apartmentratings.com credibility for Seattle area apartments?

having lived in San Jose, i can say, you probably better off living up here anyway... but then again, i have never lived in Seattle. but have been there many many times.

 

oh San Jose was a very nice place to live, no doubt. i much prefer their weather (i came from Riverside so its much cooler than what i was used to). just expensive, crowded and a economy that was too tied to the cyclical ups and downs of the computer industry especially at the time i lived there.

i worked with a contractor at the time and we did kitchen upgrades. now this was before the computer industry became as dominant as it is today. Apple was still king but falling fast. we went from working 6 days a week, 10 hour days, juggling up to 4-5 jobs at a time, to one job a week. cant feed 4 families on that...

one other thing...what i really liked about the area was the its central location. there was so much to do and see all within 100 miles.

 

Back when I was condo hunting (5 years ago), I looked at some reviews on apartmentratings.com for a building that was being converted to condos. My real estate agent thought that it was skewed toward the negative, since as you said people with complaints are more likely to post than people who are happy. I figured he was probably right.

But, the content of the complaints was very helpful to me. Something like "the walls are so thin, I can hear my neighbor when he pees" is good know because it involves structural issues that can't be changed and probably affect everyone. Different complaints, such as problems with management, might be more isolated instances.

So I would use it like I use customer ratings on sites like Amazon - they might not be representative of the population at large, but they can still help with decision making.

 

Using just my own experience as a gauge, I'd suggest you be highly skeptical of most of what you read on Apartment Ratings "dot" com. You'll run into both the perennial whiners (who want to recount every injustice - real or imagined - they've ever suffered) and the management's lackeys, who post (unjustified) glowing reviews. Now, if you are seeing the same complaints about staff turnover, dishonest and/or incompetent employees, crumbling construction or bad maintenance, you might want to take notice....and if you read a well-balanced review that lists both good and bad, I'd also suggest heeding it. For the most part, though, I recommend you do your homework the old-fashioned way: gather facts, visit the property, ask questions, and put your intuition to work.

Good luck to you!