The Park In Bellevue Apartments

Had the worst experience today.
Last month we dealt with Angie who was a sweetheart and gave us a great tour about a month ago. We can’t move in till March so we kept The Park as a strong contender. Appliances weren’t great but Angie and the location were the selling points. Also we currently live in Eastlake in a Greystar apartment and are so happy with the staff here. We just need to relocate because of jobs and a growing family.
We got an email from Lexy Wednesday giving us a quote sheet. We had a couple of questions for her over the next couple of days. Friday we got an email from Angie saying the quote was a little higher (which was fine) but to set up an appointment. We couldn’t do it Friday because we both work. So she set us an appointment on 2pm Saturday with Mo. This is where things got bad really quick.
The sign said the office would be back at 2:20pm (fine maybe they are showing another apartment) doors didn’t open till 2:30. A guy was there and he didn’t greet us or introduce himself at all. We said «hi, we had a 2pm appointment» he said «for what» it looked like he was just in the back office finishing his lunch. He already seemed annoyed with us. We tell him we are interested in the 2 b/​b and he tells us the quotes changed again. Which is FINE but we wanted to know why it jumped so much. I understand now that pricing can change daily but how he handled the situation and explanation was all wrong.
He said to show him the email or quote. We pulled it up on the phone but the image came out distorted. Mo said «well I can’t read that, it can say anything, I don’t see it» like he was accusing us that we are lying. I said it’s our phone we can pull up our email his computer. He wanted to call Angie or Lexy I am not sure who he spoke to. But I understand it is probably best to confirm what was emailed and told to us.
He called Angie/​Lexy and said «we are not supposed to send the quote over email, I told her not to do that» then he said «I don’t see the email» «I only see the email about the 2pm appointment» (here I got annoyed he knew the appointment was at 2pm, clearly he doesn’t care about time) He found the email and pointed out the quote was 48hours only. We said we know we see that, we were quoted yesterday for a higher price. He said you should’ve applied yesterday online. We said we weren’t told that with the email and were told to set up an appointment. He pretty much told us it’s our fault we didn’t apply yesterday. I told him I wish this was told to us. At this point his voice was staring to raise.
I told him hold up we got off on the wrong foot. I advised him he was rude from the get go and didn’t even introduce himself. So I asked him who he was because I didn’t even know if he was Mo or not.
He then goes on a tangent on how he and his wife were apartment hunting and yesterday the apartment was gone. Ok but what does that have to do with this?
I tell him I understand prices go up. We just wanted an explanation but he went on the defense really quick. We were so taken aback by his bad attitude and we were still going to apply with the higher cost but we don’t want to live here because he was just awful to deal with. We can just tell he hates his job and does not represent Greystar well at all.

I lived here January 2015 — November 2015.
*** Bad and dumb stuff: ***
— Rent jumped $ 400/​month after our 10 month lease expired November 2015 on a 2 bed /​2 bath
— They sent me an itemized bill of everything I damaged or dirtied, conveniently totaling just under the total sum of my original deposit. I’ve always gotten my deposit back in full, so seeing so little of it come back after just 10 months was a shock. (And I scrubbed the hell out of the place, too.)
— On the bright side, YOU DON’T NEED TO CLEAN YOUR APARTMENT ON THE WAY OUT OF THIS PLACE! So skip the two weekends you’d normally spend scrubbing every nook and cranny because no matter how pristine you make it, you won’t get your money back.
— It’s a «no smoking» unit, but people will smoke outside. I often walked through cigarette smoke walking around the property.
— Lobby hours for package pickup suck (9am-​5pm, same hours I work)
— Front office often left unattended/​locked with a pileup of people outside waiting for assistance
*** Good stuff: ***
+ It’s pretty quiet, except for when the Mormons are trolling the neighborhood or your neighbor left his dog alone overnight
+ In-​unit washer and dryer
+ My bike never got stolen despite having nothing to lock it to except my other bike
+ Lots of room in the parking lot for moving trucks, which you’ll appreciate when you leave this place.

