Gateway Lakes Apartments (Marlin Lakes) Horrible Nightmare Sarasota Florida

Gateway Lakes is the LAST place you'll want to live!! If I could review this without any stars, believe me..I would!

My boyfriend and I signed our lease here in November of 2013. We fell completely in love with the location, property, and property management team. Unfortunately, in April of 2014 the property was bought out by Wood Residential.

Let me just say since then, we can not WAIT until our lease is up. We have contemplated breaking our lease many times. Since this new team has come in, the whole place has gone to ----.

Living here now is like living in a glorified ghetto. The grounds are very poorly maintained, long grass, dog poop everywhere, massive ant hills all over the place, only 1/3 of the outside lights work, wires sticking up out of the ground in multiple places.

The maintenance staff is slow and lazy. We have started just repairing things ourselves.

The office staff is a joke. The girls in there are so catty and rude. They make no effort to get to know you. They shift the blame when something is wrong instead of just apologizing and don't ever try to get the name or number for someone higher up because you will get the ultimate run around.

Our mailbox was broken for four days and no one had the decency to tell us-in fact, we called the office and the lady, MARY ANN, told me that it wasn't her responsibility to notify us that our mailbox was broken and then hung up on me. All of our mail was being sent back to the Post Office because the leasing office refused to hold it in the mail room on property. FOUR DAYS before we found out and we found out from the mail delivery man. He said that he notified the office and they couldn't have cared any less. We had bills, packages, documents, etc. backed up. Had we found out any later, all of our mail would've been returned to the sender due to negligence of pick up.

There is no parking, ever. When we moved here there was a parking system in place with marked visitor parking now, if you pull in here after 8pm you will be walking a mile from your apartment. The safety of this area has really gone down and almost all of the outdoor lighting is burnt out so as a young women at 9/10pm walking that far from my car to apartment, I do not feel safe.

Finally, when Wood Residential took over this property, they screwed all of the billing up. We used to get two separate bills-one for rent/pet fee and one for water/trash/pest control. Now, it is all on one bill and every month there is a huge jump in the price. We have called and called and called to speak with someone and no one ever answers. Our water bill went from $30 to $96 in one month...we are only two people in this apartment and we are not wasteful.

I make sure to tell everyone I know and meet to not even consider living here! I have posted reviews on multiple sites. Save your money and go elsewhere! This complex is not worth anyones time or money. The new leasing agents talk a good game but really really research and shop around before committing anywhere.

**I went on the properties facebook page and wrote this same review and within seconds, it was deleted and I was blocked..maybe instead of hiding from their disgruntled residents, they should confront them and ask what they can do to fix their experience.**