Apartment Management

The worst. Don’t rent from these people. They tried to scam me out of $ 1,800 by invoicing me for an air conditioner of theirs that broke. After I repeatedly told them that it was not my responsibility they went back to acting like nothing happened. Morally bankrupt people.

My daughter is moving out for her first time on her own to go to school with a girlfriend of hers, we rented her an apartment from them, and I fell relieved to have her living there. The application process was simple the other mother and myself co-​signed for the girls, and were relieved to be only responsible for each girls portion, unlike other companies that would make us responsible for the entire place. The girls were even allowed to choose their own paint for the apartment! Jennifer handled everything including giving the girls all the phone numbers they would need to set p their utilities, and get their parking stickers, and showed them all the grocery stores and things they would need right around the apartment.

If I were a 19 year old college student, I would probably give them four stars. As someone in their mid-​twenties who has had other landlords, I am still kicking myself for not seeing their incompetence coming. This company does not seem to realize that there are tenant laws in Chicago that require landlords to be responsible for certain obligations… like heat in the winter. But I’ll get to that.
To start with our leasing process: the woman who showed us the apartment, Jen, was friendly and very relaxed, though seemed a little scatterbrained. At the time my roommate and I thought that was a good thing — little did we know it was masking her complete incompetence and unprofessionalism. There didn’t seem to be a process for applying to rent, she just kept telling us we would be fine if we filled out an application and wrote a check. We never received confirmation that we had been accepted — till our checks were cashed two weeks later.
Our first major issue happened within a month of us moving in, when it was winter in Chicago, and they refused to turn on the heat in our building. We went a week with temperatures around 55 – 60 degrees in our apartment (we bought a thermometer) and Jen’s response to our complains were that she didn’t see what the big deal was, and it wasn’t bothering anyone else.
We had one major event where our upstairs neighbors radiator was leaking into our apartment, to which they responded quickly and effectively. Every other request — leaking toilet, broken buzzer, broken windows, door knobs falling off the front door of the building — was met with disdain, questioning if it was really an issue, or, most usually, they just ignored us. I think, over the course of the year, Jen replied to one email I sent her (and only then because it pertained to money).
The most comical part of this all was that part way through the year they changed their name to Warshaw Property Management, seemimngly to seem more professional… though they still continued on with their incompetence and an email address that is
. Picture of professionalism…
The icing on the cake was when I recieved an email from Jen telling me that our neighbors were upset by the number of late night parties my roomate and I were having on week days. My roommate and I are both fast alseep by 10pm to be up for our jobs, and are constantly woken by the partying, so clearly they had the wrong people… though she must’ve not passed the message along to the rest of our neighbors, who continue to have bi-​weekly ragers until 5am in the courtyard during which people smoke on our back porch and leave lit cigarettes on our wooden patio and furniture, and leave their mess all over the courtyard that no one cleans. Ever wonder what a 2 week old rotting watermellon looks like? There currently is one out there.
To wrap up, if you are OK not relying on your landlord for anything, this is the place for you. If you’re between the ages of 18 and 22 and your parents are paying your rent (and/​or you don’t need to be up at 6am to get ready for work), this is the place for you. If you’re a normal, functioning adult, who enjoys having their apartment heated during Chicago winters, and prefers their landlord to a rational being that does their job — definetly not the place for you.