Windemere Apartments

Love the place and the locality. Very well maintained, quite and has encinal park in the neighborhood too! Close proximity to companies like apple, linkedin. It also has some restaurants nearby!

Nice and quiet community to live in. Has a great park within few steps. Being a Indian and having Madras groceries very near is a great plus! Had a comfortable stay for close to 2 years.

The walkways have leaves strewn over for days.
Also they just starting charging for utilities. we were told it was going to be just for water and then they charged us for water, sewer, garbage, service fee and set up fees… and the fees are higher per unit than what you would pay for a single family home… and this is a joint 250 unit complex.
These guys, the owners, are a rip off.
The apartment managers Maria and Julie are very professional and very nice.

Lived there a long time back… 2007 – 8, but know still have friends living there.
Pros:
Peaceful, nice homes. Mostly four-​plexes. Stone’s throw from Encinal park. Reasonable rent for 1B/​R. Nice landscaping and trees. Management was good back then. Got full deposit back, inspite of breaking lease as I had move out of country. Very responsive to maintanence requests. Great location and easy commute to all southbay tech companies.
Cons:
Swimming pool is for namesake. Laundry can get crowded in the weekend.

We are moving out recently from an unit where we lived for 2.5 years. And before that we were in another unit for 1.5 years. 3 of us cleaned for 5 hrs after the move. And they are charging us $ 100 cleaning fee and $ 130 for painting. I’m so disappointed after so many years, they would do that to us. They complained that our makeup paint was not matching 100% with the original color. After so many years of living there, I expect an apartment would be responsible for painting and cleaning. It’s not like we didn’t do our part. Did I mention that they didn’t change the carpet when we originally moved in?
1 star for the previous manager who was very nice and friendly, and left more than 2 years ago.

We moved out last year. Maria was very helpful with the whole process. We also received a big portion of the deposit back. We also had to break the lease as we moved to a different city and the rental office returned the lease breaking fee to us as they found a new tenant immediately after we left!

Pros:
* In good commute location. But, these days, the central expressway is so busy, we are losing that advantage.
* Safe neighborhood.
Cons:
* New managers in the leasing office are indifferent to anything we request. Some of their replies are standard — ‘Higher management/​owners have given orders like these and that; so we can’t do anything’.
* Gym is a namesake. Treadmill is broken most of the time. They left it broken for 3 months. Reason for not repairing is — ‘Management/​Owners are not responding to their request’. I think saying that there is a gym just gets them a check mark in apartment listing. If you are moving in, this is a not a difference maker.
* Common Laundry is a mess, forget doing it during a weekend or evenings. Lot of the resources are OK when the apartment is at 80% occupancy. But, with the bay area demand, it is almost 100% full and the resources like laundry, gym, swimming pool, etc are nearly useless. Laundry has puddles of water on the floor and unclean dryers, washers, especially during weekend.
* Small old apartments; and units near open areas are very noisy. As usual, apartments have thin walls and add to the noise experience.
* Cable is paid, but at low speed. These units used to be corporate housing a while back. Having cable paid was good for corporate stuff. But with the bandwidth is not good for today’s needs. If you want to work from home, the reliability is bad.
Overall, this is an OK place!

We lived here for 1 year, Had the most comfortable stay. Very prompt service.
The apartment was very well maintained and clean. Water, trash, internet and cable is included in the rent. No complains!
There is also a beautiful park very close.

Currently staying here, and I choose this as this being the most greenest of communities that I saw. The management is very helpful and cooperative. As having recently moved to the US, all other communities in the same area were demanding deposit for lack of credit + rent history (which was nearly 1000 $) as well an application fee which was around 75 – 80 $. But Windemere was kind enough to waive it off, as well offered me a special 50% discount on my 2^nd month rent (which leaves me enough money off my paycheck to furnish the house).
So all in all, it is a win win. Internet and cable TV (with hindi channels) is a community feature, and that is quite a cost out over here. As well heated water + disposal is included, and you only have to take care of the electricity.
The only downside is that there is no washer + dryer in the unit, and you have to lug around the laundry to either of the two laundries in the community, but that’s okay once a week.
Till that time, I will continue feeding the squirrels off my patio, and enjoying my stay out here at Windermere.
P. S.: It is in walking distance (1 mi) of Mountain View business center, so walking to work is a good exercise option.

Overall decent experience. Great location. Noisy, old, and expensive. but well all the apartments are expensive in this area.