Sonoma at Porter Ranch Apartments

I’m really shocked by the negative reviews of this apartment and my only conclusion is that most of them are older. Perhaps there was different management a couple of years ago.
Our experience in this apartment, from day one, has been excellent. We’ve worked exclusively with Maya and Amanda in the office, who are friendly, responsive and very informative.
I definitely don’t understand the «don’t be fooled by the pretty exterior» comments I see in the reviews here. The complex is beautiful, solidly built, and extremely well kept up. I understand that you are paying more for a one bedroom than pretty much anywhere else in the Valley, but you’re in Porter Ranch. You know what you’re getting into here.
My unit has an attached garage, a washer and dryer, «hardwood» floors (they are not real but they’re very pretty, scratch and water resistant and easy to clean) and a marble kitchen. We have a patio that overlooks the cul-​de-​sac, and a very neat iPod dock that lets me play music through the apartment with the speakers on the ceiling. Everything is modern, efficient, and not one thing has broken since I’ve been here.
The gym is beautiful and well maintained. Bear in mind that this is an apartment gym — not an LA Fitness. There are about 8 cardio machines (with TV’s and fans) and maybe 10 weight machines. I don’t know why on earth any resident would complain about the gym. I’ve never been unable to get a machine any time I’ve gone.
The only issues are the visitor parking (which I don’t blame the office for, because parking really should be for residents and frankly there is just limited space) and some of the other residents driving through the area. There are some people who are extremely reckless, which is worrisome because there are often children or pets running around the very pretty community. That being said, I am extremely happy here and look forward to coming home every night.

I love my apartment and the complex. Maintenance requests are easy to submit and are fixed quickly, washer and dryer in every unit, friendly neighbors that are quiet, and the neighborhood is close to shopping. I have zero complaints and have been living here since March 2015. Can’t relate to the negative reviews on here.

Beautiful property, had to leave because of the Porter Ranch gas leak. So sad. I heard from others that Management is really bad at returning your security deposit… Still did not get mine back. We will see I hope what I heard is wrong, I can’t even begin to think that such a beautiful place could be so wrong. Finger crossed.

This place is actually suited for single people. It really isn’t family friendly AT ALL. The attraction of the almost Olympic size pool was an initial draw. We obviously thought we could have a kids party there but surprise surprise… residence can only have two guests at the pool. That was not disclosed to our dismay. Plus the open parking is non existent. If you wanna have even a few guests over it will be tough for them to find parking with only a few spots open. The gym is ok if you only want to maintain but not good enough for any serious training. The winds up there are also a nuisance. What else??? The only positive I can say is that they allow small pets & have ok amenities. Don’t move there or you’ll regret it.

I have moved here during 2013 and the staff was amazing and all of them treated residents great but as for now when they changed the staff it was miserable ! This is the worst apartment in LA! The staff are miserable and especially the new staff brought here in 2014 I would not recommend anyone to live in this so called «luxury» apartment which is not. Don’t ever think of living here.

Read my view of Tesoro Apartments which is a block away because the same problem may apply to Sonoma and that is very loud talkers and partiers throughout the night and into the early morning hours on any given night. Yes, last night, 3am partiers at Tesoro and you can hear them for blocks away because the echo effect. You also will hear people racing up and down Mason and Sorrento. They have loud exhaust systems and rev it going up the hills, they do burnouts frequently and again the loud talkers who party all night and refuse to close their balcony doors and windows. Just look at the photo when you search and you get the idea.
If you have to get a good night sleep on weeknights for your job, I would demand they put something into their contracts to enforce these noise violations (again I am talking from someone who lives in the townhouse below the Tesoro Apartments but I can tell you the loud talking and partying goes for blocks and even closing your windows doesn’t muffle the noise, I have to put on a loud box fan to muffle the loud shouting.)

