r/Olathe

Edit: tl;dr: Cendana Olathe is very nice from the outside but living there was a nightmare and moving out was even worse. Unprofessional and sloppy management.

Original Post:

Long time Reddit lurker, first time poster. I moved out of Cendana Olathe this summer after living there for about a year, and after everything that has happened since, I figured this was worth sharing with other people in Olathe who might be considering living there.

First, the obvious: Cendana is a nice-looking property. It’s new, the apartments photograph well, and there are genuinely nice amenities. That’s why I chose it.

I also became genuinely unhappy living there. Wanting out of Cendana actually became part of a much larger reevaluation of whether I even wanted to stay in Kansas, and the flexibility to move somewhere new was one of the factors pushing me to look for a new job. I ultimately moved to Chicago.

Some of my issues while living there were individually pretty mundane apartment complaints, but they added up: the gym flooded and closed for several days, a door handle literally came off in my hand, the grass was sometimes halfway up my shins, pet waste was a persistent problem around the property and dog park, and an internet/package-locker outage temporarily left me unable to access medication. The elevator in my building was also supposed to be down for roughly a day and ended up being unavailable for several days. When it reopened, a piece of cardboard was being used as part of the temporary solution.

One thing I found particularly uncomfortable was that an employee from the leasing office lived in my building. Over time, I increasingly felt watched rather than simply at home. I once received complaints about weeks of “excessive noise,” including intimate activity, despite my partner having been away for most of the period they were describing.

I also think people looking at Cendana’s very high online ratings should know that, while I lived there, I personally witnessed on-site review drives where residents were encouraged and offered incentives to leave reviews. I also received emails soliciting reviews as a current resident. One prominently displayed their 4.9-star Google rating and gave residents buttons to review Cendana on Google and Apartments.com, while separately telling residents who weren’t happy to contact management directly.
To be very clear, I’m not saying incentives were conditioned on positive reviews or that anyone was prohibited from leaving a negative review. I’m saying review solicitation was something I personally observed as a resident. I also personally did not feel comfortable leaving a negative review while my landlord was still my landlord, particularly with a leasing-office employee living in my building.

And despite all of that, I actually intended to move away and never write a negative review.
Then came move-out.

Cendana charged me for replacement of the flooring throughout my entire apartment. I dispute that I am responsible for the full replacement cost based on my lease, the evidence I’ve been provided, and Kansas law. They disagree. I’m not asking Reddit to adjudicate a flooring dispute based on a post, and reasonable people can disagree about the underlying charge.

What has blown my mind is how the dispute has been handled.

For months I’ve asked specific questions about their evidence, flooring age and depreciation, accounting, payment arrangements, and what happens if the account goes to collections. Far too often, I’ve gotten some variation of “the balance remains due” instead of an answer to the question I actually asked.

Information has also come out in pieces. I’ve been told, in substance, that the necessary documentation had been provided and their review was final, only to have additional documents, explanations, and allegations appear afterward.

One of the strangest examples involved my partner. Management contacted me about him while I still lived there. I gave them the information they requested, they spoke directly with him, and then…nothing. No application. No additional paperwork. No fee request. No “hey, you still need to do X.” Months later, during the flooring dispute, his occupancy was raised as an alleged lease violation.

They also raised an alleged unauthorized pet and said an additional occupant and pet had been identified during my tenancy. I received no contemporaneous communication about an additional pet. Management later told me its position on the flooring charge was the same regardless of whether there was an additional occupant or pet.

Which left me wondering: if management knew about these things while I lived there, why weren’t they meaningfully addressed then? And if they don’t affect the flooring charge, why introduce them months later during a flooring dispute?

I tried to settle the whole thing. My security deposit was $1,709, and they were demanding another $1,679.51. I offered to let them keep my entire deposit and waive the additional balance so everybody could walk away without admitting liability.

They declined.

Then came the payment agreement.

It required signatures from both me and my co-leaseholder. Initially neither of us received the DocuSign. Later I received it, but he didn’t. When I finally reviewed it, I discovered the two scheduled payments added up to one cent more than the balance stated in the agreement.
Yes. I am an accountant. Of course I found the penny. 😂

They acknowledged the error and sent a corrected agreement.

I was ultimately given until 5:00 p.m. on October 1 to decide whether to sign it, while the first payment of nearly $840 was also due October 1.

At this point, I’ve decided not to sign the payment agreement. If they send the disputed balance to collections, I’ll deal with the collection process and continue disputing it there.
And perhaps my favorite tiny detail in this entire saga:

One of management’s recent emails said, “We truly enjoyed having you and Justin as residents in our community.”

Justin was my co-leaseholder.

Justin never lived at Cendana.

Management knew Justin never lived at Cendana.

After months of asking specific questions and receiving canned or incomplete responses, I cannot think of a more perfect summary of the attention to detail I’ve experienced than Cendana fondly remembering the residency of a man who was never a resident.

So, that’s my experience with Cendana Olathe.
I’m not posting this because I expect everyone to agree with me about the flooring charge. I’m posting because disagreement over money is normal. This level of difficulty getting clear answers, consistent documentation, functional paperwork, and basic follow-through is not something I would have expected from a professionally managed apartment community.
If you’re apartment hunting in Olathe, make whatever decision makes sense for you. I just wish I’d had this kind of information when I was making mine.

EDIT - Flooring context: Someone asked whether the flooring was actually damaged, and I realized I glossed over an important part of the underlying dispute. There was no visible flooring damage when I surrendered the apartment. After move-out, management reported a pet urine odor and, after removing the flooring, found conditions underneath that they attributed to pet urine. Two people who were in the apartment on separate dates after I moved out do not recall a pet urine odor.

I have never denied that my pets had a few accidents during my tenancy, which I cleaned up. My dispute is not “nothing happened and they’re making it up.” I dispute whether the evidence establishes that the conditions later found beneath the pre-existing flooring were caused by my pet during my tenancy and whether that makes me responsible for replacing the flooring throughout the entire apartment. That’s why I described the underlying charge as genuinely disputed rather than asking Reddit to decide who’s right about the flooring.