Catalina Club Apartments, Merritt Island FL

For a $1k a month you get to live in a ;

Moldy Building – Other neighbors have confessed about the mold problems. But no one says anything due the terms in the lease.

HVACs - The landlord has been replacing the HVAC and gave us no issues when ours finally broke.

Single Pane Windows – These windows do nothing to insulate the building from the Florida heat, being a major contributor to your electric bill.

Poor Roads – The parking lot needs to be repaved.

Trash – It's not too bad actually. Some tenants like to feed stray cats and leave food out. They apparently don't understand that's how you end up with a racoon problem. We see chicken bones from people buying wings from 7-11 tossing them on the ground as they walk through. The occasional furniture sitting by the dumpster. Over all its fairly clean due to a tenant who cleans around the apartments.

Coax - The only Coax line in the living room is on the smallest wall that separates your kitchen and dinning room. Its 31 inches wide. Now I know what you're thinking, so what? Who cares? Okay, say you have a 40 inch TV that's now wider than your wall, never mind the TV stand itself. You now get to decide either block part of your kitchen or dinning room with your TV. If you eat at the dinner table, guess whats in the way every time? It's just annoying and has to be experienced to appreciate this in all its grandeur.

False Ventilation – The ventilation in the bathrooms & kitchen don’t actually vent anything out of the room… much less the building. They’re fake. They vent right back into the room. So, every time you take a shower and it builds up moisture, it has no where to go. The HVAC intake vent is located right next to the bathroom as well. Meaning the moisture will go through the HVAC when you finish showering, causing mold to build up in the system. There is no getting around it honestly.

Bathtub Poorly Installed – They caulk over the old moldy caulking and grout work in the bathtub. In about a year or so it’ll start to peel away. Or the mold will start to grow through.

The pool – I’ve been here for years, and I’ve only seen the pool open 1 time. It’s always closed or broken. I just think the landlord doesn’t want to maintain the pool, as they’re expensive to manage. It's currently a swamp.

Landscaping – The grass is patchy, full of weeds, and ant mounds. The landlord hasn’t done anything about the lawn since I’ve been here. And because of this, the ants will get into your apartment regardless of how clean you are.

We had Hurricane damage to all of our apartments. It took the landlord over a year to fix the damage because he refused to hire contractors to properly do the job. Instead he did the repairs himself, and cut corns. He also dumped the construction trash through out the property, rather than renting a dumpster to properly dispose of the refuse. This was eventually cleaned up, but it was a hazard and eye sore for everyone who lived here.

Over All: These apartments are not worth the money. Since Florida had relaxed COVID policies and folks relocating here for the space industry caused prices to go sky high for rent and homes here. So I don't blame the landlord for reacting to the market and raising prices. That still doesn't excuse the buildings having mold, fake vents, bad lighting, patchy grass with ants, and the pool is still a mini-swamp. The building manager is amazing though and does her best to help. The maintenance man is a neat old guy who does his best given the resources he has to work with. The neighborhood is full of a variety of people from all walks of life, most are friendly. I will admit, some things have improved since I've lived here. But mostly its stayed the same. I've lived in a lot worse here in Florida. For all its flaws there are positives; good staff, good tenants (mostly), the buildings have improved a bit, survived a few hurricanes, and the apartments are remarkably quiet.

I don't live here but it looks like renovations are coming along. And they are looking for new maintenance or more of them, the leasing staff is very polite and very informative

Rent just keeps going up from like 1.6k and the pool literally looks like this. The place is disgusting and not worth the money at all.