The Preserve at Terrell Mill Apartments — Local services in Smyrna

I only have 750 characters to sum it up but I have a lot more to say! But to be short: everything is gross!!! Only rent here if you must. Not joking.

Here are the facts:

Rent is WAY too high for what you are getting. The kitchen has cracks where bugs come in and out of. Also, they have super cheap cabinet drawers that are also cracked and dysfunctional. Cabinet doors are falling off; some of them don’t even close. The unit is put together in a very cheap fashion where things are not leveled. The fridge door never stays open. I had to keep it open with my leg every single time. The counter top looks like dirt was spilled into the sand. It’s awful! The wall color is depressing and ugly.

Bugs. There are ants, fruit flies and roaches. Many, many fruit flies! Big roaches.

When I got this unit it took them 10 months to fix my shower and they did a horrible job! They made my tub so slippery that it is dangerous. I had to hold onto the wall when I needed to turn. During that 10 months I have had so many workers coming in and out of my unit that after that I didn’t let anyone in anymore. The shower tiles? They are a joke!

Water. Be prepared for management cutting off the water without any warning. Keep water with you at all times because sometimes they shut it off for the whole day. The water quality is horrible. I had to boil water first and then filter it to be able to drink it. It smells bad and tastes bad.

Smells. You can smell everything. The neighbor’s cooking, making coffee, smoking, drugs…everything. You come home from a hard day at work and when you enter you smell what your neighbor’s are doing….

Druggies. Lots of them. This place is as illegal as it can get. And because Management doesn’t do very effective job of getting rid of them, they are accessories to the crime. If the neighbor is smoking drugs, you smell it through the vents. You smell it everywhere in your apartment at any time. AWFUL!!! There is just no relaxing in this apartment. Very upsetting. Lots of frustrations.

Storage: adequate.

Outside. Awful, depressing, full of drug smells, no landscaping.

Trash. There were times where the trash was in the hallways for 5 weeks bc Management didn’t do a thing about it. Gross!!! There are still times and weeks when the valet service people don’t come and if you don’t report it to Management, they won’t notice it on their own…. GROSS!!!

People living here. They don’t seem to speak English. People rather hide behind their own language so when they are responsible for something they put up their hands saying they don’t speak English. This is America! We speak English here! They also fly through Stop signs. No one stops…. Loud cars, loud car music… Speed bumps are broken, so people push you off the road because they want to drive where there is no speed bump.

Dog poop. Everywhere. The so called dog park is used to dumping. The owners don’t even go inside there anymore. They let their dog in to do their business and they leave without picking up. But just everywhere. Sidewalks, driving road, dog park, anywhere really. GROSS! It took 3 years for Management to finally put dog waste bins outside! 3 years when it is a legal requirement when the complex accepts animals….

Parking is aberrated. People do park backwards going all the way to the curb blocking the sidewalk which is also illegal. Also, they park with all kinds of big vehicles where small cars should park.

Lots of screws scattered around. I have stepped into many piercing through my shoes.

Management is cheap and awful. Ignorance is high. They don’t like to communicate. They also are bad with money management. They will waste your dollars on needless things like painting the road instead of paving it or putting up car stoppers at the parking lot or building up retainer walls where it doesn’t even matter…. They also hire the worst and cheapest maintenance people. Very slow and inactive Management. You also can’t call them…

Drugs are definitely a problem here. Please report it if you smell it. These guys can be regulated if they...

Do yourself a favor and stay very far away from this place. Seriously, I should have gone to Rockledge or anywhere else in the area because you get nothing you signed up for at Barrington Mills/The Preserve.

First, No functioning working gate. I was lied to that the gate would be fixed within the month...that was last year when we signed the lease. 6 months later we are being told that we were given wrong information and that it costs a lot of money to fix the gates (apparently safety isn't a priority). I was pretty patient about maintenance issues until my ceiling had a leak that was blatantly disregarded for 6 weeks. It was only when I took time off of work to schedule 3 separate meetings with management to terminate my lease that all of a sudden I come home to a hack job of various cosmetic fixes around my home. There's debris everywhere** If there's going to be work done, shouldn't i get a notice so I can move things out of the way like my toothbrush or makeup brushes or towels? Instead, my towels were on the floor, there's debris all over, and there's chips on my bathroom rug from whoever had a snack in my bathroom/bedroom (which we never eat in the rooms because of the roach problems). Just imagine how violated you'd feel if you come home and someone has touched/dirtied your things and moved things out of place? Literally even my toothbrush had dust all over it. Do yourself a favor and don't move here. There's plenty of other places that won't screw you over and then try to trap you in your lease, keep your deposit, and make you pay an early termination fee because they're just not done screwing you over.

