**LONG POST ALERT**

If you’re just here for the linkup, scroll to the end.  I wanted to share this on a linkup post, because I want as many people as possible, to see this post.  We live in a small world and you never know, you or someone you know may be looking into this apartment complex.  I want this apartment exposed for the scum that they are.  Please share this post so that it can help someone else into never having to deal with this!  If you ask why we didn’t take legal action, it’s because we just wanted to close this horrible chapter and never look back, plus who knows how long this would have been drawn out in court.  Our lives are worth more than any settlement we would ever possibly get.  We were also already planning on moving out of state, so we thought it’s best to just leave it as is and start over fresh elsewhere.

I have been debating on whether or not I should post about this, especially since it’s been quite some time since we moved out of NJ.  However, because I have NJ people following and reading my blog, I NEED to get this information out in the open, so that no one else has to go through what we went through.  The Google review for this apartment complex is still too high at a 1.9.  When they almost killed us (which I will get into later) I told them that if they worked with us I wouldn’t go public with this, but because they didn’t and I’ve already posted my Google review (which got a lot of likes, and inspired me to write the full post), I needed to talk more in depth about EVERYTHING.  I’m going to break this post up into a 3 part series, so if you want to only learn about how they almost killed us you can skip to part 3.  However, if you’re someone who is actually interested in this apartment complex, make sure to read all 3 parts.  Anyway, let’s get into it.

PART 1:  THE BEGINNINGS

PREFACE

My fiance and I were looking for our first apartment in 2016.  We were both really tight on money, so we had to find a place that was within our very small budget and a pet friendly complex.  The area that we were looking in, didn’t really have much to choose from because there were only 3 places that were pet friendly, and only one that fit into our budget.  That was Oakwood Village, now called Overlook at Flanders in Flanders, NJ.  I think everyone and their mother has lived or still continues to live in this complex.  It was the least shady complex in the area at the time that allowed pets.

Red flag number one was the day that we went to the leasing office and got our keys.  We were so excited and went to open the doors for the first time, and the keys wouldn’t unlock the door.  When we called the leasing office, Liz told us to just “wiggle it a little bit” to open the door.  Are you kidding me?  Well, my fiance was not having that and told her to get a maintenance person to our place right away because the entire door knob needed to be replaced.  They sent someone over and it took most of the afternoon for them to get us into our apartment.  We were finally moved in and were now starting to notice so many things that were wrong that we didn’t notice before.

Just to let everyone know, we always paid our rent on time and only contacted the office for major repairs (we did a lot of things ourselves because it took too much time to get someone in our apartment, plus we didn’t feel comfortable with people coming in when we weren’t home).  We did make a lot of memories only because it was our first apartment together, and we had only had a few sleepovers in the two years we had been dating prior to moving in together.  What makes me so mad, is that the complex is so disgusting and our apartment was completely shot, and every year we would get a rent increase (which is normal in NJ, as long as it doesn’t exceed 4% which they didn’t, but then they would tack on other fees that would bring it to astronomical prices).  They built this brand new leasing office and rec center along with getting golf carts that are electrically powered and that’s where our money went.  It’s funny because we were told about the fitness center being built in 2016 ad would be done within the year 2016 and it wasn’t done until 2018.  When we first moved in, our rent alone was $1225 (not including any utilities because we had to pay for electric, gas, internet, water, trash, etc. on our own) and when we moved out it had increased to over $1400, and it would have gone up to $1590 if we stayed another 12 months.  Now, keep in mind this is for a one bedroom rinky dink apartment built in the 70’s with little to no renovations done since then.  I would also like to add that the ONLY person in that entire leasing office (not sure why they even had all those people when they use an outside service for customer service and I really don’t think any of those people worked) that was the least bit helpful was Casey.  No one wanted to tell me how much would be owed at the end of the lease in March since it was prorated (the lease expired March 12th) and she was the only one who sent me an email with the numbers.  She was the sweetest person I have ever met, and she does not belong in that office.  She’s too nice and helpful to be a part of that team.

NEIGHBORS (GOOD AND BAD)

Our good neighbors did this for us when they found out that we got engaged when we went to Poland.  Later on we found out that all of these things were actually considered a fire hazard.  Not sure how?

