Parliament Enterprises

People only leave bad reviews for management companies, so I thought I’d leave a nice one. I’ve lived in a Parliament building for a year and a half, and they have been really wonderful. Any issues I have are addressed very quickly and they always call afterwards to make sure I am satisfied. Rent increases have been very reasonable — if that stays the case, I will stick around for quite a while!
Minus one star because I feel like they are a tad behind technologically. I hate having to mail in a rent check every month — it would be great if they could set up a system to pay rent online. But that is my only complaint!

First of all don’t have any packages delivered to your apartment because regardless of if they are placed inside the security door they WILL get stolen. This literally happens every single day in our building. The entryway smells terrible and is always filthy, not an awesome first impression when you’re having guests over. I’ve probably lost $ 100 in quarters using the forever-​broken laundry machines. Nothing gets fixed in a timely manner and when it does it is usually a half-​assed temporary solution. Overall, just an awful experience. Everything is outdated/​falling apart and definitely not worth the rent. There are thousands of apartments in Chicago, don’t pick this one.

After 6+ months of people working on the roof every morning at 7am (stomping on the bedroom ceilings and yelling), using the small balcony for their personal storage of ladders and equipment, having men that are «working» on the roof staring in our windows, complaining to Parliament countless times…
the ROOF COLLAPSED.
In the bedroom. Ceiling particles all over the bed & everything else. Sunlight in the room. Had to call and leave messages multiple times for a couple hours before ever hearing a response.
Unbelievable.
UPDATE (2 WEEKS LATER):
NOW THE ROOF HAS ALSO COLLAPSED IN THE KITCHEN (A HOLE TWICE THE SIZE).
IT IS UNSAFE TO LIVE HERE.

I have lived in a Parliament building for almost three years now. Overall, any issues I’ve brought to the table have been fully addressed. I’ve had to push a bit on a couple things (mostly due to other tenants) but this is Chicago folks — if you are not in a luxury high rise, you will possibly have fellow tenants that aren’t always desirable and respectful. Consider the location (Lakeview).
Also, as mentioned, most Chicago buildings are older and the amount of space for the price and location is great. The grounds and common areas are clean and up-​to-​date.
The office staff isn’t necessarily the friendliest but they get the job done. The biggest bonus is the building engineer, Andy. He is patient, responsive and very helpful.
If we weren’t moving to California, we would stay in a Parliament building. I’ve lived in Chicago for 20 years so trust me when I say this property and management company is worth considering.

I am ending a 2 year stay at one of their buildings. I have easily lost of $ 100 in quarters in their broken coin laundry machines. I often find myself at 11PM on a work night in a white hot rage with piles of wet laundry and zero options for drying. I call to report the broken machines and the machines remain broken. I am not sure if they legally are required to provide laundry options, but I feel they should either update their machines or pay back their tenants the money stolen by the broken machines.

Very positive experience with this management company. The building engineers work very hard and try their best to create a community vibe at their buildings. Yes, the apartments are older but so are the majority of Chicago buildings. You get a large space with real hardwood floors and in prime locations in Lincoln Park and Lakeview. When completing an application, everything was outlined before the application is submitted. Yes, the first month’s rent is required with the application and it is cashed to secure the apartment. It is all outlined in the application. There are no surprises if you take the time to read the application. You should read anything before you sign it anyway. It’s unreal that people ignore wording, sign their names and then complain because they refused to read what was in front of them. Overall, I rather pay cheaper rent for a large, vintage space than overpay for a small, pseudo renovated space with laminate floors and overrated lobbies. In the crazy Chicago rental market, it is important to stay realistic and know that every place will have its pros and cons regardless of price. All that being said, it will be great if they introduced an online bill pay system or resident portal.

I lived at 2212 Sherman for three years and loved it! The building is very nice, has a ton of character, and is super convenient for working at Northwestern. One major strong point is the super, John. He really works hard and cares about the place. As a result, the grounds are gorgeous and stands out in the neighborhood. He also fixes all manner of issues very quickly. I actually wish I could rate this building and not Parliament as a whole because my interactions with Parliament were often frustrating but we only dealt with them very infrequently after picking up our keys.

