I second other tenants reviews.

New manager Darbie is abusive and aggressive toward employees and residents

Darbie greets you with an aggressive smile showing her teeth and wild eyes 👀. In an unprofessional manner she makes personal comments attempting to devalue you. Furthermore Darbie dug around my resident file and found past information then proceeded to ask me questions about my personal relationships ….. that an unhealthy trait of psychologically not well person.

Darbie failed to accommodate me with new management’s transition to new payment system. I constantly have to pay late fees and other accounting discrepancies because her team can not fix her financial online payment system. Perhaps that’s how she makes money for the company?…

As a resident, besides paying constantly increasing rent & utilities which vary wildly, expect to pay $300 per year for someone to take out your trash, however the company doesn’t take out trash and Darbie harasses the residents sending them memo’s like: “this will be noted in your resident file.” That will make you cringe if you make a mistake of signing a lease here.

Someone rents out apartments on AirBnB and Zillow. So there are random unsafe people coming in an out of apartments. 2 of my female neighbors have different male visitors every night.

If we have a Lawyer at RIZE or any of the residents or perhaps current employees of the managment company would like to form an action harassment lawsuit please respond to this review.

Darbie is a danger to the company, employees and residents at Rize. She is pervasive into personal lives of the residents. She is abusive with employees, she doesn’t understand boundaries.

I didn’t mention, all the uncontrolled parties, drug use, a stabbing. Calm and decent Rize community that once was a safe place, Darbie turned into a psychological thriller.

Bonus: here’s how Darbie makes $ for the new managment company:

They charged me over $400 for insurance fees , because during the change managment they Rize office didn’t communicate with the rent insurance company.

There’s never soap or paper in the public bathrooms !!!

Darbie charges “late” rent fees and when you try to make payment prior to the due date the system doesn’t allow you or is off line or there’s another reason why it’s not working.

Check out the photos of a torched BMW At RIZE, the whole building had to evacuate at 3:00 am. The security in the building is non existent. One lady got harassed by drug users in...