GOOD NEIGHBORS COME TO THE RESCUE

Our neighbors across the hall were the best neighbors anyone could ask for.  They were so nice, and we actually spent a lot of time with them.  We were truly lucky to have them.  We had BBQ’s together and they invited us over every year for the annual Christmas party.  It didn’t matter if they had people over, they always had us join in with whoever they were outside with.  They had even met both my parents and my fiance’s parents along with all of our friends.  Looking out for each other was implied, and there was an incident during the winter of 2017 where my neighbor was actually there for and had called the cops.  There had been a suspicious vehicle parking next to my fiance’s work van for several days that would walk in the back door of the apartment building (the apartment had comforters covering the windows so that you couldn’t see into it whatsoever, my stereotypical basic true crime watching self assumed it was a trap house or was used for human trafficking) in front of us.  Since there is no assigned parking, sometimes my fiance would have to park all the way down the street and walk home because of people parking in spots that weren’t even connected to their building.  This lot was specifically for our building and suspicious car guy just thought it would be ok, because it’s convenient for him.

There was a huge snow storm, to the point where my job closed down the office and told us to work from home.  If you’re from the northeast, you know that it has to be really extreme with more than a foot of snow for them to shut down, or there is ice underneath that snow.  My fiance had been picked up by his dad because he had a 4×4 truck and they had to go to their shop and shovel out their parking lot and at least see how much snow they got there.  His dad’s business was located about 45 minutes away.  So, I was at home working.  Then I heard tires spinning in the massive amounts of snow that we got.  I looked out the window and saw the suspicious car guy trying to get out of his spot.  Ladies and gents, there was NO WAY that car was making it out of that spot, let alone even down the street, without hitting something.  I decided to go outside and watch him get out of the spot because he was getting extremely close to my fiance’s van and he seemed like the type to leave the scene of an accident.

Needless to say, he hit my fiance’s van, and he hit it hard.  That’s when I started taking pictures and recording the entire thing.  I have his friend (the one with the broom in the above picture), on video, calling me a lot of names for recording it and how it’s not a big deal because it’s a piece of shit work van anyway.  It’s not just the damage to the car, it’s the principle of the matter that you’re friend didn’t get out of the car and even apologize, or offer to fix whatever damage was done, he just went along trying to get out of the spot like hitting another car was no big deal.  While I was recording the video, the suspicious car guy had the audacity to open his door and tell me to go record someone else.  My neighbor was outside at the time and called the cops because he knew this would escalate as soon as he saw me come out and start recording.  When the cop showed up he had asked for the documentation for the van but because my fiance had the keys I told him we would have to send it to the station because he wasn’t even home.  The guy who was helping suspicious car guy had ran away as soon as he saw the cop car and hide.  I showed the cop the video and my neighbor even said he was a witness to all of this.  Come to find out, suspicious car guy had a warrant out for his arrest, and he had his license suspended.  They ended up taking him down to the station.

Moving on to the people who lived above us, and above our neighbors across the hall.  THEY WERE THE ABSOLUTE WORST!

Now, I understand that it’s apartment living, so I was expecting some crazy stuff and not being able to have peace and quiet because that’s just normal when you live in an apartment building built in the 70’s with no insulation and walls that are paper thin.  This was expected, but apparently, some truly scummy people lived in this complex.

UPSTAIRS GIRL

The woman who lived above us was the worst.  I think that she was in some legal trouble because even after she moved out there were people (shady people and people who looked like government officials) who would ring all of our doorbells looking for her and they legit would not stop until one of us answered.  I wouldn’t open the door so I would yell through the window and tell them to go to the leasing office and their response was always the same that they had already tried that and couldn’t get any information.  My neighbor across the hall stopped that one day when he talked to the people face to face and had a few choice words.  When we first moved in she was pretty quiet, she was outside smoking on her balcony one night when my fiance and I went outside with Lilly (this was before we adopted Zero) and we talked to her for a few minutes.  She seemed really nice and said that she had been living in that apartment because her and her husband had decided to separate.

A few weeks went by and by this point, my fiance and I had rescued Zero.  Within a week of having Zero, upstairs girl’s husband came back for her.  The fight that broke out was fucking scary.  I was about to call the cops because both Lilly and Zero were crying and hiding under furniture (Zero actually peed everywhere out of fear), while all of my lamps on the ceilings were shaking from the commotion coming from upstairs.  Needless to say, at that point I was worried that this girl had separated from him because of domestic violence.  Then, all of the sudden, I heard the door slam and I heard footsteps of a very heavy man go down the stairs.  There was complete silence.  I was wondering if I should go upstairs and check on her to see if she had been hurt, but I was too afraid of him coming back and possibly hurting me too.  However, then I heard her flipping a shit and cursing at him out of her window (remember, paper thin walls), so I figured she was ok.  Well, he eventually ended up moving in with her and she had told me that they were going to try this marriage thing out again.  Ok, you do you boo.

