MAA Seasons

I lived at Seasons at Celebrate (phase II) for just over four years, and I found my time in the community generally acceptable. Overall, the community is conveniently located, usually pretty quiet and has decent living spaces with good amounts of storage, and the screened-in patios on nearly every unit are a nice touch.

With that said, I've lived in some terrible apartment complexes previously, and these are far and away the best I've lived in over the last decade, but there's nothing super… luxurious about them. The appliances are super basic, the spaces generally lack natural light as a result of their configuration, and the "hardwood" flooring in each unit is cheaply made.

One of my biggest problems I had while living here was that the appliances in our unit were clearly aging and ready to be replaced just a year after moving in. Our dishwasher started getting really loud and the dryer stopped working efficiently. Management refused to replace them, despite their admission that they should probably be replaced, and stated they would only do so if they stopped functioning entirely.

Community amenities also regularly fell into disrepair even though they added a "community fee" to our monthly rent to cover such things. It was not unusual to see the pool turn an unpleasant green before it was opened for the season, and anyone who lived at this community can tell you that getting management to fix/reinstall the parking gates was a 2-3 year saga that only was resolved right before I moved out. It's really disappointing because the maintenance and management staff were always very friendly and responsive to requests and questions -- it just seemed like there was never any urgency to get crucial community amenities fixed when they needed it.

I wouldn't have been so bothered by the slowness to fix things if they hadn't also changed their lease payment policy a year after we moved in. Whereas previously they would allow a 5-day grace period to pay your rent at the beginning of each month, they changed this up to a "pay before the end of the day on the first or we tack on a 10% late fee, no questions asked" policy. Demanding expediency from your tenants to pay up when you refuse to fix important things like the parking lot gate in a timely manner is certainly a choice by management.

Lastly, be sure to ask about the costs of living with pets. Dropping $400 as a non-refundable pet "deposit" plus a monthly "pet rent" fee for just one cat always felt insulting. Read More