They switched management companies this season, and it's been a clusterfuck. The nice crew that was here when we moved in were phased out when the building switched hands. They do not have an in-house cleaning crew to turn over apartments anymore--instead they hire out a crew to do each new vacancy, using your refundable deposit--in essence forwarding a bill to you of a company that they outsource.
Before we left our apartment here, we hired a professional cleaner off Groupon, they did a normal, professional job. The guy who did a walk through for our last day, though, claimed we needed to have shampooed the carpets, and also the empty lint catcher on the dryer wasn't clean enough. The lease, of course, mentions none of this, it's all a script to treat your refundable deposit as a non refundable cleaning fee. It was very transparent that they do this to every tenant, because he mentioned the lint dryer wasn't up to snuff before he even opened it! They purposely don't give you a list to use as a guide for the clean, nor paper up any part of the exit process. I had to ask for a walk-through while documenting the blemishes. The first guy flat out refused and said "we don't have to do that with you here". Um, so you would like to write down all the imperfections on the place after I've left? From memory? What sort of suspicious plotting is going on here? His manager saw no problem with a proper, papered up walk through, however, and momentarily the problems alleviated.
Long story short the deposit amount isn't huge, on purpose--it's just under the radar so people don't go into arbitration over it. The problem is this nightmare exit is done repeatedly for every tenant. Washington only allows to spend from deposits for excessive damage. Not ordinary usage. I should mention we had no pets, and the walkthrough even states, "no apparent stains." We have lived here only 1 year. Yet they take YOUR money for carpet shampoos and their flips like it's standard process.
*I also agree with the smoker situation in the other negative review. We smelled weed often until they moved out...because no one lives here longer than a year! Not for 2 grand/2 bedrooms. read more