The UW Apartment Viewing Checklist for Seattle Renters

Seattle rents move fast enough that most students see a U District unit once, decide on the sidewalk outside, and sign within a day. At the prices this neighborhood commands, forty distracted minutes in an apartment can cost you thousands over a lease year. A UW apartment viewing checklist is the cheapest insurance there is against that: a short list of things to open, run, and ask about while you are still standing in the room and walking away is still free. Everything below is built around five real listings currently sourced on the University of Washington off-campus housing page.

Begin your search at Off-Campus Universe, where you can browse current listings near Seattle (U District), compare bedroom counts and line up several showings in one afternoon, which is the only sane way to do this. Prices below are quoted exactly as recorded on each listing.

Before the checklist itself, it helps to know what the current set actually costs, because a showing is much easier to judge when you already know the going rate. Troveré - Elevated Studio Living is a studio with one bathroom at $775 /Month, under five minutes from UW, and it is the only listing here where the rent and the per-person cost are the same number. University Heights, a 1bd/1ba at $1600 /Month, is also under five minutes out and runs more than twice the studio for a single occupant, which is roughly what a separate bedroom and living space costs in this pocket of the city. Updated 2-Rooms Apartment Available Now! is a 2bd/1ba five to ten minutes from campus at $1580 /Month; with one roommate that is $790 each, which is fifteen dollars a month more than living alone in the studio and worth sitting with for a moment before you assume sharing is cheaper. University West is a 3bd/1ba at $2600 /Month, under five minutes out, or $866.67 per person across three. That is the highest per-person figure among the listings whose pricing is unambiguous, and it puts three people on one bathroom, which is the sort of thing a showing exists to make real.

One listing needs a question answered before you can compare it at all. Queen Anne | Next to SPU & Close to UW is recorded as 4bd with private rooms and a single bathroom at $940 /Month, more than ten minutes from UW. If that figure is the price of one private room, it sits between the two-bedroom split of $790 and the three-bedroom split of $866.67, which is expensive for a shared-bath room that far out. If it is the rent for the entire four-bedroom unit, it is $235 per person, less than a third of anything else on this page. Both readings cannot be right and the listing does not settle it, so ask before you book a tour and ask who holds the lease while you are at it. The name tells you something the price does not, too: Queen Anne sits next to Seattle Pacific, and getting to UW from there is a bus ride across the ship canal rather than a walk.

The U District and the Neighborhoods That Ring It

The U District proper runs roughly from the Ship Canal north to NE 55th Street, with University Way NE, which everyone calls the Ave, as its spine and Brooklyn Avenue NE and 15th Avenue NE flanking it. Almost everything walkable to campus is in that rectangle, and much of the housing stock there was built before 1940, which matters enormously once you start touring. North across NE 45th Street, Ravenna and Roosevelt are quieter and a little cheaper, and Roosevelt has its own Link light rail station, which changes the commute math more than a few blocks of distance ever could. Wallingford, west of I-5, is a genuine neighborhood with a fifteen-minute walk or a short bus ride to campus and rents that often beat the Ave. Eastlake, south across the bridge, puts you between campus and downtown. Green Lake and Northgate are further north and cheaper again, with Northgate now on the light rail line. Queen Anne, as the fifth listing shows, is a different commute entirely. The single most useful filter in this city is not distance in miles; it is whether you are within a short walk of the U District or Roosevelt light rail stations, or of the 45th Street and 15th Avenue bus corridors.

UW Apartment Viewing Checklist: What to Test Before You Leave the Unit

A UW apartment viewing checklist has to cover things a checklist written for a dry climate would not bother with. Run every tap and flush the toilet while a tap is running, and watch how long hot water takes to arrive in an older building where it may be shared. Open every window: single-pane sashes painted shut are common in pre-war U District stock, and a bedroom that cannot be aired out is a bedroom that will smell in February. Look hard at the corners of bathroom ceilings, along window sills and behind any furniture pushed against an exterior wall for the dark speckling that means the room does not dry out. Seattle's rain season runs most of eight months and damp is the single most common thing tenants here end up arguing with a landlord about. Find the heat source and ask what it costs in January, because baseboard electric in an uninsulated 1920s unit produces a very different bill from gas. Check the water pressure on the shower, open the fridge and the oven, test the phone signal in the bedroom, and count the stairs, since you will carry groceries up them all year. Then stand still for thirty seconds with everything switched off and just listen: I-5, the 45th Street buses and the Ave on a Friday night are all audible from parts of this neighborhood, and no photograph will tell you that.

Four Questions to Ask Before You Leave the Showing

• What is the total move-in cost, itemized? In Seattle that usually means first month, a deposit, a non-refundable screening fee and often last month's rent. Ask for the figure in writing before you hand over a holding deposit.

• Which utilities are included, and how are water, sewer and garbage billed? Many older U District buildings divide those across units by a formula rather than a meter, and you should see the formula before you agree to it.

• Is subletting allowed, and on what terms? Most students leave for at least part of the summer, and a twelve-month lease with no sublet clause in a city this expensive is a real cost.

• What is the parking situation and does the building sit in a Restricted Parking Zone? Much of the U District is zoned, permits are limited, and a listed parking space may be a tandem spot you cannot actually use.

Ready to find your place? Browse all listings at Off-Campus Universe.

This article is provided by an independent housing resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the University of Washington.