Top Ten Reasons Why Waterstone Is Better Than Pathfinder Village

My landlord has some silly interpretations of lease provisions, and my rent is a bit on the pricey side. However, life is good here at Waterstone. It's a zillion times better than it was in Pathfinder Village. (I have some other colorful names for Pathfinder, but this is a family blog.)

As I was listening to my upstairs neighbors step on every creaky floorboard last night, I began to get annoyed. Then I realized that if my biggest annoyance is creaky floorboards, I've got a pretty good deal. I decided to count my blessings. So, here are the top ten reasons why Waterstone is better than Pathfinder.

10. Sufficient parking - At Waterstone, each apartment gets one parking space included with the rent. Additional parking spots can be rented for a modest fee. There is plenty of parking for guests or people too cheap to rent an extra spot. At Pathfinder, parking was a constant nightmare. There were times when the nearest parking space I could find was a 10 minute walk from my apartment.

9. Parking is enforced - At Pathfinder, there was one parking spot per apartment, regardless of the size of the apartment or the number of occupants. On several occasions, someone (not a roommate or other person with permission) was parked in the reserved spot. I called security and they refused to do anything about it. At Waterstone, I've had people park in my spot on a few occasions, and the management immediately tags the car with those bright orange violation stickers threatening to tow the car if it isn't promptly removed. The offending car is always gone within an hour. (Whether by the owner's own volition or by towing, I'm not sure, but either way, I get my spot back.)

8. Safety - My car got broken into multiple times at Pathfinder, despite my being compulsive about locking it and removing all valuables. Last week, I was an airhead and forgot to lock my car door overnight. When I got to my car in the morning, it was still there, untouched, with all of my belongings completely undisturbed. Score for Waterstone. At Pathfinder, the cops showed up at least once a week. At Waterstone, the one time the cops showed up, it was so newsworthy that the manager sent a notice to all the residents explaining the reason for the visit and reassuring us that this is a safe community.

7. Everything is up to code - In Pathfinder, I couldn't run multiple appliances at the same time. The microwave and iron would trip the circuit if used together. Same with the television and the vacuum cleaner, or the hairdryer with just about anything. The heater never worked, so I had to use space heaters, which tripped the circuit when anything else was used. The place constantly grew mold no matter what I did. At Waterstone, I have central heat, central air, and functioning electrical outlets. I can simultaneously run my television, washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, and microwave with no problems!

6. Walk-in closet - I have a huge walk-in closet. I love it! It's almost big enough to be another bedroom.

5. Well-behaved children - At Pathfinder, roving bands of unsupervised children and teenagers plagued the place. They would curse at top volume, play basketball until all hours of the night, throw eggs at residents' doors, harass the stray cats, and generally make nuisances of themselves. At Waterstone, the children are polite, well-behaved, quiet, and supervised. They are completely inoffensive. One time, I was struggling with two large boxes in my hands, and a little girl about 4 years old opened the building door for me and pressed the elevator call button! (I made sure to tell her mother what a polite child she had.)

4. Elevator - The elevator at Pathfinder didn't stop on the second floor (thank goodness I lived on the third), was always really iffy, and managed to get stuck on multiple occasions. I was trapped in there three separate times. That's saying something, given that I took the elevator probably once a month, tops. The elevator at Waterstone works just fine. It's slow, but it's reliable. (I still take the stairs, though.)

3. Quiet - Pathfinder was always noisy. Between the marauding bands of urchins, the constant fiesta music, the constant rap, the police sirens, and the construction noise, I don't think I experienced a moment's peace in the 4 years I lived there. It's silent here at Waterstone. Aside from splashing in the pool or my upstairs neighbors' footsteps, I don't hear any noise. I love it!

2. Competent management - Pathfinder could never keep a manager for more than 6 months. They lost my lease file on several occasions, and they didn't add roommates to the lease even when they said that they had. (That created a nightmare when everything went south right before I had to move out.) It took them a week to fix a problem caused by an electrical fire that left us without power in half of the apartment. The employees were rude and disorganized, and they failed on several occasions to comply with notice requirements for entry. The management at Waterstone is competent, polite, and helpful. The only time I had to put in a service request, it was taken care of within a few hours.

And, the number one reason why Waterstone is better than Pathfinder:

No bedbugs!!! - Bedbugs are the scourge of humanity. They're insidious little pests that can infest even the cleanest environments. I never had bedbugs, but they were allegedly found in neighboring apartments, and my roommates spotted them on occasion as well. I detailed the arduous process of getting rid of bedbugs here. In addition to Pathfinder having bedbugs, the management wouldn't always tell us when the bugspray people were coming. The pest control people would show up at 8 am on a Monday morning (after I was at work, so I never talked to them), demand entry, and get upset when we weren't ready for them because we didn't know they were coming. Hello, we're not clairvoyant! (At one point, this happened 4 weeks in a row. I even went and asked the office on a Sunday afternoon if they were coming on Monday, and they wouldn't tell me.) Anyway, Waterstone has been spared this Monday-stealing scourge.