DO NOT hand over a 1^st month check to Parliament when you apply for an apartment, they will cash it… the day AFTER they reject the application. Then the burden will be on you to take a day off of work to go to your bank to provide Parliament with document to prove that they did indeed cash your check. Shaking my head.

If I was rating solely the engineer in our building, Andy, I would maybe give a few more starts. Unfortunately, the overall picture is very poor. Andy works his butt off to get everything done in the building and he is very sweet and approachable. The women in their main office are some of the rudest. I dreaded dropping off a rent check and needing to ask a question, because they were just unnecessarily annoyed. It got to a point where I would just walk in, throw my envelope on the desk, and walk out because I didn’t even feel like attempting to be nice or polite to those awful women.

Mixed feelings about Parliament. I am coming up on the end of a 3-​year stay in a Parliament building.
The bad: The office staff are apathetic on a good day, outright hostile on a bad one. I don’t have any major horror stories myself but it is a litany of little things. The worst of them:
I called them for cracking paint and they sent a guy a week later. He repainted without scraping off the old cracked paint and it cracked again in under a week. This happened twice.
I called because my bike was stolen from the storage room, and they denied that I had registered a bike with them in the first place, then hung up on me.
The girl downstairs from me had water leaking into her bathroom, they waited several days to get back to her and THEN they invoked the emergency clause to enter my apartment without advance notice. This one happened multiple times, I suppose because they did shoddy repairs each time.
The good: The building is in working order. Big airy apartment, pretty cheap given the location and the size. The water is hot, laundry machines work 75% of the time, and the neighbors are mostly alright. Every interaction with the company may be unpleasant, but the apartment itself is fine.

It was a cheap apartment, in an old building, in a good part of town. I would have rated this a solid 3 stars.
But they REALLY stiffed us on our security deposit. And for no reason at all — we were model tenants and didn’t cause any problems.
We definitely left the place spotless, and the walls hadn’t been painted in 3 years. Would not rent again.

Don’t rent from them!
They deducted a few hundred dollars form my security deposit for two missing fire alarms that never existed and for clean up despite that I did a thorough clean up at the time I left the apartment. I left the apartment with very good condition with only reasonable wear and tear — no other land lord would have charged this morbid clean up fee. No redress after I complained with the management.
I am rather upset the fire alarms were not installed in the apartment during my stay.
Look at their ratings and think twice before signing a lease — their ratings have been falling off a cliff since 2010 …

My lease is finally up here thank god! The management here is horrible, they dont even have email, the women who work here are rude and unhappy with their lives you can tell in the way they talk to you on the phone. The building is old, i can dust the place every day of my life but an hour later it just reappears. The bathroom is filthy, it was when i moved in and it has gotten worse, there are bugs crawling out of the cracks around the bath tub, i asked them to re-​caulk the bathroom and a month after they did the paint and caulk just melted, they must have used the cheapest crap at home depot they can find. The ceilings and walls are so thin, you can hear the neighbors upstairs walking around all day, it sounds like elephants stomping around NON STOP! There is no dishwasher, the kitchen cabinets smell like mold, the refrigerator is a JOKE, you cant fit anything in it, the freezer is useless unless you want your food to smell and taste like freezer burn.
In the winter the heat comes on whenever it feels like it, they have it on auto so it shuts off at night when its cold and doesnt turn back on till late morning so they can save a few bucks. The laundry room is in another building, the alley is so loud every morninbg you cant even sleep past 7am. This is just the beginning of my rant. The ONLY good thing about this place is the maintenance. They are very quick and nice, they can get the work done when you ask. just hope you dont have to deal with the office staff. I work in property management and if i spoke like that to tenants i would be fired on the spot.
There is no easy way to pay the rent except to mail it in, no drop box, no online payment, i had to get checks JUST to pay the rent. its 2012, GET EMAIL AND GET A WAY FOR TENANTS TO PAY ONLINE!