I have lived here now for a year in a one bedroom and yes there are a few things that are very inconvenient about this complex. The MAJOR one, is guest parking is horrible here. It is always such a pain if you want to have a dinner party with some friends because there aren’t enough visitor parking for a complex this size. There are only 6 spots (which residents take a lot of times) on the west side of the complex (where I am) so it is quite stressful if you plan on having people over. I have a 1 car garage and yes it is inconvenient that I have to walk quite a ways away to carry a lot of groceries and since my bf comes over a lot I have been forced to rent out a space on the other side of the complex. However, I am very thankful to have my 1 car garage since it has allowed me to store some of my stuff (I used to live in a 2 bedroom apartment in studio city which had a 2 car subterranean parking and I wasn’t allowed to store anything in my space at all.)
And I think because of the limited parking, it is that reason why there arent a whole lot of noise due to tenants partying or a lot of people coming over which keeps this complex very peaceful. Mind you, I would prefer to have more guest parking available but living in a peaceful complex is a definite plus.
I have never witnessed any kind of fights in the complex (per one review) and to me, the grounds are always well-​maintained. Yes it gets windy up here (per one tenant’s review) but anywhere on the northwest side of the valley is so I already expected that. Yes it is annoying that there is security by the pool who tells the kids they cant splash around and yes they close umbrellas at 6pm which is also annoying.
I’m not really sure what other tenants are complaining about regarding the NWP bill because that portion of my contract was made very clear to me when i signed the lease and no I was not made responsible for anyone else’s. My NWP bill is not «shared» and I am not responsible for anyone else’s.
Every one complains about the people in the leasing office but ALL of them have been nothing but nice and extremely accommodating to me. I had a dinner party for xmas last year and there were 6 cars which needed parking spaces. I called the leasing office and they were able to guide me as to where those cars could park for a few hours. I tore my ACL 6 months ago and I needed help carrying my xmas tree box as well as ornaments up the stairs and Ray in the leasing office hurried on over to help with that. I have called the leasing office a few times for some things I needed help with and Ray has been super with that. Every time something needed fixing (which wasn’t a lot and very minor things like light bulbs being changed and ant problem in my kitchen) the maintenance staff fixed it the day of or the following day and one of the maintenance staff even carried my groceries for me. If I could separate my star rating I would give the people in the leasing office as well as the maintenance staff a 5 star and the 3 star I gave for everything else (all the inconveniences previously mentioned). I have never had any issues with any of my neighbors and the lady who lives above me is very quiet. Overall, even though there are some inconveniences I am quite happy here. It’s a beautiful neighborhood.
I read all these negative reviews about this place about the wood floors being fake, management being rude and one person got overly religious in their complaint to a point where I actually flinched as I was reading the review. Listen, you will NEVER find a PERFECT place to live in. There will always be inconveniences, some more than others. But before you sign the lease, READ THE CONTRACT. Make sure you know what you are responsible for and ask all the pertinent questions. When you walk around the complex and into the unit which could possibly be your living space then make sure you like it well enough to actually sign the contract.
With all of that being said, I wanted to thank the people in the leasing office as well as the maintenance staff for always being accommodating to all my needs. They have made the «inconveniences» more manageable.

DO NOT

The staff have changed. In fact they seem to change every other day. The latest people are not as friendly as the people who were here when I moved in. If they decide to smile it’s very fake. One lady very rudely rushed me out of the business center 3 minutes before it was supposed to close despite the fact that the moment she came in I began to pack up my stuff without her even saying anything. Not how I like to be treated when we pay as much as we do to live here.
They seem to have stopped spraying for bugs. Spider webs are all over the garage now and we never saw any at all when the old staff was here. The grounds, the gym and the pool are still nice though. It’s also very quiet which is good.

Do not move here! There is NO PARKING!

