Arbor Lakes at Middleton

I feel i can finally post this… this is from 2012 – 2014
the bathroom:
there is no exhaust fan. there is a vent that i think turns on at random times during the day. since it’s connected to ALL the apartments in the building, if someone smokes or if multiple apartments smoke a lot, it will seep into your bathroom and make your entire apartment stink. it also means that anytime anyone cooks something those smells also get into your apartment. the cabinets under the vanity also smell like other people’s cooking. it’s especially disgusting because it always smells like rotten taco meat. since there is no exhaust fan be prepared to have black mold in your shower and for the caulking around the plastic tile walls to mold. the toilet is a joke. the hard water has gotten so bad in the bowl, you have to clean every other day or all it does is turn into a bowl of mold.
the bedrooms:
the closets that aren’t part of the master bedroom have these cheap metal accordion style doors that easily fall out of the tracks. good luck trying to put them back in without damaging the ceiling. since the walls are paper thin, consider sleeping in the living room because when you actually want to sleep it’s the quietest place in the apartment. the 2^nd bedroom in our unit is across the street from PDQ and every night around 2−3am the city bus parks there for a long time with the engine running. since the street is also a busy one, be prepared to not get any sleep due to traffic. the walls are paper thin. people let their kids scream ALL THE DAMN TIME AT ALL HOURS OF THE DAY. i can hear the downstairs neighbors music at 5am and they are on the opposite side of the building on the lower level. also, people let the cribs hit the wall when the baby throws a tantrum.
the kitchen:
it’s the same size as the bathroom. the cabinets are cheap and from the 70s. exhaust fan for the stove actually doesn’t exhaust or vent except above your head. the outlets don’t have the safety test options. i fried the outlet nearest the stove trying to plug something in and generated a shock/​spark big enough to melt part of the prong to the coffee grinder. you can hear your neighbors running their garbage disposal. the lighting unit is cheap and a piece of crap. i’ve complained about this a few times and all they do is give us new light bulbs. when you turn it on, the lights sometimes don’t come on, so you have to flip the switch up & down a lot to get it to turn on.
the parking lot:
if you value your car, don’t park it here. you’re going to get door dings and this past winter a plow hit my car and i had to pay the damages. they use way too much salt and it tracks everywhere, be prepared to vacuum every damn day.
the building:
so they finally installed locks on the outer doors. they started to install an intercom system last year. they haven’t finished the work. the intercom is placed on the weirdest spot on our building. it’s on the inside of the court yard away from where we tell people to park their car to access our building. so people would have to walk all the way around to use the system they didn’t finish installing. i was told a few times they were finishing the work on specific days and they never do. then i find out from the maintenance guy that they are having trouble getting the rest of the parts for the intercom… who installs an intercom and doesn’t have all the parts?
there are 2 common small patios and during the super hot summer months, people will open them and leave them open all day/​night and let in all the bugs not realizing that there is no breeze/​air to circulate the building to cool it off. then all the bugs find their way into your apartment. if people in the apartments smoke, the hallways smell like smoke. always trash/​gum/​etc in the common area hallways. they installed an automated air freshener thing — axe body spray is really an air freshener that is supposed to smell like rain forest.
the neighbors:
i had to call the police 3 times in one night on the neighbors for domestic issues.
heat paid in rent:
if you take the apartment where heat is part of your rent, be prepared for it to not be warm in winter. i had to still run a space heater to keep warm.
notices to enter — a few times when they had contractors working to install the intercom system, the rental office DID NOT give 24 hrs notice before entering our apartment. we have cats and would prefer to be home so they don’t get out. the contractors just showed up and let themselves in. they lied and said they delivered notices, but the notices that were posted were for previous weeks/​days and NOT the days they actually entered the apartment.
if you don’t smoke and can’t stand the smell — tough bananas, suck it up. everyone smokes, you should too is the basic office view when you complain about it. there was one point where i had packing tape around the cracks in the door frame that enters into our apartment because the hallway would fill up with smoke so bad.

My rating used to be four stars, yes that’s four stars. I wouldn’t even give this ONE star now.
Living here has turned out to be a complete nightmare. They are not military friendly at all, they claim to be. We are in TX on orders, they assured us they would renew our lease over and over including several times in September, October, November and December when we inquired about terminating our lease for military orders. We were repeatedly reassured that it would not be an issue to renew in April (while we would still be gone). However, in February, after swindling us for 7 months of extra rent, they informed us they would not be renewing our lease. Fine, their prerogative in the end (although I was BEYOND ticked over this). Now they have been giving «notices» to enter our apartment while we’re gone even though every single person in their office is full aware that we’re in TX and they can’t be bothered to send an email to actually make 24 hours notice.
Carla in the front office is great and Mike who heads up maintenance is a saint, but otherwise, the staff here is AWFUL, the walls are thin, the rules are not enforced for quiet time, smoking policy or anything else listed in the lease except when they want to harass you and take advantage.
I would hope that any decent person is able to stay clear of this apartment complex!

I lived here following college, and I enjoyed the laid-​back atmosphere and relative peace and quiet. I believe this started to change about the time that I left, but at the time it was pretty nice.
I had a ground floor one bedroom that looked out at the pond and the pool. I especially enjoyed sitting outside on the patios, although there was an inordinate amount of insects in the summer. There was always a decent amount of parking, but it seemed that there were many cars that were virtually abandoned in the parking lot. The office staff were pretty laid back, but I never had anything wrong so I can’t rate that aspect.
I’ve had a couple of friends and acquaintances that had lived there after I had left, and they’ve consistently panned the place. It has also been in the news from time to time due to shootings, stabbings and other assorted crime. It’s really too bad, since they have a decent location and grounds, and with some upkeep it could be a low-​cost option in Middleton.

First, the good stuff: the staff are really nice.
That being said, the units are ghetto. Burglars smash and grab in broad daylight. Domestically violent neighbors require police assistance in the night hours. The door locks are a joke. Snow removal seems to be done on an «at will» basis. Units haven’t been renovated in decades, aside from the incidental balcony that needs to be brought up to code — seriously, is this carpet original? The water literally takes 5min to rise in temp from frigid to lukewarm, and another 5min to rise to shower temp. All the sockets are so old and worn-​out that plugs fall out under their own weight — WTF?
It could be worse I guess. I could live next to a crack house.