Tenant Reviews for 9545 ELLA LEE LN

Worst place I have ever been to. I didn't even get to move in it was such a problem. The price wasn't bad for the location and the leasing staff was pleasant when you first meet them. But, as soon as something is wrong they turn, they tried to put me in an apartment with water damage, holes in the walls, wires sticking out, and so much more. They paint, but not the things that matter... thy painted the COUNTER TOPS, BATH TUB, BATH TILE, AND ALL CABINETS IN THE HOUSE the same bleached white color, with no regard to overspray or drip and it looks terrible... but then they didn't paint the living room walls. Who paints the bath tub. There was a massive gap of at least 1" between the bottom of the of the front door and the door jam, so you could literally see outside, no need for a peep hole because you could just look under the door to see who was there, oh they also painted the crap out of the doors and door jams too. The wire sticking out of the wall was extremely obvious and not small in the slightest, it was a random wire that had been pulled out of 1 wall and routed into another, what if a dog or a child bit into it? As if all this wasn't enough there was very obvious water damage, and it didn't look like they even tried to fix it. I wish i could say they didn't know about it but they were in there painting because the paint was wet and the water damage and holes in the walls were soooooooo obvious. I went to the office and confronted them about it, and not once did i get an apology... i was met with rudeness and denial. Finally they decided to walk the apartment for themselves; "maintenance" person, property manager, and property leasing agents. When they saw how bad it was they didn't try to move me to a new place or upgrade me for the frustration, they cancelled my lease and just let me go saying they would refund my money and it wouldn't go against my rental history. After being treated like that i don't want to rent from them anyways but wow, talk about terrible business practices. What that really tells me is they aren't going to fix the unit, they are going to move someone in who will deal with the problems and won't make a fuss. Don't rent from Park at Woodlake, and stay the hell away from apt. 312. I took a ton of pictures, and attached a few. I wish I could have attached them all it was that bad. I know I am leaving out so much but i just cant stress how much i got screwed, electricity was turned on so i had to pay for that, rental truck reservation had to be cancelled, and renters insurance was already paid for... just save yourself the headache.

This place is the worst in Houston, rent keeps going up, and there has been no upkeep to the complex in 4 years I have lived here. The light fixture at my front door is hanging off the building because the wood has rotted underneath it, there is a 3 foor section of wood on the building near my front step that termites have eaten up. Cable and phones boxes are falling off the sides of the buildings, stairs have needed to be repainted for at least 3 years, they are peeling and rusted. most building have holes where termites have chewed thru them, upstairs neighbors ac has leaked at least 4 time into my unit, down the walls and on to the ceiling, plumbing is constantly stopped up, you see tp and feces running in the complex.

I liked how spacey my unit was. I don't have any serious complaints about it, nothing broke during my stay and I didn't experience any safety issues or bad neighbors.

The apartments are okay for the price. The only issues I had are the nasty geckos outside. They are EVERYWHERE! To be honest thats the main reason i'm moving. I'm terrified of them. When I first moved in there was a BAD roach problem but I eventually got rid of them with acid, roach hotels, and raid. Other than that I had no problems. I never had problems with the staff or crime Thank God. As long as you pay your rent and mind your business you should be fine if you can look past the geckos and roaches.

I lived here 5 years ago and liked it better. I have lived here again for almost a year and it's ok but not the best. The upside is it's not too bad of a neighborhood for the price. And the apartments are giant. I had problems with roaches when I first moved in from previous tenants or whatever reason both times but I sprayed Bengal religiously and haven't since. The apartment pesticide doesn't do crap. The walls are super thin though and the giant windows mean that if there are people outside, YOU WILL HEAR every word they say. I face the street and the construction has been non-stop at 6am for the entire time I've been back at this place. Even on Saturday mornings, so if you don't want to wake up at 6am, don't face the street. The fridge sucks, the freezer doesn't really freeze things. The upside is online rent payments and very nice maintenance staff, very prompt. The thing selling it is the size for your money. The laundry rooms suck mostly too. They only work half the time and it's hit or miss on the machines. If you can get over that stuff, it's not bad. cheap and they leave you alone as long as you pay your rent. Oh and they used to tow like crazy cause the parking situation was bad but they don't seem to care anymore.

