Wilsonian Apartments

This place has a lot of ups and downs.
The location is both good and bad. It is a 30 second walk to Safeway and about a 7 minute walk to campus. The bad thing about the location is that it sketchy at night. Walking on this part of the Ave at night is pretty dangerous and I would not recommend it if you are alone. It also gets very loud at night. There are a lot of drunk people running around screaming and shouting until maybe 1 at night? Sometimes 3 depending on the night. There are also ridiculously loud cars that drive down the ave.
My apartment unit is a one bedroom and it is wonderful. It is incredibly cozy. The hardwood floors are nice, but at the same time they suck. If the person above you is inconsiderate (like mine) they will walk extremely loud and probably wake you up whenever they are up.
The units all come with multiple heaters that are really nice in the winter. However, they can only turn on if the employees remember to turn them on downstairs, so I have had some very cold nights when they forget to turn them on for the entire building. They only turn them on if it’s below 35 outside I believe?
One of the biggest things that you should be aware about if moving in here is that EVERY unit is different. This is not a good thing. Some apartments have window screens, some don’t. Some units have the double doors to separate the living room and bedroom, most don’t. Some have a door for the kitchen, and some don’t. Some of the hardwood flooring is also a lot older and cheaper than some. Honestly, getting assigned a unit here is really a hit or miss if you can’t view it before hand. My roommate and I were told that we COULD view our options before leasing a unit, but they lied and refused to let us. So we simply picked a unit and got lucky that we had one of the better units. I have friend’s that live in other units that are no where near as nice. The price however is very decent in my opinion, and you do not have to worry about paying a separate utilities bill.
Getting a good unit here is pretty much up to chance.

I have lived in the Wilsonian Apartments for several years and I love it.
The location is perfect. It’s right in the middle of everything and only a few minutes walk to the UW. There are tons of shops and restaurants right on the Ave.
The staff here are friendly and helpful. They have a 24 hour maintenance line and some of them live in the building. They respond to service requests very quickly.
It gets a little noisy sometimes but it is the UDistrict.
The apartments are awesome. The building was built in the 20’s but has been well maintained. My apartment is HUGE!!! It has hardwood floors and high ceilings. The owners recently upgraded the kitchens too, so I have a dishwasher now.
If you want to be close to the University of Washington and don’t mind a little noise now and then, this is the place to live.

I preleased a 1 bedroom unit for the Wilsonian in February 2013 after checking out the space which looked great (along with feedback from my friend who lived there). I mean what’s not to like about $ 1249 a month for a hardwood floor apartment on the Ave? Paid the $ 250 application fee/​deposit, got the credit check done, all was good.
The issue really started the month after in March 2013 when I was supposed to receive the assignment for what apartment I was going to be in, which was great news to hear since I wanted to finalize the place that I wanted to live in and what rent exactly. Well the end of March was approaching and I still hadn’t received any notifications about assignment, so I decide to email them, then call them, then go in person, then email again and continuing that cycle all the way until I got a phone call back in early May 2013 where they «apologized» and assigned me the unit. Well that’s a good thing then, at least it’s all over with!
. Or so I thought. In early June 2013 I received a phone call from them where the individual on the phone apologized and told me that I no longer had a place to stay at the Wilsonian. Why you say? Well the individual who currently lived in the unit decided he really wanted to renew his lease so he asked the management and they told him no. Well the «management» was now under a new owner so this individual goes ahead and calls corporate, who then call down to management and command them to honor the lease, months after the deadline for existing tenants to renew.
Well that means that I’m out of an apartment and essentially months behind the game on finding a place in the University District. As a consolation they offered me a studio in the Lothlorien (another one of their buildings) for the same price. While it was a welcome gesture, I decided not to take them up on it since I was sacrificing the space and psuedo-​location that I wanted for the same amount (in addition the Lothlorien has the tenant pay for utilities). I asked for them to cancel my prelease and refund me the application fee and deposit, to which they agreed. Left them my name, number, email and forwarding address and called it good.
Here comes the third week of June and I haven’t heard anything or received a check and I call in and a day or two later I receive a response saying that the accounting department at corporate was handling it and it should go out in a few days. Forward a two weeks later (almost beginning of July 2013) I get a phone call asking what my forwarding address is (are you fu**ing kidding me. it’s on the note and the prelease document), so I provided it to them. Here comes the end of July and I have yet to receive anything at all. Do I really need the $ 250? Not really, but it’s the principle of the whole affair that how poorly they handle this situation, I can’t imagine what it must be like for others that have issues with management/​corporate.
I think I may go sue…
TL;DR: Management may have changed, but it’s still crap.

