Norland Trails

My observations -
1. Office personnel changes frequently - open 5d/wk, and I saw 3 different people manning the desk (one at any given time). They can't really help you when you're in there, so all communications are via e-mail. Good luck getting a reply and follow-through
2. Check-out was difficult, when the time came - we were NOT informed when the final walk-through was performed, so we were not present, despite numerous attempts and modes used to schedule it.
3. NO PARKING for visitors, ever... . We were in a townhouse so had a garage and the driveway, but unless you moved your car across the road uphill at the medical offices, you were unlikely to have a place to park. The drive spaces around are all labeled as fire lanes.
4. DON"T BELIEVE the pretty pictures. The square footage may be real, but very little of it is usable, and we had 5 floors (half-floors, really). Moving our household of 4 from a 3 bd house to a 3 bd townhouse required us to keep an off-site storage unit.
5. HIDDEN FEES are small but abundant. Your listed monthly rent does not include fees for water/sewer/garbage, they charge extra for these. Internet is available, you choose between 2 services, but pay extra to have it running.
6. MOST of the very frequent windows DON"T EVEN OPEN!!! I cannot stress this enough - given there are 5 floors, each one with at least 2 windows on it, you would think circulation would be easy, but the master bedroom only has 1 opening window (bathroom window does not), additional bedrooms had 2 windows to open, but they do nothing to move air through the walking spaces.
7. Kitchen drawers are shallow, and PRONE TO GETTING STUCK with their contents. So often we had to shake loose, dislodge, or flat out remove a drawer because something inside stuck to let us open the drawer.

OK parts -
-- they really are quiet inside.
-- convenient location
-- floors, cabinets and countertops are attractive and resilient
-- maintenance is easy to contact and Shawn (at least the 2nd guy hired while I was there) is very thorough and professional.

I am leaving out a bunch of little things that occurred when I first moved it, because they're comparatively trivial, but in reality you will put more into the monthly expenses of living there than you see, and you will get almost NOTHING back after move-out (I've never - in many years of renting - not received my full deposit back after leaving a rental property until this one).
Just hoping no one else goes into it blind. Read More