Alvarado Sunset Apartments

An exterior shot of Alvarado Sunset Apartments

Alvarado Sunset is an apartment complex offering two-bedroom apartments as well as two- and three-bedroom townhomes . Described in advertisements as a "quiet & spacious community; near shopping &;has large open space," Alvarado Sunset also provides a clubhouse and free parking to its residents. The complex is located on Unitrans F bus line with a bus stop close by. This property has been managed by Jon Berkley Management, Inc. since April 21, 2006;

WE ARE CURRENTLY LEASING UP FOR FALL 2014! Call for current prices!!

In November 2005, UC Davis student Nicole Chun-Nelson successfully sued Sunset Apartments in Small Claims Court for charging excessive cleaning costs. The judge ruled in her favor in the amount of $414.00. There was a story in the California Aggie (U-Wire link)

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• For additional information and listings of other rental housing in Davis, please visit our Housing Guide as well as our Apartments pages.

• Older comments from 2005 up to the the 2010 change in management.

2010-11-10 17:23:11   To all Davis Wiki readers, I just want to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Vera and I am manager here since beginning of July. I made couple of changes to the complex such as we have an official study room and fresh hot coffee, tee or hot chocolate available during the day now; we are current with our responses on the work orders and I am personally making sore my residents in a good care. If you are looking for place to live stop by our place and give me an opportunity to accommodate your needs. Thank you for your consideration. —verap

2012-02-01 11:38:31   There haven't been any comments since 2010?? That seems like a good sign... I'll add my two cents. My roommate and I moved here in 2010 when Vera was the manager. The management changed three times since then, I think. Now the manager is Tamara. She's been nice and friendly so far and seems down to earth. My only complaint is that you can't go by the posted office hours; they seem to be pretty random. But there's always numbers that you can call for maintenance issues. Getting to maintenance: When we first moved in, the blinds were really crappy and falling apart. We asked them to replace them and they did (it took a while). The next issue was the front door; it had no weatherstripping and you could see a ~1" gap of sunlight where air would come in all around it. It took them a few days to see to that and the first time they fixed it, they did it wrong. They did it okay the second time though. The next thing was the ceiling in one of the bedrooms. When we moved in we'd noticed that there was a bathtub-sized spot on the ceiling that had been patched horribly and was yellowing and there looked to be water damage on the wall beneath it. Then the rain came. Yup! Water damage it was. The ceiling started leaking, lightly as far as leaks go, it just kinda dripped down the wall (no carpet damage). Then I realized the window was leaking too and I had to keep a towel under it. We told management of this and it took them about a week to fix it I think. At first maintenance couldn't figure out where the leak was coming from. We haven't had any troubles with leaks since then though. Under the new management, repairs have always been prompt. When we complained that our freezer was not keeping things frozen, they replaced our entire fridge! That was really nice and the new fridge and freezer work great. We've had some issues with the dishwasher, but this is Davis — don't expect any better at any apartment complex. Davis water is a bitch. My other complaint that I haven't mentioned to maintenance is the screens. Before we moved in, whoever put the screens on the windows bought the wrong size. Instead of buying new screens, they used pieces of cardboard to make the screens stay there. Except, they DON'T stay there if there's a breeze, or if you have a cat that likes to sit on the windowsill (which we do). Also, two of the windows just don't have screens at all. The heater has always worked fine and the A/C has only broken once and was fixed within days. Hot water has gone out maybe twice in over a year's time. I saw a single cockroach ONCE... So no bug problems here, at least not in our unit. As for neighbor complaints - our previous neighbors were college jocks who took to piling bags of garbage on their patio. Included in these bags was old food and what smelled like cat feces and litter. So my roommates and I couldn't use OUR adjoining patio because the smell was absolutely horrifying. We complained to management and the garbage disappeared for a few months... Then they started doing it again. We complained again, and soon after, those neighbors left and others moved in (not sure if it was related to the garbage or if their lease was just up). We have also had neighbors who played incredibly loud music with a powerful subwoofer on week nights after 11PM. My roommates and I all work on weekdays and two of us have to get up around 5AM most days so this is really uncool. We complained about it and haven't had any problems since. Be aware that Alvarado Sunset DOES sit along Covell, a fairly busy street, and there will be traffic sounds. They don't bug me, personally, but then, I used to live right next to I-80. Also, it is within walking distance of a grocery store AND the high school, so you'd think you'd see a lot of annoying high school kids or get some vandalism or something, but we haven't had any issues with that at all. Don't get too excited about the pool, it's medium-sized and cleaned biweekly at best, and there is no spa. All in all, Alvarado Sunset has decent prices for its location and amenities and I didn't really expect anything different. No horror stories here. It's college living, not the life of luxury, and not your mom's house. Will be back when we move out for an update on how much our cleaning deposit we get back and if any other issues come up! —gurglemeow