I got an appointment for apartment showing as they indicated on their website and craigslist. I came here 5 min earlier than the appointment time and it has been 45 min now and I am still waiting and writing this review. What is the point of getting an appointment if you put walkins ahead of me??? Show respect to other people’s time…

Please be very careful if you are thinking of renting a place here. We went in on a Sunday, signed application papers and paid $ 500 deposit. Not even 24 hours passed when we decided we couldn’t take the apt. They will NOT refund your deposit as soon as you walk out that door. I have contacted Attorney General about receiving money back. So unfair. That’s not how apartments should run their business. Banks were even closed for President’s day.

Stayed at the Park in Bellevue for a year. As far as the price and location goes, it is not too bad being so close to downtown Bellevue. The rooms are huge, and the area is very appealing. Maintenance requests are dealt with by the next day, and we didn’t have any trouble with anything while living here. Having said that, there are a few things that are a problem, and can be a deal-​breaker.
The staff here are extremely impersonal, it gets annoying after a while. Many times, they don’t even look up when I’ve walked in to collect packages, and have had phone calls cut abruptly. Collecting packages is a hassle, and one of the primary reasons we decided not to renew the lease.
The move out process isn’t too painful. We cleaned the apartment for 3 days straight and only got minor deductions from the security deposit for painting walls over etc. But its been almost a month and we haven’t received the check for refunded security deposit even though our leasing agreement and Washington state laws state that they are to be returned within 14 days. On calling the leasing office, they don’t even sound remotely apologetic, and simply state that I should keep checking my mail.
In spite of the good layout of the apartments and free parking, the experience of dealing with the lousy management staff brings down my rating from 4 to 2.

So this place is the worst apartment complex that I have every stayed in. When my wife and I went to check this place out, they were super nice and friendly, but I noticed on the walk through that there were a few maintenance issues that they said would be taken care of promptly. We needed a place rather quickly as we had just relocated out to the Seattle area, and it didn’t seem too bad.
Short version: Don’t live here. They don’t fix anything, over charge on utilities, are rude, packages get left at your door, including my TV from Amazon, and upon move out, they charge you for EVERYTHING, even if it is in perfect shape. Got a whole $ 8 back on our nearly $ 1000 security deposit.
Now begins the problems. Upon moving in, the staff became less and less friendly or helpful. Not even a week into living there, the dishwasher leaked all over the kitchen, flooding it out pretty bad. Nothing was damaged thanks goodness, but was still not how we wanted to start our time there. Maintenance then came out not once, but 3 separate times claiming it was fixed resulting in the dishwasher leaking all of the floor immediately upon use. I actually had to demand the manager handle this or I would have to escalate it further. They finally replaced with a used dishwasher that never cleaned our dishes right the entire time we were there.
Next up was the stove that only 3 burners worked on. After 3 visits, the poor burner still did not work, and finally I went out myself and purchased what I needed to fix it myself with MY OWN MONEY. This horrible maintenance would continue for the entire year I was there.
Rent. Well it was really kind of high for the quality, but the location is nice. Utilities are definitely high each month for the common utilities that are «divided» among all of the building residents. Their automated bill pay failed one month for some reason and I paid it immediately upon noticing it did not come out, which happened to be on the day it would be late, and they charged me a ridiculous late fee for something that was their fault.
Finally, when we moved out, we cleaned the apartment from ceiling to floor, cleaned the stove and kitchen, and made sure nothing was broken. A week later, we received our statement of move out showing that we would receive $ 8 back from our $ 1000 deposit. They quoted pet damage for carpets, even in rooms that the dog NEVER was allowed in and the door was shut too, along with damages to walls and cabinets in the kitchen that were damaged upon move in. In the move out packet, the papers we signed for move in condition were not the documents that we signed and our initials that should have been on page 1 and were on page 1 were mysteriously missing. DO NOT TRUST THIS HORRIBLE PLACE! You will lose you deposit and live in a horribly maintained place.

This place really needs a better staff. As it stands riverstone management rather replace the staff at Park in Bellevue with a morbid rule book that we can just walk into the office and read.