Even though her being an idiot wasn’t my problem, it actually was.  They would have karaoke together in the bedroom (which was obviously right above our bedroom) at 3am on week nights and they would be singing at the top of their lungs.  Then they would fight and we would hear things being thrown, things being broken, and doors being slammed.  It was so disrespectful to everyone, because EVERYONE in the building heard all of this going on.  Her husband used to take up about 2 spots in the parking lot and not give a rat’s ass, knowing that the parking situation was already really shitty.  Eventually it got to a point where there was confrontation between the neighbors, but thankfully she moved out in September of 2017, so we dealt with that for a little over a year.  That apartment was vacant until fall of 2018.  The new tenant was almost never home and I never even met her.

ABOVE OUR GOOD NEIGHBORS

Now, the neighbors across the hall from upstairs girl were terrible too.  They had dogs that would legit bark EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. they were brought outside. and they would go up and down the stairs at least 5 times a night (no idea how many times they brought them out during the day).  Then they would leave the dogs in the stairwell and allow them to sit by my door and torment my dogs who would viciously be barking and wanting to go out the door.  Being lazy was their fortay so they would never close the main door when they went out with the dogs.  That was until I told everyone in our building about how a girl I knew who lived two buildings away shared a photo of her door knob of someone trying to break in.  Once they moved out, the new neighbors were even worse.  They didn’t have dogs, but they would stomp up and down the stairs and play their music so loud that I could hear it in our bedroom and the neighbors across the hall talked to them multiple times because they would legit have parties every day.  It got to the point where our good neighbors told them they would start calling the cops because they had been nice about it long enough.  If you want to do that every once in a while or on the weekends fine, but not every day.  Also, the son would drive home drunk every night.  Unfortunately, we could never prove it, but we all knew.  He would stumble up the stairs and accidentally try to get into our apartments thinking it was his dad’s apartment.  It was an absolute nightmare.  However, at least we got extremely lucky with the neighbors across the hall.

PART 2:  CONSTANT REPAIRS & COMPLEX CULTURE

REPAIRS

These pictures aren’t even the worst of it.  This particular leak did the least amount of damage, but smelled horrible.

We had to call maintenance so many times.  I started to document it better at one point and share my experiences on Facebook to deter anyone from moving into this complex.  I know that some people may have said well just move out, and unfortunately, now that we had two dogs, it was a lot harder to find an apartment that would take pets, let alone two dogs.  Lilly and Zero were the only reason we were in that apartment for so long.  They had to fix my garage door I think 5 times within a few months.  Our neighbor’s laundry room would leak and seep into our storage unit which caused a lot of damage to our stuff.  The stench that came from those leaks was horrendous.  Our heat would stop working ALL. THE. TIME.  They had to relight the pilot light so many times, which caused gas leaks in our apartment that I would smell.  We complained about this a bunch of times, and they legit never did anything major, besides just relight the pilot light.  I’m no licensed technician, but I’m pretty sure if a pilot light has gone out that many times, it’s time to look and see if there is a bigger problem that needs to be looked at.

Our AC was broken when we used it for the first time, then it kept breaking.  They installed a new unit and again, it broke so many times.  There was one time on a weekend on one of the hottest days of the summer, we were worried that we might have to take the dogs to our parents because it was that hot.  Because the complex wouldn’t send a licensed technician out to fix it right away, my fiance purchased one of those in house units and finagled a way to keep us cool.  Thanks to the AC unit being constantly broken and not working properly, our electric bill was sky high.  We actually wanted to start hassling the office to start paying our electric because it was obvious that the AC unit was not functioning properly.

THE COMPLEX’S LACK OF UPKEEP

When we first moved in, there was a valet trash pickup service, however, you could still go to the dumpsters and throw your garbage in there.  Because some tenants were throwing away furniture, the complex was getting fined to the point where they got rid of the dumpsters completely and said that we could only use the valet trash pickup service (Sunday-Friday between 6pm-8pm), which was just the employees in a pickup truck picking up garbage.  You also had to put your broken down cardboard into clear plastic bags, because they couldn’t pick up the individual pieces of cardboard.  This service caused there to be rodents aka, rats roaming around.  I was outside on the patio and a rat ran across my feet.  They would send out emails about people leaving out their garbage at the wrong times, but they never picked up after 8pm anyway.  If we were lucky they’d pick up by 9pm.

