Whispering Pines Apartments

I was lucky enough to get a one bedroom apartment in this affordable complex. The apartment complex is always clean and very safe. Not sure what all the bad reviews are about the manager, she is a very nice and caring lady. She lays out the law and you know exactly what is expected so there is no surprises. I was in her office for over an hour (signing contract) and at least four tenants came in to wish her a merry Christmas and gave her a nice warm hug. She is a tough fierce lady but do not mistake that with being rude! She is sweet (:
It is unfortunate but most people only write negative reviews when they have a bad experience but I can guarantee you that for every negative review there must be hundreds of satisfied tenants.

I came in today to ask to view an apartment. The manager immediately screeches (before I even sappy anything) «no apartments until June 2016». Wow

The stars are for the manager. The apartment itself is bare bones, it is a roof over your head, the appliances are there and working, but nothing fancy (enough for a student). Try not to get a street facing one like we did, since the cars are pretty loud on Nobel.
The manager, Mariza, walked us through the renting steps very clearly and laid out expectations and rental agreements at the beginning, so there were no surprises. The professional carpet cleaning is part of the contract, so I don’t understand why people are complaining. I also don’t get the parking problem. The manager accommodated our apartment’s need for two spaces and was very nice about it (although we did have to wait a month for the other space). None of our cars were ever broken into, and the carports are well spaced and lit.
Although most of the reviews here are negative for the manager, I had a totally different experience. The manager is very motherly and very quickly took care of problems with the apartment. For instance, recently one of the faucets broke and it was repaired within a few hours. She greets residents in a warm way when she sees us.
For the public spaces in the complex, the area is kept clean. They replace the BBQ racks every few years, so it is usually always clean. The laundry room is usually pretty clean, although 4 machines are a bit on the few side, sometimes you have to wait hours to use the washer since people leave their clothes in there.
All in all, my experience was quite different from the other reviewer’s. Initially I was hesitant to rent from the place due to the amount of poor reviews, but I can personally say it has been a great first rental experience (lived there for 2 years).

Completely super bad place to live in.
The manager Maritha is just crazy and so rude to tenants here. What she is doing here is just to spy on tenants and invade privacy.
I asked her to fix up somthing more than 2 weeks ago and whenever I dropped by the office to make sure of it, she promised me but she did nothing but yelling at me and kicking me out.
I have never seen this exceptionally rude person in my life. If you are fooled by comparatively cheap price and move into this apartment, I bet you have to spend more on your mental healthy.
She should be fired for this apartment. I am an international student here so I don’t know how I can reach the higher ups to report this serious problem of the person. I will appreciate it if those who read my review let me know the way.

OMG
I just called to get information regarding their availability. Whoever answered was rude from the moment she answered the phone. She was yelling at me to call back another time. asked me if i understood what that meant. I tried to respond and she continued to ask me if i understood what that meant.
i finally hung up on her because i couldnt get a word in.

This review is based on the customer service here and not actually occupying an apt. So my boyfriend and I were looking for an apartment around the UTC/​La Jolla area and we saw Whispering Pines’ craigslist ad. and we were shocked on how inexpensive it was especially for the area.
Oh my f – king god. Just like the other reviews here. the woman on the phone is exceptionally rude. I called to see if there were any available apartments and she said no and hung up. Also. when picking up the phone and after I said hi she said «what do you want?». really? This place is a joke. I don’t understand why they would put up ads everyday and not have anything available. or that the fact the person over the phone is completely disrespectful. I called back numerous of times to see if there is a waiting list, but it’s just not worth it. The location would be great because we work nearby, but it’s impossible to get a hold of someone and especially someone helpful.