2012-05-01 01:28:10   It is as it is described by gurglemeow. I've been living here for the past year. Here's what I have so far:

Good:

- Staff is nice. Tamara is prompt and helpful whenever things go bad in the house. - Large apartments for the price. I'm paying about $100 more for my own bedroom than I did splitting a 1-bedroom in Cambridge House last year. (There's an interesting story there but I'll get into that another time.) - New dishwasher. Seriously new. Like they installed it day-of move-in. Sweet. - Balcony is included. Nice if you want to dry off clothes that didn't fully dry in the dryer (looking at you, favorite hoodie!) - Close to campus and buses. F line stops more or less outside the apartment, J and G are a block away.

Bad: - Complex is falling apart. Seriously. When I moved in there were cobwebs and banged-up paint everywhere on the exterior. There are also times my key doesn't fully work and requires much shouting and jiggling of large and bulky kendo equipment held in other hand. There was a leak in the living room but it seems to have been addressed. - Overzealous use of paint by workers. Not lying - they painted over the doors, light switches, and even the toilet seat. They also painted over a dent in my wall but somehow left greasy fingerprints on my door instead. - Dishwasher was installed poorly - the insulation around the dishwasher is totally visible. - House is all electric except... the heater. Not disclosed by management until I got a bill a few months later.

Meh: - This is not the apartment's fault, but there are quite a lot of young children here. If you like children, yay! But they do have a habit of shouting loudly, slamming doors, and leaving their toys out. Also, playing in the parking lot (!) so drive carefully. Maybe I'm just old and cranky. GERROFF MA' LAWN YOU PESKY KIDS!

Addendum: - They've really taken a large step in cleaning up the grungy laundry room. One of the perpetually broken machines finally got taken down and they got rid of the caked in dog poo (?) on the ground. —HarrisonM

2013-03-11 22:27:16   Listed below are the pros and cons of living at Alvarado Sunset Apts. We have lived here for a little over six months at this point, and I honestly recommend that you take both the pros and the cons of this place into account when deciding to move in.

PROS 1. The manager is nice. Tamara works very hard to respond to issues quickly and she is very approachable. 2. Space. The apartments are quite large for what you pay for. We have a ton of storage space, the living room is large, and so is the dining area. So many kitchen cabinets! 3. Good location. Close to the greenbelt, less than 1.5 miles from campus. Close to F, J, G lines. By Anderson Plaza and the North Davis Marketplace. 4. They recently got a new maintenance person (you'll understand why this is relevant if you take a look at the cons). 5. The complex is relatively quiet apart from a few nights where people decide to play music. For the most part, many families live within the complex so people are generally not very loud.

