Vue 22 Apartments — Attraction in Bellevue

I have been living this place for more than half a year as a resident signing a lease directly with the office. The experience could be very different from those who live here through Aboda and those who live here for only a couple of weeks. There are some pros and cons, which could have deserved 3 or 4 stars.

Pros: (1) Brand new apartments with excellent open spaces. (2) The location is near where I work and shop. (3) Good experience in touring and signing the lease.

Cons: Many other reviewers have already mentioned these cons, here I just re-state them based on my own experience. (1) Strict regulation and bad management on shared spaces. All the open space including the rooftop and study room is prohibited after 10 pm. My bike is moved away without proper notice. (2) Nearly no guest parking. Parking in the mall nearby is unsafe and inconvenient. (3) Parking garage door breaks down frequently. there was one time the main garage door is down several times a month. (4) The utility bill is not fully transparent and is higher than expected.

However, I give only 1 star to this apartment because of the very rude and unprofessional staff. The reader may be confused about the feedback being diverted into two extreme sides. Some gave 5 stars for the nice staff, while others complained the staff being "very rude". After being here for a while, I can tell you that both sides are true. Some of the staff, e.g., J and G (not mentioning the full name for privacy), are deserved for five stars, because they are not only professional but also nice. However, there is also a staff who is being very rude and nonsense to me several times.

The most recent issue is about my bike being moved and the lock being cut. This is a wrong-wrong situation which is not complicated to resolve at all. The office changed the bike storage rule and thought they informed the residence properly. However, I did not receive any notice so I do not tag or move it. The consequence is not too bad either, I just lose the ~$10 lock. However, when I tried to communicate this situation with the office and returned another lock which was put on my bike by mistake. That staff (you may see her story in other reviews as well) is being mad at me and even threatened me that she will locate my unit number and terminate my lease because I tended to yell (Did I really? Absolutely no. After hearing this, I realized this is the wrong person I should ever talk to and then walked away silently).

Again, this little story shared above is not hard to handle and the lost is negligible. As one of the many bad experiences I have with that staff, this story tells several things about this real estate property. (1) Not all the stuff are well trained and professional. This miscommunication of the bike rule changing is one example. When an issue occurs, how it is handled by the staff makes the situation even worse is a second example. (2) They cut and move the bikes after 3 three days they put a paper notice on the bike could be merely an incident of carelessness. However, it could also be a sign that some of the staff lack in respect to the residence. In addition, I am very surprised that the staff tends to resolve this simple issue by threatening me of terminating my lease. (3) Poor performance of the property manger. The persistence of issue for inappropriate and under trained staff should be blamed to the property manager. Are they hearing but not listening? As I quote from one recent review "Maybe they can replace this person or better train the staff." In addition, I will wait and see how the manager will handle the issue of the cut lock.

Even though I have persons and things I love here, I do not want to stay in this place any more. I would love to see that my lease being "early terminated" because the reviews on most of the nearby properties, e.g., Avalon, is much higher. I feel sorry but not surprising to see that this property is ruined by inappropriate staff.

Updated on Sep 2: The manger handled this issue professionally and helped me with bike...

To begin with, I would have given this community and GreyStar in general 0 stars if I had the option to.

We rented a unit in LIV around Feb 2016. At that time the community was managed by Pinnacle, which was a much more favorable management. The staff were simply more friendly, maintenance more effective and you can even infer it by the fact that every comment here that was in the era of the previous management has been replied to, even the negative ones.

Then came the take over of the community by GreyStar. Before sharing my personal experience I suggest you consider their 1 star rating on BBB or simply google "greystarnightmare" to see there are even websites collecting horror stories about their management. We had no choice since we did sign a lease with Pinnacle and Greystar simply took over.

So, for our experience, from the time they took over, immediate effect was unfriendly staff, having to set up an appointment for simplest thing since nobody in the leasing office is available to talk to and the horrors of the maintenance. It might be enough to say that we had a water leak in our unit in the kitchen that happened multiple times, many times even without us being present in our house. The first call to emergency line of maintenance was simply "we will take a look in the weekday" So much for the emergency "care". Then they came multiple times, saying they found nothing wrong. I had to provide photos of the incident happening for them to believe it is and at the end pretty much nothing to prevent it.