Make Sure Not TO Sign ANYTHING REGARDLESS OF WHAT THEY TELL YOU; BECAUSE... THEY WILL KEEP YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY IF FOR WHATEVER REASON YOU ARE DENIED THE APARTMENT. THEY WILL DECEIVE YOU BY HAVING YOU SIGN AND INITIAL WHILE THEY TELL YOU THAT YOUR DEPOSIT WILL BE RETURNED IF YOU ARE DENIED; BUT THEY KEEP THEIR UNGODLY ADMIN FEE AND APP FEE'S. BUT, REALLY THEY EVEN KEEP YOUR DEPOSIT. YES, YOU SIGN A LEGAL BINDING DOCUMENT; AND THE LESSON LEARNED IS READ IT, READ IT ALL, DON'T TRUST THE PEOPLE THERE TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH OR THEIR RE-ASSURANCE THAT YOU WILL GET YOUR DEPOSIT BACK ONLY! THEY LIE, THEY LIE, THEY LIE!!! THEY LIE!

The only reason I live here is because the rent is so cheap. Now on to the bad stuff: 1) There is practically no insulation in my bedroom. In the winter, it's so cold and during the summer it is REALLY REALLY scorching. That, in turn, makes my electric bill very high. I've had $200 electric bills. One winter, I just decided to sleep on the couch in my living room. 2) The office has stopped taking packages... my boyfriend sent me a package on Valentines Day not knowing the office wasn't going to take it. So the postman left the package at my front door. If my boyfriend hadn't shown up early to my apartment that day to surprise me, he wouldn't have seen my NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR taking my package! He lied about taking the box... but eventually he gave back the teddy bear my boyfriend sent... but kept the chocolates. 3) I've had several different next door neighbors since living here. I've seen the cops come for all of them! I don't know what they're doing... but I've seen one arrested with another officer behind him holding several baggies of god-knows-what. (This has nothing to do with the apartment, I guess, but it sure says something about the type of people who live here). 4) The kitchen in the 1/1 is so freaking small. I have my microwave on one counter top... and that leaves only one more counter top! That's usually where I keep my spices and whatnot. Very annoying. 5) At night, I hear people outside of my bedroom window screaming or yelling. I can't even tell if they're yelling in joy or in pain. Either way, it's inconsiderate of people trying to sleep. Wasn't there supposed to be security? 6) Parking is horrid. Your guests have to find a parking space with a yellow stripe... OR they have to park on the street. The tow trucks are like sharks here. One time, I got a car wash where they removed my parking tag hanging on my window and put it on my dashboard. The next morning, my car was towed! Even though my car was registered with the office and I had been parking there for over 2 years. 7) Haven't paid your rent and it's the 3rd? No problem. Drop your check off at the mailbox at the office after hours... oh wait... The mailbox is bolted shut! I've had to slip my check in under the door several times because I work 'til 5:30 and by the time I get home, the office is closed. 8) Oh, the office hours change based on daylight savings time. During the winter months, when it gets dark earlier, the office closes at 5:30. It's like they don't have electricity or lights or something. Why is that even a policy? So those are my two cents.

