I moved into Oak Park Manor in August 2009. Having lived three years at Quail Hill Apartments in Walnut Creek, I had come to respect and appreciate their management company, M&L Properties. M&L took over Oak Park Manor in 2009. This three-building, two-story apartment complex sits on a quiet and attractive street, right next to a Safeway flanked with towering eucalyptus, pine and redwood trees. Just a few blocks west of the Pleasant Hill public library, the apartment buildings are far enough away from highway 680 that you don't hear the roar of highway traffic. Yet it takes only five minutes to drive, or 25 minutes to walk, to the Pleasant Hill BART station -- and less than ten minutes to drive onto 680. My one-bedroom apartment, which measures about 800 square feet, has an unusually spacious bedroom and living room, along with a large balcony. My bedroom has only one window, which does not let in as much natural light as I'd like. The central air-conditioning and heating work smoothly. The wall-to-wall carpeting is soft and very sensitive to denting from furniture or appliances sitting on it. On my second inspection of the apartment I noticed the carpet had several dents resembling claw marks gouged into it -- probably from some wheeled appliance that maintenance men had left on it for too long. The management agreed to replace the carpet before I moved in. They also gave me free rent for the first month, the going offer at that time. The live-in managers, Mandy and Derek, while pleasant and compassionate people, proved woefully disorganized. When I applied for a free storage locker they did not follow through, complaining they had inherited a confusing mess in which they did not know which tenants were renting which lockers, and which in fact were vacant. Derek responded very slowly to my requests for basic repairs such as a fluorescent bulb replacement, and seemed easily distracted from his tasks. In December 2009, M&L Properties fired Mandy and Derek. They replaced them temporarily with Leslie and Mike, the resident managers at Sunnyvale Terrace Apartments, which M&L had also bought recently. Applying careful record-keeping, Leslie soon got control of the storage-locker situation and issued me my free locker. Mike responded quickly and skillfully to my repair requests. In spring 2010 a new couple, Asia and Kendall, moved in and took the reins as live-in managers. Friendly and hard-working, they've displayed excellent communication and technical skills. Kendall responds within one hour to my repair requests. He and Asia tolerate, with good humor, the lazy and irresponsible behavior of certain tenants who dump their unwanted furniture into the garbage-bin area; leave large cardboard boxes outside the recycling bin instead of cutting them up and placing the pieces inside the bin; and leave the bin and dumpster lids open, letting crows invade the dumpsters and letting water flood in during the rainy season. Asia and Kendall uncomplainingly clean up the messes left by such tenants. In October 2009, while Mandy and Derek were still the resident managers, a construction crew started rebuilding the balconies, including mine. They did what seemed a nice job, applying an initial coat of white paint to the new wooden railing around the balcony. However, they stopped their work on the balconies for several months, allowing the winter rains to pound the plastic tarp loosely covering the wooden beams stacked beyond my building. They finally resumed work rebuilding the balconies and finished the job (except for the painting) by the next spring. In this second round of balcony work, they added vertical beam support underneath my balcony and installed metal braces on the joints. In Sept. 2010 I called the Pleasant Hill Building Department (925-671-5200) and asked Mike, the official who answered, whether his department had halted construction, and why. Mike told me the building department had indeed "red-tagged" (halted) the balcony construction, because the crew did not have the required permits. Then, after the apartment management obtained the permits and resumed construction, the building department ruled the units in compliance in August 2010. Oak Park Manor has plenty of parking space: reserved carport spaces for tenants and some non-reserved spaces, plus ample street parking. Also, M&L Properties offers tenants who have lived in an apartment for at least two years, free scrub-cleaning of their carpet by a professional service. read more

Oak Park Manor - Oak Park Manor - Apartments Near Me - Pleasant Hill, California

I've lived here for a year with my girlfriend. Maintenance is poor and responses from Elizabeth, one of the owners has been very unpleasant and actually rude. I was basically told if we didn't like it here we should move. However when I moved in, cleanliness and general image of building were much better. Huge decline in the past 12 months. Very good neighborhood and friendly neighbors earns this place an extra star. Building appearance and safety as well as management alone, would give this place one or even zero stars. read more

