I'm moving out of this dump hole in a few weeks and I can't wait! I've lived here for almost 10 years and that's...
I'm moving out of this dump hole in a few weeks and I can't wait! I've lived here for almost 10 years and that's waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. To be fair, it was pretty good when I moved in and Koury Corp. was running it, but things have gone steadily downhill since Hawthorne Management took over in 2009. I will never rent from Hawthorne again!
Security is a joke. The gate is broken more than it is operational (I've never seen it remain operational for more than three weeks at a time in more than nine years) and when it does work, people just piggyback on the car in front of them. One car going through the gate legitimately can let an infinite number of other cars through if they get there before the gate closes completely. Rent-a-cops drive through the complex periodically, but that's all they do; they just drive through.
The only bigger joke than security is maintenance. They are ABSOLUTELY INCOMPETENT. Their standard operating procedure seems to be to ignore maintenance requests when they first come in. If the tenant does follow up, they claim to have not received the initial request and then they come out and don't fix the problem. On one occasion, I had weather stripping falling out of the kitchen window. When maintenance eventually came, they put new weather stripping on the front door. Really??? They can't tell the difference between a door and a window? I ended up fixing that one myself. Took me two minutes with a tube of silicone. On another occasion, I had floor tiles coming loose in the bathroom. Their solution was to re-caulk the tub and the toilet. It eventually took more than three weeks to get that repair done properly. Their excuse was that the grout was on back order. Really? Lowe's and Home Depot are both 10 minutes away. Lately, my solution for maintenance problems has been to call Hawthorne's corporate office in Greensboro and raise hell with them. They have been kind enough to give me the regional maintenance manager's cell phone number.
Over the years, the main saving grace of Stonesthrow has been that the rent was pretty reasonable for the size of the apartment. That is no longer the case. Since taking over, Hawthorne has consistently raised the rent by larger and larger margins each time my lease was up for renewal. For me, this time was the last time.