Time and time again, there is absolutely no common courtesy to be shown here. Here's a bulleted list of things wrong with the apartment: Roaches everywhere (as if they spray roach food and not insecticide) dishwasher that doesn't open all the way (installed in front of fridge) and can't seem to wash things we squeeze through the crack without leaking unfinished cabinetry (probably where the roaches are coming from) filthy a/c vents rude and inattentive maintenance (6 weeks for a leak, really?) no gate (and apparently no money to fix it but they still advertise a gated community and happily take everyone's money) interior kwikset door knobs installed on your exterior front door (anyone with a flat wire can open it, woohoo) -zero insulation (get ready for you utility bills to skyrocket winter and summer) no sound proofing (no insulation and cheap hollow core doors = you hear everything like the neighbor coughing, singing happy birthday Maria, and knowing exactly what show they're watching on netflix - spoiler alert!) lackluster "renovated" gym (old cardio machines in a dusty basement, spin/yoga room full of dust and bugs and no mirror, 5 ill-equipped weight machines, no sanitary measures - ew) filthy pools awful water pressure (seriously it's a lukewarm trickle on a good day) broken/sketchy/poorly lit mailboxes loose outlets (fixed with tape) exposed wire no smoke alarm (lol how I showed manager the picture and she said the battery is just missing... there's nothing there) no street lights random people walking through the "gated" community found a playboy magazine when investigating the leak (who knows how long that's been up there, I guess maintenance chose to overlook it when they came to "inspect" the leak the first time...or maybe it belongs to them - who cares that it's gross, right?) lyng, manipulative, and sneaky management

The funny part is, I'm going to get a response from them like, "sorry it didn't meet your expectations, please reach out so we can talk." But here's the thing, you person who is interested in getting an apartment here: I'm a reasonable human who just wanted a safe and clean place to live and I've talked myself into a stupor dealing with the aforementioned bulleted points. If you still end up signing a lease here after seeing this review, you're probably a sadist, bless...

UPDATE: DON'T MOVE HERE IF AT ALL POSSIBLE

It started out okay but continues to get worse. The leasing agents are extremely unhelpful. They never answer their phones, never respond to emails. But are the first to send out last minute notifications (like the day before... and include threats to charge you if action isn't taken... but give you less than 24 hours to do so).

They make it extremely difficult to get out of your lease and get important information to a future landlord. They say you need a form but won't tell you where or how to get the form. And then they are extremely rude and gaslight you as if you don't know anything about renting simply because you've never had to sign a release form.

The laundry units are disgusting, not taken care of, and more than half of the dryers and washers haven't worked for the 15th months I've lived there. And they ignore requests to fix them.

The security gates haven't worked for the entire 15th months I've lived here.

There has been garbage and a pile of rubble sitting out by the pool for months. And garbage from other tenants just left sitting around and stinking up the hallways.

And they have the audacity to charge for all of these extra "amenities" that suck, are broken down majority of the time, and are unusable.

When it says you'll be pay $1095, you'll more than likely be paying closer to $1250/$1300.

Just don't rent here if at all possible.

I'm from Los Angeles, so an apartment like this for the price that it is, to me, is a steal. I've been here almost a year and staff is friendly, maintenance is on top of it, as with any older apartment there have been a couple roaches but pest control was on top of it, and it's mostly quiet apart from someone with a truck that has an extremely loud bass late at night lol... however...

They have a few annoying rules and rent add ons that I'm not used to as a Los Angeleno, like valet trash - you have to bring the nasty trash can inside your apartment every day, they just added wifi that you have to opt into and pay for, you can't have screens in your windows or patio sliding door so if you want fresh air you're gonna have to deal with bugs coming inside your apartment, just to name a few.

Also, you have to drive to the laundry units, they're kind of always dirty, and half of the machines haven't been working for months and the gates that are supposed to help secure the apartment complex haven't been working since I got here (a whole year). They also do a shoddy job with fixing up the shower - the paint or whatever it is, is peeling up off the floor of the tub, some of the cabinets and draws were placed wrong and have some gaps, and I'm pretty sure there was a leak/mold in my bathroom since I moved in.

Apart from these few annoying things, it's a decent place to live (again, in comparison to LA). As my first year in Georgia, I'd say it was an okay, soft place to land before finding a better, more convenient...