Then there’s the issue of the dog bags.  Because the complex is pet friendly (which is legit the only thing they have going for them), there are bag stations in random spots and the dog parks that have bag stations.  Well, these bags were almost never filled, and the garbages full of feces were always overflowing.  This caused the place to not only stink, but there were no bags for people to pick up after their dogs.  We would step in dog shit all the time.  The complex would send out emails about people not picking up after their dogs, so I finally had enough and sent them an email saying I emailed two weeks ago saying that there were no dog bags in the park and no one had come to fill them.  The upkeep of the grounds was horrible.  That was the only time (before they almost killed us) that I was hounding them to put dog bags in the parks and at the stations.  People drove to the park from their buildings expecting there to be bags, so when there weren’t any, they really had no choice but to just leave the feces on the ground.

The fire alarms would go off all the time in every building for no reason.  The fire department would show up and it was a false alarm every single time.  That’s so incredibly dangerous because what happens when there is an actual fire and it isn’t taken seriously?  You can potentially kill so many innocent people.

MAKING NEIGHBORS TURN AGAINST EACH OTHER

One thing I absolutely hated, is the leasing office encouraged you to tattle tail on your neighbors.  Now if they are doing something severely wrong ok that’s fine, but if my neighbor puts their garbage out 5 minutes ahead of the scheduled 6pm, I don’t give a shit.  Even with the neighbors I talked about above, I still wouldn’t have tattle tailed on some stupid bullshit like the garbage pickup times.  They encouraged you to complain to the office about things neighbors were doing wrong, otherwise everyone in the building would be penalized.  Are you serious?  So, you’re telling me that because you can’t fix the problems that you are consistently sending us emails about, you have resorted to having people become your personal snitch?  That is not ok.  Do your job of managing your property!  And hey, maybe your methods aren’t working if you have to result to this kind of behavior, but that’s none of my business (insert Kermit drinking tea meme here).

PART 3:  WE ALMOST DIED

HOW THEY ALMOST KILLED US

After all of the above, right before my fiance had left for Florida to build the store and before I came down, we almost got killed.  Our carbon monoxide detector went off in the middle of the night and then it shut off.  We thought nothing of it.  However, the next day I almost immediately had to take something for pain relief, because I had the worst migraine and I felt so light headed.  I didn’t think anything of it because I get migraines all the time, so it’s normal for me.  My fiance woke up with a migraine too, but his migraines are even worse than mine so, again, that’s normal.  He was staying home that day with the dogs because he still had some last minute things to do and he was going in and out of the apartment with the dogs with taking them outside into the park, but he texted me and said he thought that maybe he was getting sick because he felt terrible.  He left the apartment, so I was the next one to enter.  As soon as I walked in I smelled gas (or what I thought was gas at the time).  We had a gas stove and the pilot light always went out and there were always problems with coming home and it smelling like gas, but this time it was so potent I was honestly scared.  Turns out, that gas I smelled was actually carbon monoxide.  I thought it was the silent killer, but was told that recently they started putting something into homes where it would give off a smell if there was carbon monoxide leaking.  Maybe they did some renovating since they built the building in the 70’s after all -_-

I immediately grabbed the dogs and took them outside so that they could breathe because I was so scared that they had breathed in too much and were being poisoned.  Also, just as an fyi, the carbon monoxide detector was NOT going off, and had not gone off since the night prior for a split second before shutting off on it’s own.  I called my fiance because I wasn’t sure if I should go back in the apartment and wait for maintenance, or if I should just grab my keys and wait in my car.  He called the complex and told me to grab my keys and the dogs and sit in my car until they got there.  He told the maintenance crew that I would be in my car in the parking lot.  When they went in they had their meter and were checking for carbon monoxide. I forget what the reading on the meter was exactly, but I remember my fiance telling me that we should have been dead with that high of a reading.  Well, the guys came down and said that they are airing out the apartment and that I could go back in, in a little bit and to just keep the windows open (just fyi, this is December in NJ) for a little bit and that they would be turning off our furnace until they could fix the issue, along with bringing us a space heater in case the repair guy couldn’t make it until the next day.

