Typhanie Zulauf

Review of Windermere West Sound-Kingston

We moved into a new rental last year with a differ...

We moved into a new rental last year with a different property management company and within a month it has been transferred to Windermere property management. Bobbi Alger was assigned as our property manager. While initially she seemed professional and attentive her true personality came out when we needed assistance. In March when the Covid crisis shut down jobs my husband and I both lost multiple jobs and all of our income. We have three children and we re unable to continue paying the higher rent due for this property. After repeatedly asking Bobbi to discuss some options with us and the owners we were met with this is our policy, this is how we do things at Windemere. There was no grace for Covid even though we had heard that they were rental assistance programs and federally mandated protections for renters, Windermere did very little to assist us. They offered us a $500 deferment on our March rent but at the cost of signing another one year lease with them. They made no other offers to assist us. So because we were scared and didn t want to have our children homeless we accepted the only offer they provided. When it became clear that my husband was not going to be able to work again in Seattle Washington and that we would no longer be able to afford the higher rent of this property we reached out again. We let them know that we would no longer be able to afford the property due to the lack of employment. We said we would do everything we could to help them get new tenants in and we would move out as soon as possible. We were even assured that there were a few tenants who were already looking at the property by Bobbi. There was no walk-through offered for our move out and we actually had very few communications with Bobbi about the procedures and requirements for our move out. So we did what we ve done with every other rental. About halfway through July we got told that no tenants would be moving in and that we would be forced to pay the whole month of July. In addition we were served with many other fees. We were charged for cleaning, yard work, garbage removal, several items that we had already paid for or made arrangements for. The total for the entire month of July was over $5000 in charges. Every attempt to communicate with Bobbi was refused, she wouldn t take our calls, she would only send short but frank emails that stated their policies and that no provisions would be made for us. I m sure some of this had to do with a stressful time that our country is going through but I feel like under the circumstances exceptions should ve been made. Also take photos of everything you do before move out otherwise there s no way to prove that you did anything.