Seattle has built tens of thousands of condominium and apartment units since the 1990s, in Belltown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, Ballard, Columbia City, downtown Bellevue and Kirkland, and the townhouse infill that fills every block of the north end. These buildings stack kitchens over kitchens and laundries over laundries, which means water takes the shortest path down through several homes at once.
How water moves in a stacked building
A supply line, dishwasher, washing machine or water heater failure in an upper unit sends water across the floor, down the plumbing chases and electrical penetrations, and into the ceiling cavity of the unit below. From there it saturates insulation, soaks the top of drywall, runs down inside the party walls and keeps going. The unit directly below gets the ceiling; the unit two floors down may get a wet closet or a wet wall it does not notice for weeks. Townhouses share party walls and often a common crawl space, so a leak in one end unit wets the framing of the neighbor.
Crews check every unit along the path with meters and thermal imaging, including units that look dry, because the one nobody checked is the one with the mold problem in three months.
Three insurance policies and a declaration
A single multi-unit loss typically involves the source unit owner's policy, each affected owner's policy, and the HOA's master policy, plus renters policies if units are leased. The condominium declaration determines where the association's responsibility stops and each owner's begins, and master policy deductibles in Seattle buildings have climbed sharply in recent years and are often assessed back to the owners involved.
What makes that manageable is documentation that is kept separate from the start: a moisture map, photo set, equipment log and estimate for each unit and for the common elements. Adjusters for different carriers can each approve their own scope without arguing over whose drywall is in whose estimate.
Working inside an occupied building
Multi-unit work happens around people's lives. Drying equipment runs in homes where people are sleeping, working and cooking; access has to be scheduled with residents and managers; hallways and elevators are shared. Crews coordinate access through the manager, schedule daily readings at agreed times, keep equipment out of egress paths, and communicate with each owner directly about their own unit.
Property managers and HOAs
If you manage a building, you need a vendor who can be in multiple units within hours, keep the documentation straight across owners, and give you a single point of contact for status. Dispatch handles that coordination. We will also tell you plainly if a loss is one you should put through the master policy versus individual unit policies, based on the scope found on the first visit.
Rentals
Landlord-owned condos and apartment units involve the owner's policy for the structure and the tenant's renters policy for belongings. The crew documents and inventories contents separately from the building so the tenant's claim is as well supported as yours, and works through the tenant for access.