Well, these next two things are quite ridiculous.  First of all, the “space heater” that they brought us were two of those heaters you use in a cubicle.  You know, the little tiny boxes that are barely the size of a shoe box.  Secondly, at this point I had already gone back into the apartment with the dogs and was waiting for my fiance to get home.  One of the maintenance guys from the complex had decided to stay and wait for the repair man in his car which was extremely nice of him, but when my fiance pulled into the parking lot (he drives a work van because of the work he does) the maintenance guy thought my fiance was the repair guy.  My fiance got out and noticed that the maintenance guy thought he was the repair guy.  So, my fiance played along and asked the maintenance guy to show him the furnace issue, because he knew if the maintenance guy knew he was the tenant he wouldn’t show or tell him any of this.  The exhaust pipe on the furnace had rusted and the way that they “fixed” it previously, was by using duct tape.  Yes, you read that right, FUCKING DUCT TAPE, and by this point everything had completely rusted off.  Basically, that exhaust pipe from the furnace was acting the same way as if you were to sit in a running car in a closed garage.  The maintenance guy then blatantly told my fiance that if I would have stayed in the apartment with the dogs, we would have all died.  That’s when my fiance told him, that just fyi that’s my fiance and dogs you’re talking about and he got so nervous.  The repair man ended up coming and fixing the furnace properly and we had heat eventually.  We also have pictures of the “repair” that was done previously on the exhaust pipe, but I don’t want to share those in case this post does get shared and then something comes of it legally.

“THAT’S THE BEST WE CAN DO.”

The next day my fiance went to the leasing office and tried to get us out of the lease.  Our lease was up in March, and we wanted out.  It was thanks to them that we almost died.  The best that they could do after talking to the management company is to make us pay for that month’s worth of rent, the following month, and the early termination fee.  The worst part is, the manager told us that we wouldn’t be able to get that down in writing because they don’t do that kind of stuff in writing.  They were worried that we would tell other people and if anyone wanted to get out of their lease early, they could show them proof that it’s possible.  When we asked them, “then how do we know for sure we won’t get charged after we take this deal?” they basically said that we just had to take their word for it.  With the experiences that we had with this complex already, we did not trust a word they said.  By the time that this was “worked out,” it was actually more expensive for us utilize the early termination fee rather than just pay for an apartment that we wouldn’t be living in because we moved out a little over a month before our lease was up.  I mean, plus, at this point I really thought they would just say it’s fine we will let you out of the lease, no problem.  Our vents also had mold in them which we didn’t notice until we were moving out, so I was breathing that in for who knows how long.

WE GOT CHARGED FOR “DAMAGES”

When I sent them the notice to vacate, which you have to do 60 days prior to your lease end date in NJ, I wrote in there how they almost killed us and how they didn’t do anything for us.  I needed it down in writing somewhere so that in case anything was escalated, I had proof that the office acknowledged and signed that document.  I can’t even begin to tell you how spotless that apartment was when we left.  I was scrubbing everything even more than when we first moved in.  We actually left in the beginning of February, and just left the apartment vacant.  They were notified by us that we would be vacating prior to our lease end date.  We re-polished the floors, repainted the walls, patched up any holes from picture frame nails, changed the light bulbs, you name it, we did it.  A bill was sent to us for damages.  Granted it wasn’t a lot, but I feel like after almost killing us due to their negligence and not working with us at all, they should have just waived the damages fee.  It was due to scratches on the floor (which were already there when we moved in, I’m pretty sure these floors have not been replaced since the 70’s) and missing blinds, which were also broken and falling off when we moved in.  I’ve seen so many horror stories of people being charged ridiculous amounts of money in damages.  Someone I know was charged thousands of dollars for the hardwood floor when her and her family moved out.  It doesn’t even cost that much to completely replace it!  I was also told that there were quite a number of people who took this complex to small claims court.  When one person was telling me about their horror story, they said that when they went to court, there was a line of about 20 people and the majority of them were there because of the complex doing something wrong to them.  HOW HAS THIS COMPLEX NOT BEEN QUESTIONED BY OFFICIALS FOR THIS?!  We are not all crying wolf, these things actually happen!  I know that there are a handful of people who have not had any experience nearly close to something like this and actually like the complex.  Those are the 1 in a million lucky people out there in this world.

THANK THE LAWD THAT WE ARE OUT!

If you’ve read my Florida posts, you know that we’ve had issues with the property management company, however at least they worked with us and tried to get everything taken care of.  Not to mention that they didn’t try to kill us and then not do anything about it.  We did have some good memories in our old apartment, only because it was the first place that we called home together.  We came home to each other every night in that place, and we spent a few Christmas’s together, along with adopted Zero.  We had family dinners with our parents and private dinners with each other.  It was where we rested our heads every single night, next to one another.  I’ll never forget the memories both good and bad in that place.  I just hope that this post helps someone out there.  Just remember, if you or someone you know ever thinks about even touring Oakwood Village/Overlook at Flanders, I have one word for you; RUN!

MOVING ON TO THE WEEKLY LINKUP

xoxo Monica

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