BellCentre Apartments — Local services in Bellevue

This is a long review, so here's a quick summary: DO NOT live here. I've stayed at 4 other apartments in the Puget Sound area, and this is by far the worst. There are many better options nearby: Cerasa, Excalibur, Aventine, etc. Don't get fooled by the seemingly lower prices here - you will end up paying the same amount in money and much more in mental sanity by staying here.

----- Initial Move-in Problems -----

First, let me start off with the initial state of the apartment. When I walked in, I knew I had messed up in renting from here. I did not get a tour of the apartment (first mistake, I know) before I rented there. The fridge was missing some shelves and was there were yellow stains all over it. I was there for a short-term rental, so I figured I would just live with it. Then, the garbage disposal did not work. The room smelled, and the area under the sink had clear water damage.

I was able to open my apartment window once, but then the handle broke off when I tried to close it. The parking spot I was originally assigned was taken by another car. What is the point of having assigned parking spots if they are not enforced?

----- Maintenance Issues -----

All of the above issues are bad. But they are still fixable if the maintenance staff is competent. Unfortunately, this review exists, so that is clearly not the case. I filed maintenance requests for the critical items above: the window being unable to close (extremely important when it's cold and raining/snowing outside) and the garbage disposal not working. I've lived in apartments before where the maintenance staff is slow to fix things. That sucks, but do you know what sucks even more? When they come in, do not fix anything and "resolve" the request. That's what happened - not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR times for both issues (a total of 8 maintenance requests) for two simple issues.

Not only were the maintenance staff members incompetent, they were rude. I was told that I opened the window too far, and that led to the window not closing. But the other window clearly opened much wider with no issue, and when they actually fixed it (4 months later), there was no problem with it. When they finally decided to replace my garbage disposal (after 4 times - still can't believe it), they insisted on installing it during my meeting (or I could wait 2 weeks, after the end of my lease). Then, they implied I broke the disposal and told me a list of things I shouldn't put in the disposal, which was especially funny since it was already broken when I got there.

I even overheard the maintenance supervisor talking about how they were intentionally not resolving issues because it would cost extra money and that they would only replace it if the tenant complained. I guess that explains the initial state of the apartment.

It wasn't until I almost moved out that I got all of the issues resolved. At least I improved the life of the future tenant (my condolences) in that apartment.

----- Overcharging -----

All of the above are enough reasons not to live here. But, as they say: when it rains, it pours. And it really pours here - they also overcharge whenever they can.

I just received my itemized move-out receipt, and I got a massive list of bogus charges. A small cleaning fee is reasonable. But I got charged $240 for apartment cleaning, $337 for painting (!), and $160 for floorboard repair - all with no photos provided. Keep in mind that this is with no damage other than a broken light switch and some pin holes in the wall (part of normal wear & tear according to Seattle laws).

This is just one review, so you should take it with a grain of salt. However, I suggest reading through the other reviews. You'll see that many of the issues I had here are systemic issues. It's also one of the lowest-rated apartments in the area, despite trying to respond to reviews and having community incentives to leave better ones. So, you don't have to trust me, but I suggest you read through other reviews first and just live...

Echoing with what's address by many recent reviews, I'm giving BellCentre 1 star for my experience living here in the past year: Theft and break-ins. We mailed several boxes when we moved in, and while the boxes were delivered into the apartment, 2 thieves broke into the apartment security door using "stolen key fobs" and took away what was worth roughly $9000. That was not a one-time incident. Whenever we are traveling outside of Bellevue, our packages delivered at our door would go missing. I felt extremely unsafe living here knowing there could be the possibility that people don't live here can easily break in and take away stuff, and I was lucky that I wasn't personally harmed by the intruder. The management told me "this is becoming common" in Bellevue, but that's not true with the experiences of my friends living in other apartments nearby and certainly not true with my experience in my current apartment just 1 block away.

Noise. The apartment was made of wooden structure, so as many have mentioned, you can literally hear anything from your neighbors across the hallway and upstairs. And whenever there's a small construction work being done across the street, good luck trying to concentrate.

Move-out fees. When we moved in, the unit wasn't in a horrible shape but definitely needed some cleaning probably due to maintenance after the previous tenant moved out or people touring the apartment. If the previous tenant were charged of any cleaning fee, we definitely didn't see any work done when we moved in. And when we moved out, even though we did everything that was laid out on the pre move-out inspection and cleaned every spot we could see, we were still charged $500 without any explanations on where the "carpet cleaning" and "wall paint" is really needed. I've seen others being charged even if they hired professional cleaning.

Lack of on-site support. When we first moved in, the leasing office was still there and we could at least get some quick, in-person support from the staff. But sometime in the year Essex decided to close this office, and ever since then, I would have to email BellCentre and wait for days to only receive a corporate response from a new person who I've never interacted before.

Price. Seattle/Bellevue is expensive given virtually everyone renting probably gets a tech salary. BellCentre is definitely not fancy comparing to many apartments in the area, but at least it used to be relatively affordable and has a great location closed to Amazon buildings. But when we were renewing, we were given a much higher price that's virtually in the same range as many other higher-end apartment in Bellevue. Why suffer all the pains addressed above if you are paying the same price as other...

The apartments are good, but their customer service sucks. Leasing office members are never available,maintenance requests takes forever to be addressed.

Their maintenance manager is very rude, he doesn’t fix the problem but he comes home and yells at us all for raising the ticket. My callbox didn’t work for the whole time I was there. I had raised multiple requests to fix it. I also heard my neighbors complaining the same about the callbox. Garbage disposal started leaking, he came in yelled at me saying I but a bone into it, I was explaining him that am a vegetarian and I don’t cook/eat meat to throw a bone into the sink, he was not listening, he yelled at me very loudly. Even after that it was not fixed, the request was closed, I raised a request again and requested for a different maintenance guy, who fixed the problem. The fobs wouldn’t work for the main entrance, again got yelled at for raising a request. The window blind in one of the room was broken, the maintenance guy said that they were out of stock and that they should get the blind from Mexico, it was not fixed for six months. The windows had leakage, it would get cold.

The maintenance manager yelled at me on the street because I created a request to fix my fob and according to him it was not an emergency, my callbox never worked, and the fob also stopped working. How would I even enter the apartment.

Also when I moved in, there were a few issues like the fridge had worm crawling out of it, the bath tub was not resurfaced, the bathroom door paint had chipped off, and I had pointed this out to the maintenance manager, he said that it’s regular wear and tear. But when I left the apartment, I was changed $500 for just the bathtub, and I was charged for the door paint as well, later I had to contact the Essex community and get this fixed, the apartment maintenance is horrible, but the Essex community manager went through all the emails I had sent to the apartment managers throughout the year and got that deducted from the move...