I was a tenant at De la Vina house in 2010 and I'm totally happy with my stay for 10 months…read more Although, I'm not a fan of bunk beds, the house was fine, great, no INCREDIBLE location, with a nice big back yard , BBQ- equipment, pool table and patio furniture.
First off, I can't stress enough how awesome it is to have a 10 month lease, rather than 12 month situation, of which 2 months, you never use the house at all (that's $1800 people!). EVERYBODY stays home (or somewhere else over summer) before school starts, at the end of August, and why pay additional rent when you're not there? Or live there over summer, just because you've paid for it, when you'd rather be somewhere else? I didn't mind the summer fee, in return for no rent over Jun/Jul.
I lived here as part o a co- ed house, 7 girls to 2 guys. Although the guys tended to be less "clean" than us girls, and we were no sanitary saints, kinda managed to keep the house somewhat acceptable but the weekly housekeeping was a huge relief..
Each week, there would be a huge stack of dishes and trash piled up, just in time for the housekeepers to come in. In all honesty, we all contributed to the stacks, knowing that we'd be "liberated" on Tuesdays.. We never had any complaints from either the housekeepers or from the landlord. This is great, when you're in college, with far more "important" things to think about than housekeeping. I don't think that we could have done this on our own and there would have been an all- out war after the first couple of months. It's just not possible to get 9 people to agree on any acceptable level, unless everybody is 100% tuned in the same way, which I know we were not.
So, the house is old, sure, but it was furnished, supplied with all of the stuff you'd need to get through and whatever wasn't there, we asked for and it got delivered, often by the landlord himself.
We had a great relationship with the landlord, who would come in and fix stuff when we reported stuff broken or missing, and he would even hold house meetings, when things got too tense in the house. (Some of us had a harder time coping with the roommate situation than others and this caused occasional rifts.) The house meetings helped and we all ended up staying in the house through our lease period and, most of us are friends still today.
The house had laundry facilities, highly appreciated by all of us and all of the other stuff, like TV, wi-fi, all the services/utilities paid and done. We had 0 bills to deal with every month. This is a huge plus!
The most important aspect, to me, was the LOCATION! De la Vina (and Haley) are both just perfectly positioned for school (5 blks), downtown (2 blks) grocery shopping and everything else. Nobody in our house had a car but we didn't need one! We could walk to everywhere from our house.
I think that this is a great set up and, aside from getting your own studio or apartment, which is soooo expensive in SB, you couldn't do better than this for your first year of college. It's all there when you arrive. You don't need to haul sheets and stuff like that, it's already equipped. No kitchen stuff, no bills, no worries. Show up with your suitcase and you're good.
To wrap things up, we had all heard of the dreaded move- out day and other kids getting ripped off for their deposits with shitty landlords.. We had created a few dings and tears to the house, which nobody was willing to fess up to, of course.. ;) We all got 100% of our deposits back. All of us!
I have to say that I'm stunned at the level of service we received from Dave. I have recommended Active Student Housing, and De la Vina in particular, to tons of my friends, some have actually stayed and agree with me. This is AWESOME housing for SBCC!
A+++++
