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Home / Seattle Lofts / Capitol Hill / Trace Lofts / One Year at Trace Lofts

One Year at Trace Lofts

By October 16, 2008

Trace Lofts

I’ve been at Trace for 13 months now and just went through submitting all the one year issues with my place. For those curious here’s what was on my list:

  • Some grout in the bathtub surround has developed some holes in it for lack of a better way of describing it
  • The bathtub floor seems to be permanently dirty. Nothing will get it clean.
  • A section of drywall in the bedroom keeps cracking
  • The in-sink disposal is making a funny noise

We also just had our annual meeting. The issues that came up were:

  • Should we get an audit? Consensus was no, it wasn’t worth it
  • Should we get a reserve study? Yes, we should get one every 3 years starting this year.
  • Elevator: Our Kone elevator had a lot of issues. It seems to be stable now but folks were pretty concerned we were sold a lemon. Turns out you just can’t return an elevator.
  • Security: Lots of discussion around this. No changes planned to our security infrastructure.
  • Rental cap: Lots of discussion around this. People seem more concerned that they might not be able to rent their unit than concerned that they won’t be able to resell it. Frankly I think they’re ill formed and they’re ill advised to listen to the developer on this issue. The developer wants to sell (or rent) the remaining units and the less rules the better. Hopefully the board pushes forward on this and gets proper legal advice on how to proceed. I’m sure we can draft something which will address the majority of concerns.
  • Window coverings: Two units (one being mine) wanted to change our window covering policy. No such luck. Turns out we are sticking to window coverings that need to be black on the outside. Unfortunately I accidentally bought custom black out window coverings that weren’t black on the outside. Surprised that this wasn’t the case when they arrived I contacted The Shade Store who said they have never heard of black outward facing window coverings. (I was puzzled after installing them because in my unit they looked grey but when I went outside they did not. It took me a few days to realize they weren’t the same color on both sides.)

As for HOA dues, they’re raising one or two dollars, that’s it.

I’d be curious to hear from other new construction buyers on first year kinks either with the HOA or their unit? (I’m sure Mosler owners have more than a few stories to share :) )

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