How to begin, well first the price $ 1600 for a one bedroom, yes the place feels open but I can go just over the hill and save $ 200 a mouth for the same thing.
It is a very nice place place on the outside but don’t judge a book buy it’s cover The neighbors are just awful, the don’t control their children, for example the people above us children make so much noise the our walls shake, another time some kids were playing in the area and were leaving their trash everywhere. There are no speed bumbs so people drive really fast in the complex. Parking REALLY SUCKS so if you want your friends to come over you have to take you parking tag for you spot out and go park in a visitor spot until you buddy gets there and thats if some jerk who lives there isnt parked there so they dont have to a pay the $ 50 a mouth for a second spot. They do have a security company but they are never around unless you are at the pool area, we have called them a lot in the middle of the night for the noisy neighbors but it doesn’t change anything. I tried to get my parking place changed to a closer location and the managment just ignored us. Now my wife and I have both lost our jobs and can’t afford the rent, we went to the office to give our 30 day notice so we can move out and they want a early termination fee of $ 1660 plus $ 514, REALLY where do they think I’m giong to get that money from with all my other bills.
Basically this is what I have too say think very hard before you decide to move here and read you lease contract, every bit of it there are a lot of hidden things in It.

This apt SUCKS! Big time! No visitor parking !! Expensive !! Fake hardwood floors !! It’s like a jail no street parking !!! This will be my last year here !!

Please bear with me…
If I could give this place negative stars I would… I will try to keep this simple cause I just want to make some main points that hopefully save the next person (s) from a year of absolute grief.
I found this place on a friends recommendation, and being on a time crunch it was the easy way out. Boy was that a bad idea…
Firstly, if you are willing to pay over $ 1600 in rent for a 1 bdrm you are a bloody fool! You can and WILL find MUCH better places that are same but cheaper, or even bigger… DO NOT LET THE PRETTY EXTERIOR FOOL YOU!!!
— When you get your unit, you will find that your garage is basically across the sahara desert, and god forbid that your garage is on the main road to the gate. (People here will honk at you or possibly hit you when pulling in and out from your garage.) They just are awful.
— FORGET ABOUT THE VISTOR PARKING! The tenants horde the spots, so good luck finding one!
— If you require an additional spot (cause like I said before, forget about the visitor spots), You will have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to get that spot, which is also not even remotely close to your unit once again. Even if you do get the spot, beware that your car still may get towed cause the office is too incompetent to inform the security that the reserved spots now have paying tenants using them,. Oh and to add to that, random people will still park in YOUR spot. (thankfully, the towing company is pretty quick).
–People tailgate you into the complex (super annoying)
— The power goes out a lot.
— Avoid this place at all costs during the 4^th of July. (The complex has an excellent view of the fireworks, so the rest of the valley wants in on that.)
— It is ALWAYS windy, so windy that it will keep you up all night. Pray that you don’t have a west facing unit.
–Cars get vandalized. Yay.
–garage and gate remotes never work half of the time.
–Be prepared to constantly get «3 days to pay rent or quit» notices every month… You must ask for a receipt when dropping off rent, which by the way, they only accept it in a stupid drop box. They just rolled out online rent pay, but I’m leaving very soon so I couldn’t tell you how the process is.
–the pool area is always overran with annoying kids, or bros being all bro-​ish (drinking, gross girls, loud, and obnoxious)
–The gym area is small and pathetic
–People do not clean up after their dogs when they walk them.
–I have witnessed first hand a guy get jumped by 4 guys in the parking lot. (might want to invest in pepper spray, or brush up on some Brazillian Jiu Jitsu skills)
–If you have pets, you will have to pay a deposit, and then a monthly fee to have them. (its outrageous)
— They do not pay for ANY utility. You have to pay this separate company called «NWP» I guess the complex goes through them for trash & sewage. VERY expensive bill none the less. ***Update 4÷30÷13 NWP had the NERVE to charge us an additional month! We don’t even live there anymore!!!***
— Everyone here drives a very loud car. Be warned lol
***Update 4÷30÷13 Our move out date was set for April 1^st, and we were out on March 30^th. Before that, they took it upon themselves to barge into our apartment and inspect it with no notice. They have sent us a bill for shit that does’t need replacing and other things that aren’t explained. When you try to call and speak to Carmen (mind you we call around 5:30, they close at 6pm, they tell us she is «on her way out»…) WTF?! I seriously am so angry with this place. I am contacting the BBB regarding all the shenanigans that go on in that office. Which enforces the next paragraph once more…
So when you are a unhappy tenant with all these issue, and try to bring it up to the management, they do absolutely nothing. The main guy «Jorge» never comes out of the office, you never see him, its like he’s Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget… So mysterious.
I so badly regret moving here! Such a waste of money, time, and sanity. Other than myself being on a time crunch and having to move here, because it was easy, I honestly do know why people live here, except for the over-​entitled-​mercedes-​audi-​bmw-​land rover-​driving-​brand name-​wearing jerks, I am at a loss…
Yes, the complex itself is pretty nice looking, yeah you get a washer/​dryer in unit, but as the saying goes, it’s too good to be true! don’t let the looks fool you! It’s just not worth the stress! This is supposed to be your home, where you can relax and unwind. Nobody needs or deserves to deals with this crap.
Happy Apartment Hunting!

