Ponderosa Village Apartments

Great apartment

The apartment complex is average, it is not very clean in the outside and there are issues with trash management.

On another note, the management of the place is not great.

First, the pros: The property is well-secured with gates and heavy front doors, so I feel relatively safe at home. Of course, I live on an uper level, so those at ground level facing the parking lot may feel differently. The bedroom and bathroom are good-sized and private and I pay my half of the rent through a separate lease from my roommate, ensuring that if she leaves I am not responsible for her part of the bill. I appreciate that each bedroom has its own bathroom and that the unit has its own washer and dryer. The windows are large and allow in plenty of light. My particular unit has a nice view of the sunrise and hills.

Now the cons: There is virtually no storage space. The kitchen is very small, especially as it is shared between two people. Everything from the counters to the fridge to the carpets are clearly the cheapest options available. Trash builds up all over the property, cluttering the parking area and pathways as we don't seem to have enough dumpsters for the residents and nobody at the offices cleans up the property. The same bird poop has been on the railing, steps and landings of my unit for over 6 months. Parking is not just far away, but there are no designated pathways, so we're trudging up dirt paths that get muddy or aren't cleared of snow in the winter. Additionally, parking is not covered, so that's another couple hundred dollars a year. There is no guest parking to speak of, which presents additional challenges. There seems to be a high turnover rate for employees in the offices as it's always someone new. The offices are often closed during the hours they are supposed to be open and I almost never get responses to calls or emails, so I've given up trying. The location also means loud trainings on the practice fields, loud game nights, and bright parking lot lights at all hours, but that is to be expected with campus living.

Overall the unit itself has some appealing features, but gor the cost of the rent to not have much of an outdoor space, no swimming pool or gym membership (except through student fees), to have to pay separately for parking, and to have to live with a roommate because individual units are so expensive... it just doesn't measure up. Especially with the lack of care from management.

In my opinion, Ponderosa apartments are overpriced but they are a good choice because are close to campus. Although, are far from any marketplace but there is a 7 eleven close by in case you need some stuffs.

The apartment is spacious, good for health. The heating system has problems.

Neat and affordable.

So expensive in comparison with other apartments.

I don't currently live there (I moved home for COVID, and am still remote). However, the worst part about this whole property was the constant price hikes. Given that the NSHE determines student's income, they should probably tie the monthly rent to the grad student pay rate. In 5 years, I got one raise, and 5 rent increases. Also, they demand that you re-commit by like, December. That seemed to get earlier every year too! Also, the fact that parking is not included is just another slap in the face. It's ridiculous to pay hundreds of dollars a semester to park in my own apartment complex.
They need better roommate matching, also.
Lastly, they need to be better about enforcing the quiet hours. The noise from the parking lot carried straight up to my bedroom window (as did the cigarette smoke that should NOT have been happening on university property). I complained multiple times, but this was never addressed. I could literally hear entire conversations like I was standing right there, but often it was cackling and screaming.

My experience at Ponderosa has be pretty good. Living on campus is a huge plus, there is weekly transportation to grocery stores provided by the university if you don't have a car, and the rent is lower than most apartments of similar quality in the area. There have been problems due to short staffing at times. Recycling often piles up. Sometimes maintenance requests are not responded to appropriately because maintenance will not arrange a time when we are here to explain the problem. You have to pay a hundreds of dollars to park near your apartment.

5 stars! If Ponderosa was a hotel it would be the best of the best on that 5-star rating system. Unfortunately for Ponderosa, you are running an apartment complex so we have to go up to 10 stars on our reviews.

Used to be a 6/10, that was before all of the pigeons came. I really like birds, but I don't like pigeons right on my doorstep pooping continuously and cooing all hours of the day since March 2021. Ponderosa tried to clear out the pigeons, pressure-washed the poop away, destroyed the pigeons eggs (we have had about 4 eggs outside of our doorstep alone - 1 raised successfully to maturity and flown away, possibly to come back and have babies of their own), bought individual humane anti-pigeon automatic sprayers and placed them at each of the large units. Nothing seems to work. I have pigeon feathers flying into my apartment whenever I open the front door due to the pressure-change when opening the heavy self-locking doors. It is probably unsanitary at best, a human health hazard worthy of the local health department at worst. So yeah, drop a star.

Garbage and recycling. Been a disaster since the day I moved in about 3 years ago. There are 8 standard blue recycling bins outside, for about >100 people in the complex. In my experience living here that's not even close to the necessary amount considering the utilization of packages and food by college/grad students, not including all the families that live here. Believe it or not, that is an actual improvement over the situation when I first arrived where we had 4 recycling bins for all of us. The recycling bins are almost always immediately overflowing, partially because we need more, partially because people would rather try to be good people and recycle instead of throwing things into a landfill, but ultimately it gets blown out by the evening Reno winds and we get trash everywhere across our parking lot. Does anybody clean it up? No. Do the people living here clean it up? No. Do the employees for Ponderosa clean it? No. Just imagine a tornado, but instead of cows and roofs, replace it with trash and just throw that all over our parking lot. We have two giant dumpsters and one super-massive dumpster that people use when they are tearing down constructions sites, you know the giant awful-looking kind. The kind that lower your property value by $10,000 because surprise surprise nobody wants to look at a pile of heaping garbage everyday when we walk out of our apartments. No idea how often they empty that one, probably every 2-3 months. You might think that it is usually empty then, wrong. It is overflowed as well. In fact, the Republic Services will not pick up anything littered anywhere (as they probably should not be forced to in my opinion), but that means that there are old mattresses from 2 years ago, desks, broken chairs, just littered throughout. Come take a look when you drive by, stop at the only 15-minute unloading parking spot in the lower lot, hit the magic button and peruse the lot, around the dumpsters. If you don't find trash on the ground, email me and I will walk down and pay you $5, that is how confident I am in my claims. The recycling bins + garbage situation literally takes up two parking spots in the lower parking lot 90+% of the time. So yeah, enjoy not being able to buy a parking pass for a perfectly usable parking space because management created poor garbage service planning. Additionally, many many people (homeless and not) come buy and dig through our trash, so you can look forward to walking through that sometimes as well. Last year, the 3 trashcans on the inside of the complex also overfilled, basically some fall out with the Republic Services happened when ownership of Ponderosa Apt. switched hands from the private company to UNR and that meant trash and recycling overfilling for months. Campus Parking prices are steep: Orange lot (on top of the hill, the dirt/rock hill which you will become accustomed to walking up and has no stairs) i