Discover Real Resident Experiences at Torrey Villas

In Community:
Broken security features that let burglars and thieves stealing packages & your vehicle stolen out of your garage
The appearance of security but rarely operational security measures
Continuous rodent Infestations
Water & Flooding Issues including mold, sewage and water shut-offs
Excessive alcohol consumption in the pool that randomly closes and a hot tub that rarely works
Playing “Dodge the Dog Poop on the Sidewalk”!
That fresh smell of cigarette smoke throughout your home in a non-smoking community!
Invasion of your privacy control how you use your garage
Random attempts to police your patio furniture style and color as well as plants because they don’t match the “vibes” of the community
Fun police preventing children from using sidewalk chalk on the playground
Constant parking lot closures and construction throughout the community that results in no visible changes
A community that claims social gatherings but hasn’t organized a single event in three years
Seeing new maintenance staff every month because they are overworked and underpaid
Waiting over a week for any maintenance requests to be fulfilled because they are understaffed
Management sending security to break up quite and peaceful children’s gatherings at the park
A management company that might offer to pay you for a good review


In unit:
A sometimes partially working dishwasher
A non-functional ice-maker because “that’s just how they are”
Floors that turn your socks black upon move-in because the floors are never cleaned
Extremely dirty windows, the outsides of which have never been and never will be cleaned!
Ant in the kitchen for months
Windows that may or may not work
Leaves and other debris blown into your garage and front door (almost daily)
Fraudulent Move-out cleaning and repair charges


Then Torrey Villas is the apartment complex for you!!!


If you’re still here, read on for more details on how YOU TOO can live in this absolutely horrible community!


Community issues:
=============================================
Crime
Despite having a front gate that is supposed to close after 7PM, the exit gate is left open about 75% of the time (day or night).  This ultimately resulted in thieves coming into the community one night and working their way through many apartments to check and see if the doors were locked.  These thieves ended up stealing countless belongings and 3 vehicles right out of residences garages.  The response from the community management (after three days) was an email reminder to lock your doors.  No notice of what had actually happened or to be aware of suspicious activity.  Shortly after this, packages began disappearing from front doors so frequently that we were forced to purchase cameras because management told us they couldn’t put camera’s up.  They in fact responded to me when I asked what they intended to do about the increase in crime by saying, “So what do you want me to do about it?”  Which was closely followed by, “Ownership won’t let us have cameras on property” despite the fact there there are cameras as the pool, gym and on the playground.


Rats & Rodents
Our unit was on the ground floor and we witnessed rats running around our patio.  Shortly after this, we noticed rat traps popping up all over the complex, but the rat sightings never stopped.


Flooding, Sewage and Mold
Many of our friends were forced to leave their apartments due to water issues including flooding, sewage back up and/or mold.  This happened so frequently that it became a running joke between all of the parent’s and families that went to the community park with their children.  Nearly every month we would see people emptying their units of their belongings followed shortly by a remediation van showing up and spending days working on the unit or entire building!!


Alcohol @ the Pool & Hot Tub
If you choose to live here be aware that this pool often becomes VERY overcrowded and the younger crowd tends to create a party atmosphere and drinks alcohol excessively.  This became an issue on a few occasions as glass was used which resulted in breaks and forced the pool to close down.  Although, it’s somewhat hard to tell what the cause of a pool closure is because Torrey Villas randomly closes the pool down with less than a few hours notice almost every month.  If you are a fan of hot tubs, you can expect this one to be operational 1 week out of the month, it’s either way to low for the jets to work, the heater isn’t working or the water is brown.


Dog Poop
If you want to go for a walk in this community, rather than spend your time looking up at the beautiful San Diego sunny skies, you’ll be looking down and dodging puppy land mines (poop) as very few people clean up after their pets.  Management does not really care and will send emails out about once a month with no effect but they do not enforce cleaning up.


Smoking
This community states that smoking is not prohibited anywhere on grounds, however we have witnessed people smoking all over the property as well as in our own building.  For months, we had smoke coming into our unit through the vents from one of our neighbors, they even had a pile of cigarette butts on the garage floor, but management didn’t do anything (even with photo evidence).


Garage Audits
Don’t plan on using your garage for storage or if you need to use it for a small business. Management physically came to our unit and audited our garage to ensure we were parking our vehicle inside of it.  It is also worth noting that these garages are incredibly small.  Though we were required to use our garage, there was no way we could get in and our of our vehicle without damaging drywall in the garage…for which we were charged.


Patio Decorating Police Management
A very long time resident and very good friend of ours was harassed last summer and told that he needed to remove plants from his patio and change the color of his patio furniture because it didn’t match the community color scheme and style.  This requirement was not within any of the lease documents.


Constant Construction
For about 9 solid months there were rotating parking lot and amenity closures for which we received 48 notice in most cases. Management would shut down about 1/5 of all parking on a rotating basis. Even more interesting is we never understood the purpose and we never came across any visual improvements to the community. 


