The Mercer Apartment Homes — Local services in Mercer Island

I lived at The Mercer from 2018 until mid-2025. Overall, it was a really great place to live that was also managed very well!

COST In Seattle, rent costs an arm, a leg, and a firstborn. The Mercer is no exception. There was also the cost of parking, optional storage, pet rent, etc. Even so, The Mercer was run more fairly than other corporately-owned buildings I’ve experienced.

Yearly rent increases were inevitable but reasonable by today’s warped standards. My base rent in 2018 was $2274/mo. By the time I left, the base rent for a 12-month lease for the same apartment was $2,919/mo. A disgusting amount...and yet, by then, often below the market rate for the size and quality of the apartment I lived in.

Utility costs suck here. Expect to pay another ~$300 above base rent. You’ll pay for your own electricity and internet, but everything else is through the building, some of it metered to your apartment, some of it communal. The communal costs can be quite steep because the grounds are large.

MANAGEMENT & MAINTENANCE The Mercer had fantastic people on board while I lived there. In recent years, Stefany Forde has been the property manager. She went above and beyond, juggling not only the day-to-day issues of many tenants in many apartments across two buildings but also doing what she could to encourage actual community through relatively frequent events she put a lot of effort into.

Maintenance was always great, too. Except during the height of the pandemic, requests I made were responded to within a week, usually within 24 hours.

Unfortunately, nowhere is perfect. Your onsite experiences will likely be pretty nice at The Mercer, but there are gross realities to corporate buildings. Office workers at The Mercer have power but are also still constrained by what their Avenue5 corporate overlords will allow, especially through mandated software. For a few years, my leases included a forced arbitration clause. I tried to opt out, but there was no room for negotiation, not least of all because the people in the office didn’t even have the practical ability in the leasing software to remove pages or adjust clauses in a lease. The system is rigged, so be nice to the office folks on these matters; we’re all victims.

APARTMENTS & BUILDING My apartment and several neighbors’ apartments I visited were all very nice. My only real complaint, that I’m not sure The Mercer even has much legal control over, was that the fire alarm system was oversensitive. Worse, because so many apartments are together in the building, it was not uncommon that you’d have at least one prankster set off a false alarm or one apartment with a smoke alarm go off, and soon you’d have a deafening chain reaction. More than once I had to evacuate in the middle of the night.

There was fire alarm drama 4-5 times a year. On top of that, local fire code demands annual testing of all apartment smoke detectors, so once a year, for a half a day, it’s pure insanity. If you WFH, have pets or children at home, and/or have a health condition where extremely loud noises might pose a problem for you, be aware that this will be A Thing, simply due to The Mercer’s size.

SAFETY A couple of minor property incidents occurred while I lived here. Some roving jerks (teens, likely) broke many car windows at one point. The Mercer responded promptly by hiring security to drive around the garage area at night. Solved the problem.

Package delivery can be messy. Most of this is on Amazon’s delivery folks, or tenants not retrieving packages from the lock boxes soon enough, meaning excess deliveries must be left in the open in the mailroom during after hours. But even when this is not running as smoothly as one would like, I think I only ever had two packages go missing. One case was likely due to delivery problems, not a thief.

MOVE-OUT Chill and reasonable, though the move-out statement is confusing to read. I self-cleaned and sanitized and got a little of my (small) original deposit back. How much of that was due to my living there for so long,...

Current resident, very happy with this apartment!

The biggest advantage: qualify of the building itself. Unlike many newly constructed apartments that look fancy on the outside but are actually cheaply made, the Mercer is an old but gold apartment! (Maybe not that old) Its concrete construction is very sound proof and is actually the quietest apartment I’ve ever lived in. And the AC vent is also very quiet in the bedroom. So quiet that I thought it was off at first.

The maintenance response time has also improved a lot during this past year. I am happy with the maintenance team’s service as they are all real nice guys.

Some units’ window facing might not be ideal in terms of privacy so I strongly recommend touring the unit (not just the apartment) before you sign the lease. Actually some privacy issues are not that hard to fix, it would be great if the leasing team could consider sacrificing the appearance of the building a little bit and prioritize current residents’ experience. May worth escalating to upper level management if this is beyond the leasing team’s decision capability.

That said, I still think the leasing team is great in other aspects. I have enjoyed all of the events they put together for the residents. They are also easy to reach and...

It is frustrating to see that the staff at The Mercer only provides high-quality service to some residents. I understand things break, but it’s the lack of communication and consideration the office shows when handling issues. They seem preoccupied dealing with a select handful of residents, making them unable to handle the concerns of everyone else. The whole world is short staffed, we get it. Things do break, we get it. Those things are uncontrollable but what they can do (and should be doing for their residents) is maintaining consistent communication throughout these issues. Instead, they don’t reply to texts, calls, or emails, and when you visit the office, they say they’ll call you.

Additionally, after being flooded with negative reviews they have unfortunately resulted to having staff from Avenue5 post 5-star reviews. Be warned this place has gone down hill and communication is nonexistent for the majority of residents. The recent reviews speak for themselves and it’s a shame they are more concerned about fixing their Google rating than connecting with residents about the issues they’re...