See all

My husband and I have lived at Oak Park Manor for over 2 years now. Our experiences here have been mostly good. Currently we have Nancy and Mark as management here, and not many problems have occurred. There is still the issue of the office being vacant most times I go up there and going to voicemail when I call. Though I don't usually get a call back, I'll be stopped on the property by one of them to let me know that Mark will be over soon. He's constantly working, and hardly gets a break it seem. So though you may have to wait in line behind a resident or two with more severe problems, the job will get done. If it's a crisis, you get moved to the top of the list. Now about the apartments themselves; they are more spacious then you think. We live in an 850 sqft 1 bd 1 ba, apartment. The bedroom is really big. It measures somewhere around 15'x12'. It has a huge closet with sliding doors and floor to ceiling mirrors. The living room is also quite large, with a big window and sliding glass door that goes out to our patio (we're on the bottom floor). Our unit also has an AC unit in both the living room and bedroom. The kitchen has good and bad qualities. The appliances are dated, but they get the job done. The counters and cabinets were renovated before we moved in so they look quite nice. Its small with not a lot of counter space, but has a huge pantry which we ended up using more for storage because the closets in the hall aren't too big. The bathroom is ok I guess. They should renovate it. The tub has seen better days, and the bathroom window is rusted pretty badly around the edges. The neighbors are ok. Some are really nice. A huge complaint is the man next to us is like a chain smoker or something. We can hardly have our backdoor open because then we get this horrendous smell in our home. I'm pretty sure theres a law stating that you can't smoke within X feet of a residence (even if its on your "property") but I haven't looked it up, and I'm not sure the management would say anything. One random complaint: we once had construction going on in the apartment above us and they would start working (saws, hammers, sanders, all noisy things) before 8am (our you can start making noise time). It would be more like 7. The Pros of living here: Close to Bart. Less than a 5 minute drive. Safeway is RIGHT next to us. PET FRIENDLY! This is a huge thing for us. We have a 35lbs dog. They didn't care about her weight. They just wanted to meet her beforehand and make sure she was friendly. Pet rent is an extra $50 for us, but I'm not sure if thats per pet or what. Our upstairs neighbors had 2 dogs and paid $50 as well, but they were both small, so maybe its by size? There may be breed restrictions. We haven't had any trouble with car break ins, or home invasions (that i've heard of) You get 1 assigned parking space (most are covered) Price per square footage is excellent compared to most places out here A pool for the summer months The Cons of living here: The god damn laundry room... The bane of my existence. The management company is too cheap to replace these machines. The are constantly breaking (sometimes with your clothes in it). Mark comes along and fixes them... until they break again. Also, there are only 4 washers and 4 dryers to service the whole complex. We had one incident of vandalism (recently) where the coin mechanisms on the washers were sawed into to steal the quarters. This happened in broad daylight and no one noticed. We didn't have washers for about a month because instead of just buying new ones, the management company just wanted to buy new parts. Mark and Nancy were pretty nice about it though and let us into the laundry room to fluff our hung dry clothes instead of having to trek back to the laundry mat for a 5 minute spin in the dryer. So now we have keys to get into the laundry room. Some residents will leave their laundry in a machine all day. It gets to the point where you just have to move it onto the table so you can proceed. Some residents (and guests of residents) can be jerks and will stop their car in the narrow lane between the laundry room and one of the apartment buildings to wait for someone to come out, or to run in because they forgot something, making it really hard to either get out of your parking spot or to just drive past them. It's the leaving the car unattended that bothers me more. The windows are REALLY thin. They do nothing to keep out the cold or warm weather which probably means we are paying more for electricity to counter that problem. So yea. Overall safe to live at. Lots of great things, with a few drawbacks as is the norm. I'd recommend this place to most people. read more

BEWARE!! We've lived here for just under a year and we just got a notice that our RENT will be INCREASED each month by $200. Before we moved in, we specifically asked the previous resident manager if rent is raised often, and she said that people have lived here for years with little change in rent and that because we're already starting on the higher end, that it's really unlikely it will go up anytime soon. I will say, though, that the current resident manager, Julie, is fantastic. She's really nice and quick to respond. The painful rent increase unfortunately has nothing to do with a good resident manager. (The above paragraph was written while we were still living there.) Since then, we have moved out, because we were not willing to pay that steep price to live there. The main reason we were not very happy with the apartment is because it is directly behind Safeway, and we would hear DELIVERY TRUCKS and parking lot cleaners at all hours of the night. There have literally been people with leaf blowers at 2 am cleaning the lot behind Safeway. We were constantly woken up by these trucks and cleaners. In the summer, we had to use the AC every night, because if we had the windows open, we wouldn't get any sleep. Also, there were often sketchy people hanging out behind Safeway, that were really unpleasant to see from our apartment. I've seen people POOP, URINATE, SMOKE, do DRUGS, seeming DEAL DRUGS, loiter, blast MUSIC...its pretty unpleasant. I never knew that Safeway was the cool place to hang out for a smoke break. When we moved out of the apartment, we were told that we had to pay to have the carpets professionally cleaned, but we looked through all of our paperwork and we were never told upfront that that was the expectation. After bringing that to attention, we were told that we would not have to pay for carpet cleaning. When we received our deposit reimbursement, they had indeed taken $75 out for carpet cleaning. We had to call to get it rectified, which it was, but was a hassle. Actually, when we originally moved in, we moved into a dirty apartment. It looked like it had maybe been swept, but not cleaned. There was dust everywhere and even streaks in the toilet. Then, when we moved out, they told us that we would not receive our deposit if we did not clean the place. I was also surprised when they said that ideally we would clean the place enough for the next tenants to be able to move in, without the company having to bring cleaners in. Seems pretty gross. When moving into a new apartment, I would normally expect that the unit has been professionally cleaned. Obviously this company likes to cut corners. All in all, this company seems pretty sketchy. They tried charging us for something, hoping that we didn't know any better. We were happy to move out, because we can't support a company like this. read more

I was interested in renting two bedroom apartment. Called multiple times, but never got a call back. I will just find another place. read more

I have lived in Oak Park Manor for two years. As others have said it is convenient to stores, freeway and BART.

maintenance is really quick to fix things, staff is very helpful, quiet apartments, location is very convenient to groceries etc.

we stayed here for few months in 2014, this is the best option for month to month rental, everything is within walking distance(bus stop,safeway,park,library, elementary and middle school) ,Mark & Nancy are the best, very helpfull, got my security money back without any problem. read more