CONS 1. The fact that the complex needs some work is the understatement of the year. Start with the fences: they are old, stained, and need to be repainted. Laundry machines are constantly out of order, and there are nowhere near enough machines for the entire complex (five washers, six dryers). The exercise room is practically non-existent. The cement pathways, and many of the patios are cracked and uneven (they may have repaired some around the complex). 2. The wiring on all of the apartments is extremely old. I was told when I asked that they are not fixing this anytime soon. This means that you cannot get AT&T, and you'll probably be forced to get Comcast or DISH (a much more expensive option). Instaconnect is a joke. 3. Insulation - it could be 75 degrees outside and it'll be 50-something inside of the apartment even if you leave the blinds open and keep all of the windows closed. The apartment retains absolutely no heat and gets extremely cold during the winter. This is mainly due to the fact that the windows let in moisture, and that they are also not airtight, so wind gets in and there is always a draft. When you turn on the heat (which you will have to do, trust me) expect the temperature to drop back down in a matter of about a half hour. 4. Management - Although Tamara is extremely nice and helpful, they do not actually fix any issues that are "cosmetic" even though they may significantly affect your living experience. An example would be the horribly painted walls (you can clearly see that many of the walls were previously painted beige) and kitchen cabinets (when we moved in, they were painted shut). A very visible portion of our kitchen tiles had oil burns, and when I asked for replacement I was basically told that this wasn't a big deal and that there was nothing she could do. It seems like she wants to fix many things, but that she's on a tight leash with upper management to save money. We had half of a towel rack stump when we moved in (they eventually fixed one of them, but one stump is still left so we only have one). 5. Leaks! When it first rained in the fall, we had a large bubble build up on the inside of one of our walls. This was due to the fact that the ceiling on the outside of the apartment was cracked and that the wood under it was rotten. We had water leak through the walls and onto the carpet. They did fix this eventually (after a week, even though there was mold building up and the bubble got bigger), but they then had to fix the roof itself in order for the problem not to persist (they are now finally fixing the roof permanently and it is March). 6. Mold - that last part leads us to the mold. There is a constant mold problem near all of the windows (given that moisture seeps in and that the windows are not airtight). They did take the mold seriously when the bubble built up on the wall, but we're basically on our own for the window stuff, especially in the bathroom. 7. Probably not representative of the overall security of the place, but I did get my bike stolen out of my locked, fenced patio during the first week that we lived here. People sometimes hang out in the parking lot very late at night and they leave alcohol bottles and random stuff lying around (we found a decaying bouquet of flowers and a full gallon of arizona iced tea literally outside of our back door). Our locks are also extremely old and the handles are very rickety

I think that overall, you should probably spend a little more time looking for a better deal. Most places have nicer amenities, better maintenance (in terms of the complex overall and the apartments), and are probably a lot newer. The price here is low for a reason. The only reason that we moved here was because Alvarado Parkside (at the time) was only $75/month more expensive for the townhouse (both complexes are mirror images of each other except that Parkside has spent a lot of money making their complex look very nice. In retrospect, we should have moved there). —OmarTejeraCespedes

2014-08-28 15:11:59   I had a terrible experience here. THEY HAVE RATS AND DON'T TAKE CARE OF THE PROBLEM!!!!! Also, the employees are so rude and unprofessional. I was never told there was rats until I found out myself when I saw my food was bitten into, my roommates' food was bitten into as well. I had to throw away 40 dollars worth of food and I am still waiting for a reimbursement. Tamara in the front office is extremely rude and lazy, she would never call in pest control until I would go in and remind her about the situation. The guy from maintenance was rude as well. When I talked to the guy from pest control that was called in, he told me that he has gone to those apartments before to take care of rat problems, so there are rats in multiple units!! —riverbankbruin

2014-10-28 14:34:58   Does this apartment complex allow smoking inside the buildings? —RayGunn

2015-09-25 15:26:04   Worst place.. Apartment is old and management sucks donkeys balls. Tamara is deceitful, unfriendly and frustrating. Overall a really bad place with worst and vicious management. They charged huge irrational amounts for cleaning and maintenance. Best if avoided. —gradstudentcs