The second story is our move-out. So we purchased a house and decided to move out early. With understanding of the lease, I paid them twice the monthly rent plus one time for the concession ( totally three times rent ) and we waived our $500 deposit. We cleaned the unit, pretty much nothing beyond wear and tear and then we get a bill of $400+ that we owe!! on top of all the above ( $7000+ paid to them for getting out of this already ! ) and why did we get the bill, well repainting of the unit, cleaning, and most interestingly changing the lock!! I almost wasted 1 month back and forth and they sent me photos of a slight drop of food stain in the refrigerator or some debris in the restroom air filter ( that we even had no access ) as evidence for why they still needed to charge us $400+ more. Obviously attempting to discuss was not successful. Add to this the very rude person in the receivable department of Gerystar. She pretty much replied to me they are not willing to give us any "discount". I did not ask for discount, I simply did not agree to the charges! Then the most interesting part is the key/lock change fee. So at first, I ask them why do I need to pay for the changing of the lock for the next resident, the standard answer is you have to return the unit in the original condition. Irrelevant!! After pressing them further, they finally come back with a piece of paper that you did not return 1 fob, that is why you are charged for this. So we went to the leasing office asking them to review their security cameras. I had no doubt we returned everything. I returned them with my own hands. After some more time wasted, they magically say the file says everything returned and they will remove that one charge. So at the end, they added all the other charges and some interest for late payment ( and notice it was them wasting my time and I paying the late fee!! )

All in all avoid anything that bears the name of Greystar, any community with them managing it. Save yourself time and money, there are many other better options, even if they cost...

The apartment complex is new and clean and pet friendly. However, the rent per square foot is more than the other comparable apartment complexes. What you pay for is the amenities: There is a Nice rooftop terrace and a game room, but there's a 10 pm curfew. Speedy maintenance requests.

Guest parking and parking are extremely tight.

The biggest complaint is the noise pollution. Forget about enjoying a peaceful afternoon on the balcony...We live off the courtyard and is almost unbearably noisy with landscaping equipment, carpet cleaning and power washing engines, moving trucks.....I had to call the front desk because there was a power washer engine outside of our balcony for hours.......Every day.....there was even a guy polishing the sidewalk! The engine that was going very loud all day long outside of our window! So obnoxious. I'm sure they could've done without that! Landscaping is obsessive here and unsustainable. Leaf blowers and lawnmowers throughout the week. Having said that, oddly, The trees in the courtyard look very dry and look like they're dying. I called several times about this to get them watered, and my requests were received like I was annoying the STAFF: they said "yea yea ok." Nothing was done. The trees never got watered, several days in row leaf blowers roar cleaning up all the dead leaves from the dying trees they wouldn't have to do if they watered them in the first place!

They responded below that since we moved the noise would go down. But, it’s only gotten worse..... every day there’s landscaping noise and it just ricochets off the courtyard no matter where you live because the place is constructed with plywood. We got several noise complaints from neighbors below us for WALKING and VACUUMING in our own apartment if you can believe that! So, everybody can hear everybody, and you can hear everything that goes outside here. Very noisy...

Also they will take your deposit faster than you can know what happened. You have to show up for the inspection or they will absolutely take your deposit and charge you for everything that you should not have to pay for. We were charge for painting? I’m sorry but that should be included with one year of living in an apartment. Deep cleaning? Yeah that’s a lie as well because we had used a wet vac when we moved out.... I tried to dispute these two charges and I was told from their accounts receivable, "well I guess you should have showed up for the inspection"...here is the last email I got: "I would recommend that you make yourself available for the move-out inspections when you move form you next apartment as they go over the items that needed to be cleaned and or replaced with you at this time. Thank you," Laura .... | Specialist, Receivables Department So if you don't go to the inspection they just charge you for everything. my emails were ignored from here on.

Unfortunately, they put the current resident experience below getting new leases signed... but that’s what you get when you live in a corporate...