I have lived in worse places than St. Johns Pointe, and there are some strong benefits to it. The apartments is less than five minutes off of the 295 highway which is great is you work in Jacksonville or Mandarin. There are plenty of kids, but most of them only play with their current friends.
There are some serious issues with the plumbing in this place. Their water pump housing unit fails almost every single time it rains. So until they get enough people telling them, "My toilet won't flush"
...and "My toilet is overflowing" they don't really do anything about it.
The rent is extremely high for apartments this old. The office staff is very nice though. Kathleen is a wonderful individual and really makes you feel like she is happy that you are there.
The walls and ceilings may as well be made out of paper mache. If you live on the bottom floor and you have heavy-footed upstairs neighbors you can expect your entire ceiling to shake on a regular basis. Noise outside is bearable, but comes right through even heavy sound-dampening curtains. That being said, the lack of solid insulation also will push your electricity bill up. Just to keep the apartment in the low 70's we're paying up and towards $250 a month in electric -- that's a lot for an apartment this size (roughly 1400sqft).
The living room is oddly situated. The master bedrooms are a good size, but the rooms fill up far more quickly than it looks like.
The paint is cheap, and the doors are not fitted properly to the door frames. So you get a lot of doors popping loudly every time you open or close them.
The maintenance crew is really, really nice. Simple tasks like bringing you some new air filters for your AC they do right away. Any serious repairs that need to get done go through a "work order" in the front office, and you'll need to call and repeatedly pester them and remind them that it needs to happen. I put in a request during the first year of my tenancy with St. John's Pointe for a bedroom door that will not latch and stay closed, it still has not been completed. Disappointing.
All in all, the people are amazing. The "service" is lacking. The rooms are a decent size. The appliances are older, but still in better working condition than many apartments and private owned homes in Jacksonville or Orange Park.
I considered rating them at 3 Stars, but some of the issues show me that they are trying to cut costs too much, like using old doors that don't fit. Just poor value.
Max of 1.