Pangea Real Estate

Lease ended well. Overall decent experience.

The guy I talked to Nick was VERY straightforward and said they «do not allow any of them killer dog breeds like pitbull dogs, rottweillers, golden retrievers, pomeranians, dauchunds…» Literally, he kept going ON AND ON AND ON. I was trying to be VERY polite, and said thank you for your time, I will update our website, and he started yelling how he had my number, and was going to call the cops because I am «harboring vicious dogs».
For being listed as «pet friendly, I would say that is VERY contradictory.

RATS!!! Buy a cat once you move in to any of their properties… and unfortunately the exterminator will only come when your not home between 8am and 4pm. weekdays only .pangea will post your unit with a vague notice days before they enter your apartment you take off work to greet the exterminator… and we all know per the tenant rules… and regulations «A tenant shall permit access to a land Lord upon receiving a two day notice by mail, telephone. Written notice or other means designed in good faith to provide notice «those are the rules per Department of housing and IHDA… I was home for three days from the posted note to try to show the exterminator /​employee the problems .on the fourth day I had to return to work .The Forth Day — surely enough I returned home to only find a vague note left on my coffee table saying they had been Been inside and exterminated. Of course I was taken back. remind you this is not the first time this violation has happened to Me… this is the forth time… when I expressed my concerns last year I was meet with great dismissal. They exterminated yesterday. unfortunately I don’t know who was here or what they did while in my unit… in the past I have asked them to inform me of whom was here. That time someone stole a watch .I was going to file a police report but I was stoned walled .I gave up and locked away all my valuables .also I installed locks on all bed room doors due to not knowinb who is in my space when I’m not home… so am Buying a cat this weekend… the mice is still running around and I dont know what else to do or who to turn too… thank you Unilocal for giving a voice.

Dealing with Pangea was one of the worst experience I’ve had w/​a «business». We went to go look at an apartment in Humboldt Park (1357 N. Homan/​3357 W. Hirsch, at the corner of Homan and Hirsch) in early September. It was a new renovation, the whole building was completely vacant, & it was being shown by a realtor from Touchstone Realty (stay tune for my review of them). We liked what we saw, paid $ 45 in application fees to the Touchstone realtor and submitted an application around the 2^nd week of September w/​the hope that we could move in by ¹⁰⁄₁. Things fell apart asap.
Issue #1: the money we paid for the application fees was somehow misplaced. The realtor stated it was a mistake on her end and made sure that Pangea understood that the applications she sent in and the money she gave them were connected.
Issue #2:We get a call from Pangea stating that we had been approved. Hooray, right? Well, when we called them back to arrange a time to sign a lease and pay them the rent and move in fee, they kept mentioning an apartment in North Lawndale. Yeah, we NEVER even looked at an apartment in North Lawndale, never mind applied for one. I still, to this day, don’t know what the issue was, but apparently, according to the Touchstone realtor, Pangea’s computer system wasn’t updated to reflect that this specific building was available. Okay, that’s fine, but WHY try to BAIT & SWITCH us into moving into a substandard neighborhood, into a place we had never seen?
Issue #3: Our calls to Pangea were ridiculous. As mentioned, this specific building was not in their system. On top of that, they kept insisting that Touchstone Realty was NOT connected to them. Their exact words: «we’re a realty company, why would we use another realty company to show our own building?». Geez, I don’t know, why was there a giant banner outside the building w/​Touchstone Realty’s name on it? How did our realtor have access to a building that, when we went to go look at it, was still under construction and locked up w/​chains and padlocks?
Issue #4: We finally set up a time w/​our Touchstone realtor and someone at Pangea for us to come in on a Saturday at 4:30pm to sign the lease and hand over money. They told us that we could get the keys once the locks were changed. We had our place packed and ready to go, was about to rent a truck and everything. We met at their office located at 17 S. Austin. One person in our party and our realtor was running a bit late but when the rest of our party got to the office before 4:30, the employee there, Brianna, insisted that they don’t do lease signings that late since computers are apparently shut done. Okay, then why was this time mutually decided upon as the time to come in and sign a lease?
A quick aside about Ms. Brianna: I’ve worked in customer service for most of my life. I have never, NEVER EVER encountered a person as rude, as dismissive, as borderline verbally abusive as Ms. Brianna. Simple questions were met w/​hostile answers and even sarcasm. How this person is able to hold such a job is beyond my comprehension. Pangea likely would have gotten a 1 star review even if things had otherwise gone okay in only because dealing w/​Brianna was a nightmare.
Brianna tells us that we can pay the $ 500 move in fee now and they will have a lease drawn up and ready for us by Tuesday. Okay, we give her the $ 500 money order and leave. And we wait. Thursday comes and our realtor from Touchstone calls us and tells us: «The apartment was no longer available.» WHAT? No reasons given (keep in mind, again, that this was a vacant building– we had our choice several 3 bedroom apartments!).
3 weeks after viewing this apartment, handing in our applications, getting approved from that apartment (and apparently some place in North Lawndale), packing up our place, paying a $ 500 move in fee, & being told a lease would be ready for us by Tuesday, the apartment has apparently ceased to exist. Pangea has refused to explain why or even get in contact with us. They refuse to tell our realtor why. We never got an answer from either Pangea or Touchstone. We would have been homeless if our landlord hadn’t allowed us to stay in our current apartment for an extra month.
The one good thing about this is that Touchstone refunded our $ 45 application fees and the $ 500 move in fee we gave Pangea. Still, we lost money and a ton of our time dealing w/​this mess of a company. Between the attempted bait and switch, poor organization, VERY POOR customer service, and lack of communication, Pangea is basically either some sort of scam artist or just a poorly run real estate company. Based on other reviews we’ve seen about Pangea, we may have dodged a real bullet here.
I know it’s a long, novel length review, but please heed this review-​and others– before dealing w/​this company.