Hidden Lake Apartments — Local services in Stow

DO NOT RENT HERE. If you read one review, let this be the one. When they say read the negative reviews and listen to them, they weren’t lying.

When you first tour and view these apartments, it may seem all sunshine and rainbows, but once you move in and see what issues lie underneath the surface, you’ll realize the mess you got yourself into. Hidden Lake Apartments is the most unprofessional, inhabitable place I’ve ever came across. Please read this review if you’re even considering renting here. To start, I had issues w the property in general, but I reached out to Banyan, their upper management company to get them resolved and did not even get a response, they ignore you and don’t bother. Not only will the property manager Makela, not respond to your emails and concerns, but even their higher ups won’t. Essentially you’ll just be stuck with a shi*ty apartment, bug infested, old utilities that fall apart, late maintence jobs, and ultimately wasting your money here because the price compared to what you get is a rip off on its own. That’s neither here or there though. What really pushed us over the edge is having NO AC FOR OVER 5 DAYS. When we tried to complain about this, they offered us a small cooling unit temporarily that cooled not even a portion of the room, let alone the apartment itself. We emailed to try to get a rent reduction or any compensation regarding the week we were literally almost forced to vacate our home and go be in a hotel, but of course, Makela thought it was a good idea to justify it by saying they didn’t have the parts on hand, which isn’t our problem nor does it justify living in an inhabitable environment for almost a week. She ignored multiple emails sent to her regarding compensation, and stopped replying to us.

I don’t even know how they have the positive reviews they do, but it seems like it’s probably the employees or friends of the company who leave the good reviews, otherwise there’s literally no way. We've had no AC for almost a WHOLE WEEK when it was insanely hot outside, multiple maintence issues that took almost a month to resolve, and other issues with their vendors leaving a mess on our floors and in our closest where we have clothes that WE had to clean up at the end of the day. The property manager really does not care about tenants, does not respond to emails promptly or even altogether, and overall won’t really care if you have a complaint. She will make it your fault somehow and not take any accountability even though it’s a issue that has to do with their negligence.

As mentioned, when we inquired with Makela about these issues, she didn’t take accountability or apologize, nor did she come up with a resolution for us. We decided to take matters into our own hands by reaching out to Banyan directly, as mentioned prior, and to our lovely surprise, crickets. No one responded, no one cared.

The only time you will get a response from either the property managers or Banyan, is under their reviews occasionally, because they try to save face. They won’t actually address your issues. It’s disrespectful and ridiculous and I will never rent here or from any Banyan owned apartments again after my lease is up. I will also be notifying everyone I know and posting on social media to steer clear from any Banyan owned Apartments, especially Hidden Lakes in Stow and sharing my experience.

I hope you people see this review and feel shame on yourself for the way you run your business and allow these unprofessional property managers to manage your properties, and allowing them to ignore the people that keep it in business in the first place. Ignoring your tenants and their requests and complaints is not the way you run a company, and more people will surely see...

PLEASE KEEP LOOKING ELSEWHERE! I think this apartment complex does a really good job of “looking good” and it’ll do it’s best to reel the tenants in, but when you’re here, you really get the “hidden lake experience.” What’s the hidden lake experience you may ask? Well for starters, depending on when you move in, maintenance checks are mandatory and they’ll come in min 6/7 times a month in May to fix something that would completely not affect your life whatsoever. They had these 3rd party vendors come in, “fix the sprinklers” and then leave the mess behind them as they left the apartment. Surprisingly there’s a sprinkler in the closet so if you got some nice clothes in there, they’ll look even nicer with the small pieces of drywall you’ll have to clean off. Maybe you’d like to spend the night sleeping in from a long days of work, well do you remember how I told you they take good care of the look of the complex, well Davey’s mowing will have no problem waking you up. Nothing like 7am mowing! Bathroom ventilation turned off? Don’t worry! Hidden Lakes will make sure you get taken care of “within 30 days” (it took them 30 days to fix ours). I suppose air fresheners should do the job, they’ve got bigger things to do I suppose. You voice your complaints to them, and what do they? Blame you. The rent itself is a bit expensive nowadays, 1200+ for a 1bd 1bth and 750 sqft. Their amenities are the same, if not worse as basically every other apartment you stay at. It’s a bit unreasonable to charge so much for bare minimum amenities on top of everything else. I do actually like the maintenance workers themselves, they shouldn’t really be held accountable for the apartment complex’s management incompetence. I really hope anyone reading this review can explore their options prior to signing a lease with these guys. I know the Stow/Hudson area can seem appealing and that the location is very convenient, but please explore all the other options prior. You’ll save yourself a...

STAY FAR AWAY.

We lived here for 3 years, the first two of which were fine. The past year, things went downhill. Don’t bother putting in a work order; it’ll get ignored for at least a month. We had an active leak in our apartment for a month -water coming out of our outlets and dripping from the ceiling. After submitting multiple work orders, maintenance didn’t come over until we called and complained. We had consistent issues with mice and hearing rodents crawling through the ceilings at night. Our mouse infestation was so bad we had to stay with family. The complex did hire a pest control service to come over, but it was too late. Promises were made that maintenance would come over to clean up from the mice infestation in areas we could not access, which never happened. Our mouse problem continued for months and we discovered it was worse than we thought upon move out. We are exceptionally neat people - the mouse issue was not our fault. It was incredibly frustrating that maintenance was not on top of this consistent problem. There were multiple points of entry the pest control service found that were never patched up by maintenance.

Snow removal/salting was almost nonexistent this past winter, making for dangerous driving conditions in and out of the complex. There are also tire-ruining potholes that have been in the complex for most of the time we’ve lived there. There are apparent structural issues and visible water damage to the unit we stayed in, through no fault of our own.

The best part is, maintenance painted right over the water damage in our unit. No doubt they won’t fully repair the water damage and the next tenants will have mold.

All of these issues are not worth your money and energy. We were patient and good tenants, but the issues we had at Hidden Lakes were beyond stressful and out of control. Wish we could get...