I have live here for 3 years. Crime is very bad. "Ladies" in the office DON'T GIVE A SHAT. Laundry rooms are a JOKE. They are so disgusting and THEY NEVER WORK. The water in 5 of the machines in the front have had "standing water" in them for over 4 weeks. I complain, they say they fixed them. HA HA They take your money, you put your detergent in and close the lid. You are screwed. forget trying to call the machine company, they don't send your money. BUT, what I find is the most ridiculious is the Security Guard watches and works the DAY SHIFT. he must be too scared to work at night with the break ins & hold ups. Towing......forget about it. The management is in on it, they must get a kick back. I use to see the guard when he worked at night, and he would FOLLOW THE TOW TRUCK AND POINT OUT WHICH CAR HAD TO BE TOWED. More to my point, if you should call after hours for emergency or whatever, the FIRST phone number they give you is to the TOWING COMPANY. SO, how do you say "Kickbacks"?

The good: - <$800/mo for a 1000sq/ft apartment isn't bad - I could pay my rent online, with a credit card - lots of bonus points! - Enormous bedroom and living room made having company over very pleasant - Um... Closer to where I worked than where I lived prior - The random cubby space in the bedroom made a nice place to put a TV - The cool little light fixture in the (expansive) closet - Our building was pretty much vacant, so we never heard any neighbor-noise, nor were we ever heard - One of the security guards was cool as hell, and went out of his way to be friendly - never had any problems when he was working - Despite not being very helpful, or really even understanding of any circumstance, the staff was very friendly and most of them were very polite The bad: - My mother lived in these apartments before she met my father. In the 70's. Doesn't look like they've done much to keep them maintained in the years since. The dozens and dozens of layers of paint have piled up to the point that everything with a hinge sticks and pops when you open it. - If my unit had any insulation, I'd be surprised. The ancient A/C ran near 24 hours a day, when set to 80-82'f. I was told this was normal, and to set my thermostat higher. I've never had such ridiculous electric bills. - Every monthly news letter described another break-in or shooting, and advised people to ... well, to pretty much stop getting robbed and shot. - The phone wiring is literally stapled to the brick on the exterior of the building, and draped around to wherever they poked it through the wall. Surprisingly, it doesn't work. AT&T says the landlord has to fix it. The management says AT&T has to fix it. So I had to switch from DSL to cable, after two months of finger-pointing and nothing getting fixed. Unfortunately this is not the kind of thing you can fix yourself. The co-ax for the cable is also exterior to the building, but at least has broken conduit on most of it. - The circuit breakers are unsecured (open to the public), outside, far from the doorway. - Almost the whole apartment runs on a single 15 Amp fuse. Don't turn your TV on in one room and leave something else on in the other. Especially when it's raining. - Maybe they didn't have a freezer with an ice maker because the electrical wiring couldn't handle it. Hadn't thought of that reason until just now. - Four of the six electrical outlets in the living room are all tied to a light switch. I 'fixed' mine so that only the two under the windows were on this switch, after maintenance refused to do so. This is seriously one of the dumbest design flaws I have ever seen. - The cable jack in the living room is in perhaps the single most inconvenient place. I had to run ~30' of co-ax just to get a live feed to where the other, non-working jack was. This jack (the convenient one) was of course connected to the old wiring and did not work. Comcast and the management refused to correct this, same as AT&T and the management did with the phone cabling. - The electrical outlets are old and worn out. Plugs slip out if even slightly bumped or wiggled. This was also described as normal and I was advised 'just don't touch the plugs.' - Teeny-tiny little kitchen, bathroom, 'bonus room' and dining room. Almost like they were after-thoughts for the two main rooms. - You couldn't open the stove without opening the fridge first. The doors hit each other. This WAS explained before we signed our lease as 'the way it is,' and we figured it wouldn't be that big a deal. We were wrong. - Invincible roaches from another dimension. Gaps in the cabinetry gave them free reign throughout the kitchen/dining room/bonus room (and when they got bold, the living room), and numerous places to hide and nest. The gaps and openings along the molding and cabinetry was described as 'a known condition of the apartment' and would not be addressed by the management. I ended up caulking the entire kitchen, using about six tubes of silicon. We threw out all our food, scoured and scrubbed everything after taking out all our our kitchen gear, used professional-grade roach powder (the stuff you