Not a Community Property
Torrey Villas markets itself as a community that organizes social gatherings but in the 3 years we were there they did not host a single one (including well after COVID was over). In fact, it was quite the opposite, a large group of us self-organized and held parties and events.


Maintenance
Although the community markets itself on its maintenance service, the reality for most of our time there was a 2-3 week wait for scheduled appointments that never showed on the day scheduled.  They would instead show up randomly a few days later, if at all.  In the beginning, the service was great and we knew the maintenance staff, but something happened that rapidly changed and from that point on we saw a new maintenance person nearly every month.


Playground
A group of fathers got together and hosted a movie night in the park for kids.  The kids were well behaved and quiet, but security showed up and shut the movie down which resulted in the kids getting loud and playing in the park.  I still don’t understand why management would stop kids from being quiet and well behaved in favor of loud screaming.  I can’t believe I’m actually writing this but the management team actually sent out a letter to all residents prohibiting children from using sidewalk chalk at the playground.  This staff however left a pair of garden shears (12″ long) at the park and within reach of children for over a week (after numerous complaints were sent directly to notify management).  It’s clear they really care about the safety of residents.


Market Price Drops
A family that we were friends with was forced to move when their lease was up as the market rent dropped but the management wouldn’t honor it for their unit unless they physically moved out of their unit and into another.


In unit:


Dishwasher
The dishwasher in our unit never worked properly and our friends in the community said the same of their units.  Regardless of whether or not we pre-soaked, dishes and utensils came out with food stuck on them or still dirty.  The maintenance solution was for us to buy Jet Dry (an unnecessary added expense) which resulted the same dirty condition.  Despite 3 visits by maintenance, nothing was ever done to fix the dishwasher.


Ice-Maker
Next up is the ice-maker, which was either in the off state or continually created ice and overflowed into the freezer and subsequently on the kitchen floor.  Maintenance inspected and troubleshot no less than 3 separate times finally recommending that we “Just leave it in the off position”.  When confronted with this, management’s response was, “That’s just how they all are, I live here and I have to leave mine off too.”  This issue was never resolved.


Floors (Move In Cleanliness)
We moved in at the height of COVID and received the keys in a contactless manner.  After we settled and began living in the unit, we realized that our socks were turning black just a few hours into the day, which was a clear indication that the unit had not been cleaned prior to our possession.  This was later confirmed as we had to deep clean the unit.  We subsequently mopped the whole unit but to our surprise the condition was so poor, that our socks were still turning black throughout the day requiring a second iteration of mopping the entire unit.


Ants
For approximately the first four months we shared our apartment with an entire colony of ants that enjoyed exiting the walls by the hundreds directly out of our half-wall in the kitchen to search for food.  The unit was sprayed for ants prior to our move-in, but this had no effect.  We contacted maintenance 3 or 4 times pleading with them to fix the problem and each time their solution was to wait for the once every two week visit of the exterminator to spray the baseboards of the unit, but this required the unit to be vacated each time.  The spray was completely unsuccessful as ants returned immediately. It was only fixed about 4 months after the initial maintenance request when Terminix came in and identified these ants as being a specific South American species that required a special chemical.


Windows
Not only were the exterior windows NEVER cleaned in the 3+ years that we lived there (on any floors) but our master bedroom window was sealed completely shut.  Maintenance came, but ultimately the entire window needed to be replaced and we were told that these windows were entirely too heavy and to expect to continue to have issues with them by the window repairman.


Blowing Debris & Power Washing
You can expect that nearly every single weekday grounds maintenance service will use a leaf blower to blow the debris from the hallways and alleyways INTO your garage and front door.  As the garage door isn’t sealed very well by design, this means that you will be fighting an endless battle of cleaning debris (leaves & garbage) from your garage.  This debris and garbage will also collect just outside your front door.  Once in a while they also power wash the interior hallways, which for us on the ground floor resulted in water coming into the hallway connecting our unit to our garage under the drywall!


Move-Out
BE AWARE – It is very unlikely you will see any of your security deposit returned to you upon move out!!  You have been warned!!  Although not specified in the lease or disclosed up front, we were informed upon our move-out notice that a painting fee would be assessed if we had not occupied the unit for at least two years.  My wife and I made two trips back to our unit to deep clean after having already cleaned during our move out.  We were subsequently charged a $246 cleaning fee.  At first they stated that the windows and oven weren’t “clean enough”, despite not having any picture evidence of the before move in condition they assured us that it wasn’t handed to us in that condition.  We cleaned weekly, and also paid to have a housekeeper come in twice a week, I’m uncertain how the unit could be any more clean.  We were also assessed a $200 (ironic that it was exactly $200) fee to repair drywall because the garages are so narrow and we had two support beams in the entrance of our garage we were forced to park to the side in order to exit our vehicle.  Our garage had clearly been repaired a number of times so we were not the first tenants with this issue.