Not enough visitor parking. Most if not all visitor spots are always taken by residents. Annoying, bougie people that lay out by the pool and tell the kids not to splash! One, it’s not your kid so you shouldn’t be telling them what to do and two, you shouldn’t be by the pool if you don’t want to get splashed on.

YOU DO NOT WANT TO LIVE HERE.
My wife and I moved in two years ago when James King (as mentioned by a previous poster) worked in the office. He was very nice and helpful, which is why he had to leave. Since then, the office staff have changed seemingly every month, until finally settling on Jorge as their manager. The employees dislike him because he treats them like idiots and the tenants dislike him because he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about them. He has stated quite clearly that all he’s concerned about is fulfilling his contractual obligations, but beyond that, tenants should expect no caring, respect, or rational treatment from him. It’s all about the bottom line, and he’s stated that he very well expects a number of tenants to leave because of his policies, but that he’s ok with that, as he can re-​sell the apartments just fine and make his money back. TALK ABOUT NOT CARING.
Parking is as terrible as advertised. There is NO street parking, so you must park in one of the lots. When I moved in here, there were two lots and one set of buildings, so all was A-​OK. Since then, they’ve built a second set and are working on a third WITHOUT ADDING parking. I don’t know if it’s ANY parking or just SUFFICIENT parking, but the bottom line is that I get home at 8pm and have no place to put my vehicle so I can go upstairs and go to bed. There is NO contingency plan for this, except for me to buy a parking space, which I do not want to do (it’s so expensive, my monthly gym membership costs less). If I then dare to park in a space that I haven’t bought… BAM! My vehicle is towed. So what is a person supposed to do? Sleep in their car in the parking lot? Not come home at night? No: the answer is clear — «buy our expensive parking spot or we’ll tow your car.»
Look, I’m not asking for a gold-​plated toilet or complaining like a spoiled whiner because we have a pool but not a waterslide… I’m not talking about missing luxuries here. A place to park your car and come home at night is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Again, if there were street parking, I’d deal with it, but there isn’t.
The bottom line is that, after NUMEROUS debates and discussions with Jorge the manager, not only are we leaving as soon as we can, we are writing on every site we can find to warn others!!! And you know what? The management doesn’t care, because as soon as we go, they’ll fill up the room with someone who can pay and is stupid enough to buy the parking space, too.
I do want to say, in the name of fairness, that most of the office staff themselves have been nice (but they change so often it’s hard to get attached) and that the maintenance staff is wonderful. None of this is their fault. It’s all on the management’s fault, and their rigid, inflexible, uncaring, corporate money-​grubbing ways. … Should I tell you how I really feel? =)

