Persea — Local services in Vista

REVIEW UPDATE: I stayed for an additional contract, mistake on my part, shouldn't have been soo lazy and been more proactive with wanting to leave. So here's more news:

They decided to switch to a new rent payment service in the middle of December. The previous autopayment setup I had was removed. They're using a provider called "Bilt" and it's built to serve you ads, get you on their credit card and put a sketchy app on your phone. Which probably only exists to track as much data as they possibly can to sell.

There was already limited parking if you wanted to have a friend over, as the guest spots were always occupied by residents. So they decided to convert half of the guest parking to paid parking spots. Smart decision from a business perspective.

These two points should make it clear that you should not expect Persea to stay the same when you move here. The honeymoon period will fade quickly as things change for the owner's benefit and to the detriment of the renters.

The homeless aren't digging through the trash as frequently anymore. They probably stopped because all of the trash dumpers come by to drop off their furniture. You can barely throw away a trash bag without having to navigate the pile of furniture that block the path. And since it's not trash that the trash service has to pick up it all just sits around and collects even more.

I don't want to update this review, but at the same time I wish I knew what was going to happen before I moved here. The last places I rented from never had any of these problems and I paid a fraction of the price that I'm paying to live here. For a fundamentally solid business. Persea, and probably more broadly Greystar sure do make it difficult for their renters to feel like they're getting a good deal.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: The price you pay is not worth the additional amenities that Persea has compared to other Apartment Complexes. You can probably find another apartment complex with only the amenities that are relevant for you.

My main complaints are about the safety of this community. Even though there's a fence. Every week (almost daily) homeless people walk through the gates and rummage through the trash. Similarly once a month solicitors come by and knock on doors to sell you something. The final straw for me was when I saw the security guard walk past a package thief wheeling around an entire wagon full of packages. Who then proceeded to load up their car and drive away. It feels like the only purpose of the security guard is to make sure that the common areas are empty when the curfew hits.

Weekly/daily emails about "rule reminders", don't park you car here, here's how to swim in a swimming pool, remember to not store boxes on your balcony, having more than 2 guests in a common area is considered a party and we will charge you. Fill out this survey, tell us what you think, win a prize, donate to this and that. If people break the rules of their lease they should know better, stop contacting me about things I already know. And I don't care about your prizes or advertisements I just want to live in the apartment and not be bombarded junk emails.

On the positive sides. Maintenance responds quickly when a request is made and typically does a good job at fixing the problem. They maintain or at least know when something needs to be fixed or replaced within their common areas, like the gym or hangout room. Although it might take a couple of weeks/months to get addressed. Neighbors are nice.

If you do sign a lease only expect to stay for the length of the contract. As they'll surely raise the rental price with no wiggle room because of their...

======================Update===================== I've lived here for almost two years, it really was a nice place at the beginning. I would've given it four stars if it stayed the way it was. Overtime this place slowly became undesirable for any renters out there. I'm moving out of this place soon and I want to leave this final review for anyone looking at Persea in the future. Please be careful when considering renting at Persea.

The constant noise disturbance and trembles in my unit has forced me to find places to sleep outside of my own apartment. Its an ongoing issue for over three months that hasn't been resolved by leasing office. If you want more details I have previous review below.

I have friends living in Persea in different buildings. They had to call the police for witnessing domestic violence just recently. I've also seen police on site several times. The safety of this place is really starting to fall. On top of that, there's been many incidents of peoples' packages being stolen.

We used to have a strict no smoking rule, I'm not sure what happened but whenever I step outside of my apartment at night I immediately smell weed half of the time. I've even seen people smoking outside in public space in broad daylight just one block down from the leasing office.

This is a pet friendly community, its very unfortunate and gross that people stopped cleaning up after their pets. The smell used to be only concentrated in the park and certain buildings, now they're pretty much everywhere. People have their dogs urinate on the staircase. Our stairwell is very small, so the smell lingers for a long time.

I recommend checking through recent reviews of Persea if you're considering this place. Please renters, be careful with this place.

Update===================== Since my last review, the noise had not subsided. The unit causing noise disturbance at moved out only for another unit to start blasting their subwoofers in middle of the night. On top of that, my unit has a constant low hum rumble that goes on for 24 hours everyday that I've reported 2 months ago and it still hasn't been resolved. They still don't know where its coming from. I've attached a video in this review with a recording of the tremble from the bass with a sound meter. It goes up to 60 decibels in the bedroom. (That's similar to the vibration of the engine of your car. Imagine sleeping on top of it.)

I used to live near noisy neighbor in my previous places, and this place is the worst out of them all. This place is not habitable. Do not rent here. I haven't slept well for over a year, and the noise problem only seems to get worse.

There's a rule here for quiet hours and disturbance during at hour of the day, it is not being reinforced at all so everyone just do whatever they want. Even if you contact management or courtesy patrol nothing happens.

In short, this place is very noisy, and if you happen to live next to a neighbor that blast their subwoofers during quiet hours your only option is to move or wait for them to move. At this point I'm exploring legal actions. Save yourself the headache, look elsewhere...

We lived here for a year and a half, and while we liked the apartment and leasing team, there are a lot of not so great things about living here. I would not call this place evenly remotely safe. We lived right on the street - if you do decide to live here, absolutely do NOT live on the street side. The road noise is ridiculous. We couldn’t leave the windows open at night to cool the place down, because it was just too loud. If we were watching TV in the living room, we had to close the windows to be able to hear it, or to even hear each other. Our background noise was cut mufflers, cars speeding through the intersection, horns, and BLARING music. If you were listening to a song in your car, we could hear every word. The dust from the road was also insane. Everything on our balcony was covered in thick, black dust which ruined our rugs and other fabric pieces. Make sure your outdoor decor is easy to clean, or it’ll be ruined. And the window sills get filthy too, so I don’t even really want to know what the air quality was but considering how often our throats and noses would be bothered, I assume it was bad. The other big thing is bugs. We were lucky enough not to see cockroaches inside, but the complex is crawling with them. You WILL get ants, and a lot of them. We had a problem from day one, before there was even food inside. In the summer you will be dealing with a straight up infestation, so get a really good pest spray. I probably killed thousands of ants during our summers here. Apparently the spiders get really bad in the apartments in the back of the complex - our leasing agent literally advised us against one of the back units because the last resident moved to a different unit on the property because she couldn’t handle the amount of spiders.

The move out process here is a joke, too. We were going to renew, but they raised the rent on us to $3600, which for this area is really a robbery. We were told by staff that sometimes the owners can help residents out with rent, so we wrote a letter detailing our safety concerns and problems with our unit, hoping we could match the market price of our floor plan (which was $3200 at the time) or at least not have the rent raised. They offered us $24 off, which wouldn’t even cover the $80 parking fee. Upon move out, they said we could either clean the place ourselves or pay them $280 to do it for us. We spent 8 hours cleaning the unit and touching up paint and any wall damage ourselves. They charged us the full cleaning fee anyways, on top of paint touch ups and carpet treatment because we had pets. The maintenance guy who did our inspection said that it’s really hard to meet their standards, and clearly that’s true. Don’t even waste your time cleaning, just pay the charge and make them do it, since you’re going to be hit with the charge anyways. We loved the staff for our whole time living here, but our move out experience was so nasty. Remember how we asked for our rent to stay at $3500 or be lowered to the market price of $3200 and were refused? The listed price for our unit after move-out was 4-6 hundred less than our...