Stayed here for over a year. The staff over here is the WORST PART of living here. Their primary job is to simply make your life miserable. They are just robotic puppets who have no empathy and are here to basically read you rules laid out by some corporate book. The manager is simply worthless!
Lease renewal times are miserable, so forget about coming here if you think you want to stay for more than a year coz you WILL MOVE!
I simply packed up and moved to Belcarra — way nicer and has a good staff.

I found it rather difficult to find information about Riverstone Residential prior to moving into this place, so I figured I should make it a bit easier for the next person.
Here’s the short version, for the TL;DR crowd:
It’s a good place to live if it’s within your price range, and provided you know what you’re getting into.
Riverstone Residential is a huge corporation. They manage almost 700 communities, of which The Park in Bellevue is one. As such, you can expect a thoroughly «corporate experience» when you move into this place. By this, I mean the following:
–A 35-​page lease, containing no fewer than three general waivers of liability. Read the entire goddamn thing if you know what’s good for you.
–Property managers that are unequivocally bound to follow «company policy» and have little to no discretion of their own when it comes to matters of common sense. In other words, managers in name only.
–Offers of 12-​month leases, followed by upsells to 14-​month leases because they’ve already used up a predetermined number of «move-​out» slots for a given month. Protip: Always ask for a discount on the rent if this happens. If they’ll offer it in a departure letter (see below), they can offer it to you.
–A thoroughly condescending form letter, delivered within a month of your lease expiration, offering you the opportunity to stick around if you’re willing to see your rent increase by $ 600 per year ($ 50 increase per month, for us at least). The most insidious part of this letter was the table that indicated «market rent» for our unit as a $ 70 increase per month, indicating that the aforementioned rent hike was seemingly done out of the goodness of their hearts. A good website to consult when determining «market rent» would be
, which, at the time of our departure, had two identical units listed for $ 70 *less* per month than our original rent.
I can’t speak to whether they would have kept our rent at the same level if we had played hardball, since we moved out — but it’s probably worth a try (although a little bird told me that the owners keep a 97% occupancy rate in the current rental market despite their mandatory rent hikes, so that might not work out for you).
Now for the good! Here’s what I mostly approved of while living there:
–At the time of our move-​in, initial costs were discounted (we only had to pay a $ 95 non-​refundable deposit (also known as a fee), and there were two different promo deals going for a couple of different units — 4 and 6 weeks of free rent respectively.
–Maintenance! Part of a corporately managed complex is that on-​site maintenance is nearly always available, and work orders are usually completed in a very timely fashion (I should also mention that under the terms of the lease, they can only enter your unit if you give them written permission, for which an email will suffice).
Work orders for repairs to your unit are always completed thoroughly — although the complex-​wide stuff is a bit more hare-​brained sometimes. When they were painting the outside of our unit, we received multiple notices from «Executive Paints and Coatings» (or similar), warning us that some subset of the work would be completed in the next couple of days, so we would need to (variably) remove all items from our deck, close all of our windows, etc. We received so many of these notices that we had to keep our deck clear for nearly a full month (with little to no work completed during that time on our actual building). Our complaints led to a $ 100 Amex gift card for our trouble, so they’re responsive to such things at least.
–Brittany, the current property manager, has always been professional and courteous, even when I was admittedly a bit confrontational about some of the company’s more ridiculous policies.
–Move-​out costs were reasonable. If you clean the place thoroughly, you will not be charged cleaning fees. We had to replace one of the blinds due to some cat-​induced damage, and we were given a very reasonable price ($ 30 for the big living room blind), since they buy them all in bulk anyway. All of the move-​out costs are declared to you during the move-​out inspection, and you know exactly how much you owe before you move out (any horror stories you might have heard about getting collection letters 60 days after you move out are false in my experience, and are likely a product of nonpayment).
Bottom line:
I don’t approve of the rental increases (or the manner in which they were presented), but this is a fine place to live if it’s within your price range. It’s within convenient walking/​bussing/​driving distance to much of the eastside, making it an ideal location for contractors of a certain Redmond software giant to call home. Easy walking distance to Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square, if you like that sort of thing. Most everything within Bellevue is a bit expensive, a bit underwhelming, and a bit flat. But from this place, you can get to all of it easily.