You can do better.
The location is close to the UW campus and the rent isn’t too high if you have roommates but BEWARE, the security is bad, there is no parking, the building is old with lots of problems, and most importantly — the management is absolutely terrible!
I lived here for a year and during this time the elevators kept breaking, the glass front door to the building was often broken, the noise from the street was very loud, and the management gave us a lot of problems. One day they put an eviction notice under our dorr bc their records showed we hadn’t paid one month and we had to show our bank statements showing they had cashed our checks for the month before we were told it was an «accounting error on their side» (no apology) and then for no reason they wouldn’t give us our deposit back when we left.
We asked them what they were charging us for and they wouldn’t answer, then after having our parents call and fight with them they sent us HALF the amount owed from our deposits and said we would have to go to court if we wanted the rest. What? So dumb, I was leaving the country or I would have followed up by taking them to court.
Also during this time, the halls always smelled really bad, we had problems with the pipes and with mold in our bathroom and when we notified them that we would not renew our lease they kept showing our apartment without giving us notice so we would be walking out of the shower naked in a towel to find strangers touring around. Ahhh!!! So awful, don’t live here if u have any other option!

Went to this place three times during business hours and no one was there. I can understand now why other sites have said bad things about management. If I can’t find anyone before becoming a renter I can only imagine how frustrating it will be once I start paying rent. Who ever owns this property needs to start taking their ownership more seriously. You are wasting peoples time by never being around.

It’s important to note that I am not paying for my apartment here and am only staying for two months. I’m rating this place as if I’m paying out of pocket, because if I’m rating it as a price point of $ 0/​month I would be giving it 6 stars.
The good: This place is really, really good about flexible, short term leases (they do less than one month pro-​rated, I think) as long as you don’t mind paying the price. Their 1 year or 6 month lease rates are okay, but their 1 month leases are expensive. The thing though is that they do rent by the month, and that’s really useful sometimes. The management office is really also very good with communicating with folks from far away on leases. The manager told me that he constantly rents to international visiting faculty and post docs via postal mail and e-​mail. They also do furnishing for folks who need furniture short term.
The apartments are pretty spacious. Even the studios aren’t bad for something so close to the local major university. My one bedroom (the floorplan is available on their web site) has two pretty large closets and a ton of kitchen cabinets. It comes with a built in kitchen table and benches for dining. The stove/​oven isn’t bad and the fridge is on the «economy» side, but functional. They keep the lobby and the hallways really clean, and there’s a cargo elevator for moving. The elevators are pretty small but I’ve never seen a full elevator. There’s free wi-​fi in the lobby too.
The prices are definitely not on the low end. If my stay wasn’t covered by a government grant I would not have chosen this place, frankly. With a post doc salary or a grad student stipend I would not be able to afford this place easily either without a roommate. There are lots of families here though. I don’t understand how undergraduates afford to live here, but they do, perhaps with a roommate or two. But if you can afford it it’s a pretty good place to live.
It’s got on site laundry, and there’s a guy who signs for packages, so it’s pretty good. In fact, it feels like an old hotel — it’s a pretty «historic» building and they’ve kept it up pretty well.
The bad: The bathrooms and kitchens have no active ventilation. This really sucks during the summer and I can’t imagine doing real cooking here if I was to stay here long term unless I want my entire apartment to smell like grease and bacon all the time (which is actually a bad thing, contrary to popular belief). I suppose that a giant box fan at the kitchen window can solve some of this problem but the bathroom is still pretty stuffy and has no windows.
Another big minus: this place is not wheelchair accessible. I haven’t figured out a way to get into the place without climbing a few steps. This is not a problem for me but I imagine it to be a deal breaker for a lot of folks.
It’s on the corner of the Ave and 47^th, so it’s pretty noisy, but that’s completely to be expected.
Some folks on other review sites have had lots of problem with the management. I’ve not been having any problems so far. However I’m only living here short term and that could be a long term thing.
If I am coming back to Seattle next year for the same thing and the government is paying for it, I’ll definitely look into the Wilsonian again.
Short version: Living here short term is great if you come from far away and can afford it.