Santa Clara Apartment Homes — Local services in Westpark

Lived here for a little over 1 year. The move in process and my stay here were really good, finding and locking in the apartment went very smoothly, maintenance staff on premises are great, never had any issues with neighbors. The unit itself is a little on the older side, appliances were clean but a little dated. Community was also kept clean, including fitness centers and pools. There's the occasional moron revving their engines in the morning, but otherwise a pretty quiet place to live. Main issue was during move out. I submitted my notice 30 days before I planned to move out and physically moved out 1 day early. The move out process was a bit of a mess, the resident services people don't seem to have it together. One time I got multiple calls about my move out on the same day. A lady called me in the morning and called me again in the afternoon for the same reason. Whenever I asked specific questions, I tended to get back non-specific answers. After I've moved out, I receive my final move out statement and they've falsely changed my notice date so it seems like my move out date is days later. I know they had the right date because I had a previous email acknowledging when I submitted my move out notice. I called the office and a woman says they added extra days because they didn't charge me for carpet removal, which as I understand, I shouldn't be charged for anyways since I was there just over a year. I do have a pet, that I got a few months before moving out, but when I left the carpet was clean and had no issues. Even if it did, the proper thing would have been to notify me that the carpet had problems and charge me accordingly, not underhandedly change my move out date. She said she'd work on it and get back to me, one week later and after a follow up, no response, so I escalated to corporate. The corporate person was very responsive and helpful and I got another call from who I believe was the office manager, but instead of getting all of the pro-rated rent back, they still added an additional day of pro-rated rent. There was some vague explanation of utilities and other reasons, but my utilities every month usually amounted to $80 per month and should have been prorated for a partial month, not the $100 they took at the end. At this point, I was happy to not have to deal with them so I didn't argue back. If you plan to live here for a long time and don't mind the last month of headaches, the location and actual living space is worthwhile. Just beware of the move...

I have lived at Santa Clara for almost a year now and made a transfer already from our original 1 bedroom to a two bedroom unit. I had read a review on another platform that basically described this property as a hidden gem, a diamond in the rough, if you will. The reviewer was actually fearful that her amazing review would draw a ton of people and cause market prices to rise, etc, etc. I knew I had to check it out. I NEVER write reviews but have been wanting to write an honest review for some time to pay it forward as my experience here has been fantastic!

To do full justice, I will have to edit this review to elaborate on all of the positive staff members and experience I have had here. For now, allow me to talk about their super star Service Manager, Michael Prieto, and his team.

Michael is the manager of the maintenance team. He is the finisher on your move in (and move out for that matter when we transferred). He has a high attention detail when you move in and will ensure that YOU think your place is in perfect condition. He helped me on my move in by switching out an entire vertical blind track that was warped and not providing full privacy. He also helped me on my transfer with removing some nasty adhesive child proofing that I was having problems removing.

Michael is also the sweetest person you will ever meet. He took his day off to monitor an outside contractor that needed access to our unit to fix a power issue in the unit above. He checked on us during a recent earthquake to ensure we were okay and he offered to get me medication from the store when I was so sick I could hardly manage on my own.

Michael sets the bar so high on customer service it is no wonder he has a team that equally supports and sticks around for YEARS. I have only met Eduardo and Chui a couple of times, but they are the skillful doers and executers of this great work. Reina is the queen of everything. She is super sweet and so helpful. Love, love, love her. She is always running around but makes time to stop and chat and squeeze the baby. I love talking to her and using her as a resource on any questions I have.

*TO...

I’ve been living here for almost 5 months, and I really like this place. Everything look good and maintenance is perfect and fast love it and It’s a quiet community 5+ for all this but here is the story happened last weekend. After traveling for a while, we came back, and my wife parked our car outside in front of the building, as we’ve done for the last 5 months. But the next day, Sunday morning, our car was towed, and we had to pay $510 to get it back.

When I called the manager, they told us we’re not allowed to park outside without permission. When we first moved in, they said we could park outside or in the garage, but that the outside spots were for guests, and we just needed to register on the Irvine Apartments portal. Now they’re saying we can’t park outside for more than 20 minutes or we’ll get towed.

This is so frustrating because after 5 months, they’ve started giving parking tickets to people with second cars and aren’t allowing us to park outside anymore. It feels like the maintenance guys are reporting cars to the tow company since they seem to know how long each car has been parked.

It’s really disappointing because they told us one thing when we moved in, but now they’re saying something different. They even told us we were just lucky our car didn’t get towed earlier. Two months ago, I parked in the same spot for 10 days while I was in Seattle, and it wasn’t towed. Something’s...