Pros
–Beautiful property and location.
–Our roomy 1 bedroom apartment was awesome. Every unit comes with a garage.
–We felt extremely safe here. Sometimes our remote for the garage didn’t always work. We went out of town for 3 days and returned to our garage wide open. My guitar amp worth about $ 2k, along with other misc. items was still in there. Could you imagine that happening anywhere else in the valley?
–Super fast maintenance.
Cons
–Very loud. We had the great pleasure of having to listen to constant construction for the duration of our lease. Prepare to be woken by loud ass echoes if you’re apartment faces any of the parking areas.
–Parking is absolutely horrible. Be prepared to pay $ 75+ for an extra parking space. I ponied up for an additional space only to have it taken 50% of the time by some random asshat.
–Water/​Trash utilities are out of hand. You aren’t individually metered here, so those of us in 1 bedrooms are subsidizing families in 2+ bedroom apartments. My last water/​trash bill was $ 90…fuck that.
–Management…there isn’t much to say here. Make sure you have EVERYTHING in writing. Document every god damn thing. If you don’t, they will surely find a way to screw you.

the person «Samina» must be the friends of the apartment, trust me this apartment sucks, we moved from one unit to another because the first unit was next to the garage of a DJ studio and the management did not want to do anything because it was their friend, so we moved to a new unit high on the 3^rd floor and then another problem came up, the neighbors below us did bot like us walking, HELLO!!! it’s an apartment GO GET A HOUSE IF YOUR GONNA COMPLAIN!!!, and yet we can here them
Every night making boom boom in the house with other guys every night, security is pointless, because when you call them for anything they take hours to get there, and when someone parks in your assigned parking space all they do is write a warning, and parking there is horrible, all the tenants that don’t want to pay for an additional space use all the guest parking, BEWARE!!! this place may be new but is made cheap, they don’t have elevators at all so if you got really heavy items good luck getting them
Up. For the price to rent it’s not worth it.

I have to write a review countering Pam S. The customer Service at Sonoma at Porter Ranch is AMAZING! James King is the Leasing Specialist there and I highly recommend that you specifically ask for him. He takes pride in his job. I went on several tours with him and this guy pretty much knew all the tenants. Even one tenants 2 year old knew him by name. We are moving in soon and I can’t wait… Keep up the good work Sonoma at Porter Ranch!

OH. MY. GOD. This was the WORST experience I ever had with an apartment place in my entire life!!! I have been SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO­OOO upset what these people have done!
First— rude when I first showed up, telling me, «It’s too late to show you anything» in a nasty tone… and showed me something from the outside, saying it would be available on Sept. 17.
Next– I came in 3 days later, with the intention of putting a deposit down on that very apartment and was told «It’s not going to be available– we don’t know when it will be» by a sleazy unhelpful girl also working there. She said she would talk to the guy we had already talked to, and told me of another one that was available and that she would have the guy call back the next day. I left my deposit in case I wanted that place, but signed nothing.
Then the guy called me, 3 days later, and told me the one I wanted would be available. So, I made an appointment to see him. When we got there, he was on another tour– kept us waiting 20 minutes, no apology, rude, and accused me of lying about which one he said was available, and asked me to literally play the voicemail he had left for me!!! I was getting really pissed… he then said he would call and let me know when that apartment would be available and still nothing was signed.
THREE WEEKS LATER… we had blown them off, figuring they had thrown away my deposit, were getting ready to move and down to our last cent, and found they had cashed my deposit!!! I was livid and left a message, then got a message back from the manager saying they would send me the refund immediately. One week later, we received nothing, and called. They told us our check was ready. We had to pick it up.
Two weeks after we moved in, after having borrowed money from mom to eat, we found that the very check they gave us as a «refund» has bounced!!! It caused me to be overdrawn and I was so angry I was ready to sue the crap out of them… my boyfriend called, was told they would call him right back and never did.
I guess I’m going to the Better Business Bureau now. A person like myself who has a reputation for being a really sweet person, has been driven to this out of sheer incompetence and the WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE UNIVERSE!!! STAY AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE!!!