Uwajimaya Village Apartments — Local services in Seattle

Lived here for two years. All downhill since Larry left and was replaced by Aaron. Elevators were broken and never remodeled the entire time, despite being told they would be renovated on move in. Spent hundreds of dollars extra on movers for move in and move out since the freight elevator was broken and management refused to allow reservations. Our storage locker was broken into and we were provided a measly pittance for the many stolen possessions, both monetary and irreplaceable personal items. The security is a farce, they will only come if called at an undetermined future time. Predatory behavior from Blanton Turner clearly indicates their use of RealPages to price out renters as much as possible. After refusing to negotiate we very easily moved somewhere cheaper and larger in Seattle. Crackheads will be out screaming on the street all night, so do not expect any peace and quiet. The parking is a joke, management will blame the grocery store and parking company and then raise the price of parking. Any sports game days and you will not be able to park despite the exorbitant price you pay. IPM does not patrol the lot. Management does not respect tenant privacy and constantly will schedule entry to your apartment for an entire day time window without telling you when they will come. We even caught the maintenance guy once for coming into our apartment after we explicitly did not give permission to do so. On moveout they kept our deposit and extorted us with threat to send to collections additional charges that somehow total exactly $49.99. Weird huh? Especially since during the pre-move out inspection we were forced to do, we were told everything looked fine. Expect lots of turnover in the office as management does not seem to treat their workers well. Many left disgruntled telling me this. Hopefully someone kinder and more human than Aaron will...

The first thing to know about Uwajimaya Village is this: The building is shared with Uwajimaya the supermarket which is right below, and IPM the parking garage. They are not the landlord/Equity Residential. This causes problems for the tenants and I will share my experience.

At least once a month, but when it gets bad weekly or even daily (!!!) is common, the supermarket fire alarm goes off and kicks everybody out to the curb. Over and over again this happens, and over and over again they apologize and can't do anything about it.

There has been nonstop construction beginning at 8 or 9 in the morning for over a year now. I kept thinking it was going to stop and it never did. No, it's not for the tenants, it's for the supermarket. The tenants are just collateral damage and there's nothing Equity Residential can do about it besides send you happy messages. Every Wednesday morning though they kick the noise up a notch by sending in the leafblowers to sweep the whole place.

Every single time these bad things happen Equity Residential says they have no control and can't fix it or make it better in the future. My bike was stolen with bolt cutters from their "secure" bike storage, a locked room placed in front of a security camera I literally paid extra rent for. When I report it? Nope sorry once again, apparently EQR isn't even responsible for the room I'm renting, you gotta talk to IPM and hope they care at all. Turns out they don't, also the camera supposedly guarding the room was actually broken the whole time.

Obviously not...

you can read about the positives, i'll give you the negatives

biggest negatives: drag racers that are always there on wednesdays and the weekends, always late at night. the noise bounces off of the buildings nearby and its so loud. the parking is $220???? i once asked the leasing manager if there was any way they could get the rate lower and they immediately shut me down. i once forgot to display my hang tag and was ticketed by the parking company(~$60) for improper tag display.

the last unit i lived in was not properly cleaned when i moved in, the kitchen floor was somehow sticky and there was plenty of gunk in the cabinets and accumulated dust/grease on top of the floorboards. the walls were blotchy and you could see where they had painted things over, and the bathroom tub area was ugly af with a patchwork of color.

upon move out i did a much more thorough job of cleaning everything even though the unit was going to be renovated. i left the unit cleaner than i found it and was still charged a cleaning fee. the leasing manager left me on read when i pointed that out. i was also charged $60 for painting even though i patched the few holes i'd made and that should have been the only thing they needed to be painted. they also charged me $60 when i moved out of the previous unit for painting over a few tiny holes in the walls.

tl;dr be careful upon move out with charges, theyre greedy corporate...