Absolutely horrible, rude staff who don’t care about their tenants at all.
I live in La Jolla Terrace, which is affiliated with La Jolla View and Whispering Pines (all next to each other and calls about all 3 properties are answered by either one). Just now a solicitor came to my door selling chocolates, no big deal but I thought that solicitors were not allowed on this property. So naturally, I called to report it to the management, just to let them know in case they wanted to do anything about it. Well since I called after 3pm my call was routed to Whispering Pines office, and the lady who answered the phone was unspeakably rude. My phone call with her ended in her hanging up on me, and then proceeding to hang up on me again when I tried to call back and after that just letting it go to voicemail. This is how our conversation went:
Her: «Hello, this is whispering pines»
Me: «Oh, hello? Is this La Jolla Terrace?»
Her: «This is whispering pines I just said it (In the rudest, most annoyed tone I have ever heard)»
Me: «Oh, sorry. I thought this was the phone number for Terrace (I called (858) 455‑9644 which is listed as Terrace’s phone number).»
Her: «No, this is whispering pines (again, rude tone as if I had been nagging her for hours and she was fed up with me). Are you a tenant of la jolla terrace?»
Me: Yes.
Her: «Okay so what do you want?»
Me: «I just wanted to report that there was a solicitor going door to door selling chocolates or something.»
Her: «Okay ma’am, so tell them to leave. Tell them you don’t want to buy any chocolates. We can’t do anything about it. This is a free world, people can walk up to your door and knock. (Are you serious? Is this a necessary response to someone who was just calling to let you guys know about it? It’s not like I had been calling over and over again telling her to come remove this guy. I said one sentence and she goes on a rampage berating me.)
Me: «Okay well I just wanted to let you guys know-​«
Her: «For the last time we cannot do anything about people walking around on the property. Thank you for calling goodbye.»
And as she tried to hang up on me I tried asking her name so I could report this atrocious behavior to someone higher up who might care, and she spoke over me and just hung up. I tried to call back to get her name but when I said «hello» she recognized me and hung up. All calls made after that went straight to voicemail.
I have never ever been so insulted in my life, and all I was trying to do was tell my management about a solicitor. Whoever this woman is, she does not deserve to have a job at customer service.
To any management reading this: This woman was working at 7:12pm on the date of this review, March 11^th 2014. I plan on personally making a visit to LJ Terrace’s office tomorrow to lodge a formal complaint, and if necessary I will go to Whispering Pines’ office as well. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior from someone who represents your apartment complex and its management and I hope the necessary actions will be taken against her.
To the unfriendly woman whom I spoke with: I will find out what your name is and I will make sure your higher ups know about your disgusting behavior. You should not be allowed to work here.
Side note: I love LJ Terrace and View’s management and have never had a problem with them. If you are looking for an apt complex I would suggest those two and NOT whispering pines, unless you want to deal with rude bitches. :)
*** 08÷11÷14 EDIT*****
So I’m in the process of moving out of La Jolla Terrace, and it’s past their normal business hours so I wanted to call and leave a message for my management’s office requesting a callback. When I call the LJ Terrace number of COURSE I get routed back to Whispering Pines again, and lo and behold it’s this horrible excuse for a human being again! Immediately I braced myself for another rude encounter, and she truly did not disappoint.
Her: Hello this is Whispering Pines
Me: Oh hi, I was trying to reach LJ Terrace–
Her: (interrupting me) We are closed, our business hours are 9 – 5, this line is for emergencies only, is this an emergency?
Me: Well no, but– (Here I was just trying to tell her that I wanted to leave a message for LJ Terrace)
Her: Okay well I’ve got an emergency on the line so thank you goodbye. –hangs up–
WTF!!! Seriously this woman does not even have the patience to sit through one sentence from me! I literally did not get to finish a sentence! What is wrong with her?! An «emergency» at an apt complex is usually something like the fridge not working, water isn’t working, etc. Not usually anything life threatening. So really, you can’t take the time to listen to a sentence? Ugh, really. I’m so sick of dealing with the Bitch of Whispering Pines. I just wanted to leave a message.

They get 2 stars because it’s really cheap for the area & in a great location.
Pros: good price, they were pretty fast in fixing our broken fridge (the door fell off), good location, manager was usually pretty nice… when my husband’s car window got broken the 2^nd time she took some money off our rent. Close to UCSD shuttle stop.
Cons: we had to clean the carpets (professionally, not ourselves) & paint the place ourselves when we moved out… the manager insisted she could see the spots we had used the magic eraser because of their cheap, pitiful paint. Parking sucks. No guest parking & we had 2 cars so a lot of difficulty finding parking. My husband’s car window got broken there twice! Also, ants everywhere. Pretty gross. I think every room in our apartment got hit at one time or another & there were lines of ants outside & in the laundry room too… only 4 washers by the way.