can't buy from a store) baited with rotting chicken to really draw 'em out, and left for a weekend. This granted us about a two-week reprise from having to play whack-a-roach every time we entered the kitchen. - Seriously, we kept score and competed for highest confirmed kills in a week. My high score was 74. - The management did send a guy to spray every month, usually without notification. The guy also did not remember not to spray his poison around our birds, which damn near killed them on several occasions. He did, however, provide excellent glue traps. This was just not enough though - we figure these little bastards were coming from another unit and all we could do is try to hold the front line. - Cars without tires in the parking lot. Cars without windows in the parking lot. Of the very, very few visitor parking spots, you could rest assured that a 'non-resident resident' was taking them up. Or a resident who just took their parking tag off to use the closer spot. - The laundry rooms. When the machines actually turned on without eating your money, they did not work worth @^)&. A medium load had to be put through a full dryer cycle on high heat two to three times to get it mostly-dry. Sometimes the machines were unplugged, which of course you couldn't change or notice until you had already put money in them. The management always said they were working on getting it fixed, but it never was, not in two years. About halfway through our stay, someone started labeling the broken machines with Sharpies. That was the most helpful thing that happened regarding the laundry room. Not once was any of the money lost on these machines offered in return to us, either by the third-party company that 'maintained' the machines, or the apartment management. Finger-pointing, again. - When they 'remodeled' the units by replacing the siding with exactly the same style and color siding, it was nice to not see all the rotting wood anymore. They did not, however, replace the rotting 4x4's and rusted out framework that holds up the balconies and staircases at the entry way for the second floor units. I'm still surprised the one above us never collapsed. - The fan for our A/C was LOUD. When it was on, we had to turn the TV up quite a bit. When the compressor froze up and leaked everywhere, we had to clean it up ourselves because maintenance couldn't make it out for "36 to 48 hours, as this is not an emergency." When they did come out, their solution was to just put a fan on the floor to try to dry what I hadn't been able to. Not once was it offered to steam the carpet to get all the nasty odors and stains out, and when we asked we were told by management that "maintenance says they fixed it, so... they fixed it." It also took four service calls to get them to clear the clogged tube for the drip tray to drain properly, without overflowing all over the floor. - After a particularly nasty storm, we had several dark water spots show up along the wall/ceiling in the bedroom. At first management was very concerned, but after their maintenance guy said there was no mold, they ceased caring. No offer to paint over the very obvious discolorations was ever made, and my request to have this done was met with "we can give you some paint if you want to do it yourself." I declined. Even after ALL those negative things to say, once I settled in I kinda liked the place. Perhaps it's just because I tried to see the good in my situation, or just acclimated to the conditions, but I wasn't miserable living there. Now that I'm elsewhere, and I reflect on it though, I wouldn't move back. I do have a friend who still lives there (and has for years) who does not have all these same problems. Actually, the only problems he doesn't seem to have are the roaches, and maintenance does a much better job with his requests. Couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that he has close ties to a well-known apartment locator service. Nah.

I've lived here for a few years, and its been a steady decline in almost all areas of this place. For starters, the laundry rooms are NASTY, dirty, not kept up well and half are either not working or not as good as they should. The security is a joke, which is around normally only during the day, so at night your on your own!! with all the break-ins, hold-ups occuring, you would think they would invest in night security that is visible and not just sitting in their car. Seems the quality of residents has also gone down too. Used to be safe, now its like you see someone suspicious almost every other day roaming the parking lots at night or in evening. For all the $$ the property makes I guess they prefer to keep it as minimal as possible in the quality. The color of the complex is horrible. I plan on moving out soon, because they have a poop green color which is not appealing. You can tell that the buildings are losing strucuture and are falling apart. No apartments are "perfect" because we live in a big city, but to just neglect so many areas is not excusable and 'sorry' doesnt cut it either. I would not or plan on recommending this place to anyone.