The Martin is the best apartment community I've ever lived at! I've lived here for 2 years. The difference is definitely lies in the leasing and management team. They are super responsive, friendly, and know all the residents and their unit number by name. Casey, Mae, Jaimen, and Michael are the staff I interact with the most and they are super helpful. The staff feels like a family here and I can tell they really care about the residents and want to make the community a welcoming and comfortable place to live.
Another finishing touch is the management team plans awesome events for the residents and they really go above and beyond. We've had burrito, ice cream, gourmet cupcakes, and flower bouquet arrangement events. They even had food trucks come in during covid-19 (outside) which helped with isolation for me. On certain holidays like Christmas or Valentine's day, the team leave small party favor gifts at residents' doors. I've never had apartment managers be this enthusiastic about doing nice things for their residents.
As for my unit, it has everything I want including stainless steel appliances, front loading washer and dryer, gas stove, deep bath tub for soaking, and central AC (trust me you need this in Seattle now). I live high up and love my view of downtown Seattle as well. The building itself is always kept clean and there are cleaning staff that come and take out the recycling and clean the common spaces like the lobby and elevators every day. There is also a nice pet run for dogs. One time I might have missed picking up after my dog and the management immediately sent me an email saying I needed to follow the rules. They really enforce policies and make sure residents keep respectful here. That's appreciated because I've lived in places where other residents are noisy or dirty and the management team does nothing!
Some other things I really like that they do at the Martin is a package room for big and small packages including a fridge to keep your food deliveries cold! There is also a nice and convenient bike storage facility on-site. Parking is expensive but I haven't had any issues. Security is generally pretty good in the building. They used to let delivery people up the stairs with an elevator code but now to tighten security, all visitors and deliveries must be received in the lobby. This is mildly inconvenient but for the sake of safety it's a worthy trade off.
Admittedly, there are a few cons. The elevators are some of the fastest in the city but they break down or malfunction more often than I'd like. We had some issues a year ago and the team had trouble getting elevator parts in to fix the outage. Another con is Downtown Seattle and the neighborhood in general is a shit hole for the amount of rent I pay. Up until a few months ago, there were homeless tents outside the building and the residents sent emails to the city to finally get them removed. Generally, I no longer feel safe walking downtown and I'm always watching my back now and try to stay east of the building (into Amazon land). This is not the Martin's fault though, the building itself is very nice. I still choose to live downtown because I am a city person and love high rises. I mostly drive now and avoid walking because of this reason. If you stay inside the building and drive everywhere, it's definitely very safe!
I definitely feel like I get what I pay for at the Martin and living here is a great value. read more