I wish I could give 0 stars, but here goes:
So on the way home from school I decided to stop by at Whispering Pines and pick up a brochure about their floor plans. I follow the directions to their rental office and I see a big sign on top that says «Office». I figure that’s the leasing office and I take ONE step inside and peek my head in, when all of a sudden I hear a screeching voice from a brown-​haired lady across the courtyard saying, «DON’T GO IN. THAT’S MY PRIVATE OFFICE. DON’T YOU DARE. GET OUT RIGHT NOW.»
I’m really confused at this point and I take a step back calling out to her, «Sorry, I was looking for the leasing office.»
The lady walks towards me and says, «Yes, this is the leasing office. It’s MY office. You cannot go in when I’M NOT THERE.»
She’s literally shouting at me, going on and on how I should NEVER enter into a PRIVATE office. She kept using the word «private» office…
So then I say, «Sorry, it was my mistake.»
Then the lady says in the RUDEST tone, «You have to learn how to respect. I’m teaching you respect, WOMAN.»
At that point I walked away… I was so polite even though she was yelling at me for BARELY taking one step inside the rental office? And the door was wide open too! Yes, it only had one desk so in a way it may be «her private office», but seriously– If the backpack wasn’t obvious enough, I’m just a student and wasn’t planning on hacking into your computer…
Needless to say, this woman should be fired and I am not interested in living here!!!

(Couldn’t give zero stars either.)
I lived with one other person (we’re both 20-​yr-​old girls). We visited this place and only chose because the price was $ 1325 a month compared to the $ 1575 places we had been finding around La Jolla. They had two empty aptmnts to show us in La Jolla View (the sister complex). Both were along the canyon closer to Genessee and Decoro intersection. The path to the aptmnt was poorly lit and far from the parking lot. I told my roommate I refused to live there if we got stuck there since I wasn’t too fond of the place from the start. Good thing (?) I didn’t accept the canyon aptmnts as apparently the complex has had to call the cops multiple times to rid the canyons of homeless citizens.
The aptmnt they gave us was along Decoro St. This wasn’t too bad since going from the car on the street to the door was a shorter distance than the assigned parking spots to the door. Since everything was poorly lit I preferred this short distance and parked in the street. Also, we lived on the opposite side of the landlady and parking in the lot would require going by her window where her creepy, adult son would stare at passersby out his window. My roommate complained about the noise sometimes, but since I was used to living near the freeway at home, I could sleep with the sound of cars. On gardening days, expect Mexican gardeners yelling outside the window to wake you around 8a.
We did have an attempted break-​in close to the beginning of moving in over the summer. Keep your blinds closed on the first floor because my summer roommates kept insisting on opening them and showing all the belongings we were storing for other people.
The main problems were with the apartment itself. In mid-​October, mushrooms started growing from our bathroom ceiling above the toilet. Maintenance came in and took them down. Few weeks later, the mushrooms were back and we had to knock them down ourselves because maintenance wouldn’t be «on duty» next til the following week. We told them it was a problem above the ceiling and not a surface problem as they insisted. The main landlady of Whispering Pines spoke down to us as if we were children who couldn’t understand the mushroom source problem and brushed us off. When the mushrooms returned a third time, like we knew they would, they sent maintenance in to remove them. Then, maintenance plastered the ceiling to reinforce it against mushroom growth. It wasn’t until December during winter break that my dad came to SD and yelled at them. My landlady, who is very passive and unhelpful, was at lunch and my dad wasn’t in SD long. So, we went to the main landlady. She began yelling at my dad that she was on vacation and that he didn’t understand and it wasn’t her problem. My dad then said, no it was her problem if her tenants are living in an unsafe environment. She turned to me and asked if I understood that she was not responsible right then because she was on vacation, I looked at her in disbelief and said no (yeah right, lady, I would take your side over my dad’s) and she slammed the door in our faces. Luckily my landlady returned from lunch and my dad yelled at her until they agreed to go in and fix the problem at the threat of going above her head to the property owners. Two months after the first mushrooms, they finally opened the ceiling and found that the toilet from the aptmnt above us had a leak in the pipes and that mushrooms were growing above the ceiling.
If this story isn’t enough to deter you from these aptmnts, then good luck. Just know, they also have a huge ant and cockroach problem. I had ants crawling in my room for a while when friends were staying over summer and eating in my room. Since I don’t eat in my room, the problem subsided, but occasionally I would wake with an ant on my pillow or sheets or ant bites on me. And, at some point in the year we received a notice that Orkin needed to come through and spray for ants and cockroaches. No other place in La Jolla, that I know of, needs any contract with Orkin. So, that just goes to show, they contracted Orkin because they know they have the problem. My roommate and I opted not to let Orkin come in (rearranging for the procedure would require a lot of extra work in our busy schedules). Months later, one month before we moved out, I spotted and annihilated a cockroach in the kitchen. Thankfully, we got out of there before an infestation broke out.
Edit: I think it’s stupid that this got bumped from the review page. This place was so bad that I created a Unilocal account years ago JUST to review this dreadful place. I hope people can see this review from the main page if I start being more active Unilocaling.

