The Bernard

I’m so glad to be leaving this place!
The view of the space needle is amazing. The close proximity of walking everywhere to grocery stores, hip restaurants, entertainment, and more is fantastic. The neighborhood tucked in a corner with trees around you is serene. The carpeted and windows from floor to ceiling is nice. HOWEVER, MANAGEMENT CHANGED AND IT IS NO LONGER A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN FEEL AT HOME. SAFETY IS ALSO AN ISSUE. IN ADDITION, THE AREA IS LOUD WITH ALL THE NEW CONSTRUCTION BESIDE AND BEHIND THE BUILDING.
They find ways to nickel and dime you, and I haven’t event moved out yet. I have 4 days left. They drastically increased my rent (over $ 100 on top of my base rate). Elevator is always slow. Utility services through AUM is a pain to use, you also get slapped on a fee for using it online. You get emails and/​or calls from the office about fees you were not notified about, especially from a woman named Megan Tommy who has no soft skills but is all about your money. She also doesn’t care about your tenant concern — customer service is cold, sour, and unbelievably inconsistent.
Safety. There are no cameras. Garage entrance break often, so it’s open for all to enter. Bikes have been stolen several times this year.
For the same price when I moved in last year, I was able to find a place at capitol hill/​downtown with hardwood floors, parking, SAFE, clean and modern facility. Most importantly, I don’t have to deal with rude customer service from property management.
Gone are the days when Linda was handling the Bernard She was warm, welcoming, and made you feel at home.

The view of the water and the P-​I building are superb, and being walking distance to grocery stores, post office, entertainment, space needle, restaurants has been incredible; however recent construction the area and the changing of management has made our once excellent living location just tolerable.
Something very shady:
They quoted us one price for parking, then after we signed our lease management changed. The new management deleted our lease and created a new one with an almost doubled parking price! They left us only a few weeks to sign with the new price or vacate. We didn’t have time to find a new place quickly.
On top of that incident (which they didn’t reconcile) in general now customer service is cold and disjointed. The elevator is slow, AUM, the utility service is a pain, and it’s not a very green facility.
We love the view and carpeted floors (however the view is disappearing with the construction), but for the same price range I think there is better out there, with better management.
I wouldn’t recommend going with an Essex property if this is what it is like– they nickel and dime everything and make the place feel very corporate and not like a home. Perhaps we were sheltered with our previous property manager, Linda. We sure do miss her excellent customer service!

The elevator hasn’t broken down in about 2 months. Good times. As promised I have updated this review to 4 stars.

My wife, dog and I lived in The Bernard for 10 months between 2013 and 2014. Overall, it was completely fine. Not great, not terrible, fine.
The good:
Michael the property manager is a very nice person who will do what he can to help you out with building-​related issues. He’s maybe talks and explains a bit over much, but he means well and is nice.
Bong, the building’s main maintenance guy is extremely nice, very good at his job and prompt. Any maintenance request we put in was taken care of on schedule and quickly, including the replacement of our kitchen sink.
The view from the West side of the building is completely great. Water, the Seattle P-​I globe, really great. It does get hot, very hot, in the summer thanks to the constant Western exposure.
The neighborhood is great. So walkable and busable and bikeable that you don’t need a car while living here. There’s always a Car2Go around and Zipcars live in the parking lot right behind the building. Seattle Center is right there and makes for an excellent backyard/​dog walk and there’s great grocery stores nearby as well as awesome restaurants.
The place is very dog friendly.
The not-​so-​good:
The elevator is slooooow and broke down multiple times while we lived there. Supposedly that’s been fixed but… That said, we lived on the 4^th floor and usually walked the stairs anyway. This was by choice because who needs to use the elevator all the time? But still, when you have groceries and a dog, etc, it’d be nice if the elevator arrived a bit faster.
The hot water takes FOREVER to reach your unit (ours was in the middle of the building on the 4^th floor). We were told one of the hot water heaters was broken and being replaced right after we moved in, but it never got better. We wasted a lot of water running it to get hot for showers and doing the dishes.
The building’s website, which you use to put in maintenance requests and pay your rent is glitchy at best and useless most of the time as it often (6 months out of 10) did not remember me as a tenant. Only my wife could make it work.
The company they use for billing your water, Aum Inc., is terrible. They offer online payment FOR A FEE and another fee (IIRC) for auto payments. I’m sorry, 1996 called and wants its business model back. Plus there’s admin fees on top of your water bill. Ick.
Nice as he is, Michael’s hours in the office were loosely held to at best.
The stairs and the halls didn’t seem to be vacuumed all that often.
If they tell you that they’re very concerned about sustainability, don’t believe them. I had to let them know that they pay for compost pick up AND find their compost container AND bring it into the garage.

I don’t live here but I can’t say enough nice things about the leasing agent Michael. He’s very friendly, thorough and considerate. They didn’t haven’t true 1 bedrooms so I decided to go elsewhere but very nice views and leading staff in lower Queen Anne. It’s a clean property as well.

Not sure why the ratings are so low, but I moved in a few months ago and love it here. Great location, good price and very nice staff. They always respond to all requests very quickly. Very pet friendly and they offer one of the lowest pet rents around town. The only down side is no amenities on site but we have access to the sister property which is less than 10 min walk away.

For whatever reason, Unilocal keeps filtering out the tenants who are writing nice things about the building. Maybe writing an update will help unfilter my review?
Let’s see… Mike from maintenance switched to a different Essex building last month, and our new guy is just as dedicated and nice. The weather has been fab and we’re loving the park by the Seattle Center fountain. Yesterday we walked up to Dick’s a got milkshakes… good to be still living in QA!

The Bernard used to be a pretty good place to live – until it was recently bought by a large California-​based company (Essex). The new management is unresponsive and they seem to rotate through the office quickly. You can’t count on the same person being there two days in a row, so its often hard to get things taken care of. They are rude and draconian. They have reserved the best garage parking spot for the manager – it used to be open for short term use for unloading. It’s a small detail but represents their contempt for their clients. As soon as they bought the property, they have uniformly raised the rent by 20%. I moved out after 4 years because I had the opportunity and I’m glad I did. From my conversations with others, many will follow. Too many great places and new buildings in the area to take a chance on the Bernard.

I have been a resident to Benard for two years. My first year was great and I resigned my lease for another year. 2011 year is my second lease year– Essex Property Management purchased this property (2 months ago) and the quality of service from their leasing agents is poor. Every week there are different agents working the front office. There was one man who showed up late and left early. There is young woman who does her make-​up, leaves frequently for breaks, and she gives you vacate notices when they cashed your rent last week. I do not recommend living at this location unless there are conveniences that cannot be beat — such as being close to work, walking commute, etc.
If you are looking for a place to stay between 1100 — 1400 — look into other places that will have similar water view, better customer service, and more amenities.