Yea, I agree with the last review except not to the same degree. I moved from Ramona so this was a big upgrade from some of the apartments there but i recently moved to another place in the area and i realized whispering pines is not the place to be. The apartments are pretty old which is ok with me but they expect a lot. I had to put a pretty high deposit to live here which they took a lot of when i left. I cleaned the place spotless before i left and i got charged $ 250 for cleaning. Parking situation here is also a nightmare. Better places to live in the area for around the same price. Highly recommend NOT living here.

The only reason Whispering Pines gets one star is because I can’t give zero. DO NOT LIVE HERE. It may be cheap, which is rare in the area, but let me tell you the oasis is really an illusion. Let me count my grievances.
1. When we moved in we had a hollow front door. Hollow doors are not for front doors, it is against fire code. We asked to have it replaced. They cut the door without measuring and the cut was not straight. We had at least 2 inches between the ground and the door. They «fixed» this by inserting a rubber tube at the bottom that was always falling out.
2. As a result of the gap mentioned above, we were the frequent stop over point for spiders, and worst of all, the occasional cockroach. Disgusting.
3. A leak started in my room. We lived on the first floor. I was not beneath a bathroom or a kitchen or under any pipes of any kind. The leak was due to bad drainage. The rainwater got into the wall, between the floors, and dripped onto my bed. They took their time fixing this.
4. My boyfriend moved into an apartment. He was told that he had to wait to move in because they needed to patch a hole in the ceiling that was leaking water. The first rain of the season and all hell breaks loose. Their «patch» job was really a paint job, covering up the water damage. No actual repair was done.
5. They decided it was a better use of resources to re-​pave the parkign lot rather than repair the leaking rooof.
6. The «manager» is only there during the week from 10 – 3. Completely inconvenient. Her son lives with her and stares creepily from their first floor window at all passers-​by. I don’t enjoy being watched.
7. They raised my rent despite the fact that I recommended two friends to their complex, thus getting them two new renters.
8. It took at least a week for anything to be fixed.
9. They decided that no visitors should be allowed to park in the complex parking lot, even in unmarked spaces. There is no parking on the street. The closest parking is 3 blocks away and around the corner. Basically, they don’t want you to have any guests.
10. When my car was stolen, I could not find the manager ANYWHERE. I needed to make sure it was not towed but she decided to take the week off without notifying any residents. I tried calling the management company to no avail.
Don’t be fooled, this place was a complete headache for the year and a half I lived there. The only bonus was that due to their incompetance I demanded and received my full security deposit back. This was only due to the fact that I documented my grievances and threatened to report them to the fair housing commission for violating renter rights.