A lot of space for a relatively low price. We lived in a two bedroom roughly 1100 sqft unit on Belmont and Pine Grove and really did enjoy it. The building is old, so there are nuances with up-​keep, air circulation, bugs, and hanging pictures.
Overall the on-​site engineer was very helpful and quick. The office staff seems surly, but if I was dealing with renters all day, I imagine I would be too. If you are looking for a decent place where you get a lot of space for the price you pay, check them out. If you want everything to be new and to be pampered by your property management company, look elsewhere.

I’ve lived here two years and I’m ready to leave. The place is more expensive than i wanted to pay, and they’re bumping rent up $ 30 /​month. The pet fee is $ 35 /​month. I have no clue why they’re charging this much — it’s a one bed, one bath with a galley kitchen and it’s not updated.
I like my building engineer. He’s super responsive and I see him around at least 3 – 4 a week, doing something in the building. He came to let me in my apartment when I locked myself out on labor day.
You can hear everything in this building. Part of the problem is that I leave my windows open because it gets SO hot (heat is included, but still), but I also have a really noisy downstairs neighbor. He has loud speakers and likes to play music that goes «thump,» including in the middle of the night. Currently he’s playing something with a loud drum beat and a loud bass line, and having noisy sex. He also has a karaōke machine, and used to throw dance parties at 4am on weeknights (including once where his friend Anthony was wandering the block outside the building while screaming about being disrespected).
I’ve spent the past year writing letters to the management company about his loud music (like they’ve asked me to) and nothing has changed. This is really my biggest beef with Parliament. There used to be a dog that liked to bark constantly, but the management company took care of that. I’ve also spoken to numerous people about the noise downstairs and nothing has changed.
The laundry facilities are minimal at best. They’ve only not worked once, but my building only has two washers and two driers. There aren’t any rodents or bugs here, which is nice. The pathway to the laundry room is outside and not well lit at night.
Both years I’ve been told I have to renew my lease five to six months before it’s actually up — not true (the Chicago RLTO says 90 days) and since I’m not renewing my lease, Parliament is showing the apartment almost every day. This is fine, except that they let the leasing agents come in almost at whim, and were calling me 4 – 5 times a day to say someone was coming by, including after 6 on Fridays. I had to read my lease and the RLTO again, and told Parliament I need at least 48 hours notice.
To sum up: it was fine for student housing, not for adult housing. Be wary of noisy neighbors, and my building engineer is great.

I feel that most large apartment companies get horrible reviews for the most part. I have lived in several places in Chicago, both private owners and large companies. I have had all good experiences except one (ICM, surprise surprise!).
Maybe I am a low maintance person, or maybe I realize that I am living in an apartment and therefore do not expect everything to be perfect, but I have been very pleased with Parliament in my interactions with them so far. I moved in a week ago to a fantastic building in East Lakeview — very large place and excellent rent for the location.
I have read other reviews which describe people in the management office to be rude or gruff. I have only dealt with Betty, and while she is very matter-​of-​fact, she is completely pleasant and very helpful to me. Also, my onsite engineer is very nice and has complied with the few requests I have had.
I would recommend Parliament to others. Sure, I don’t get the personalized service that I would get from a private landlord, but for a big company, they are perfectly legit.

I was searching for a way to contact Parliament online when I came across these ratings. I really need to contact them about an apartment issue, but as so many individuals have posted the staff at the downtown location are such raging @## H@#$% I barely want to confront dealing with the issue.
As far as the apartment goes you get what you pay for I suppose and it is cheap for the neighborhood and space. I find it so much easier to deal with Leo than with EVER having to contact any of the downtown staff. But he only handles repairs. I do think Leo is great though!
Just wish that the staff weren’t such cruel, rude, hateful, inconsiderate, mean people. I just wish they recognized that I was a tenant and I pay my rent and I deserve common human courtesy from them.

People only hate on apt companies. I lived at a Parliament Ent. building for 2 years. It was a vintage building on Hudson, so of course it had it’s aging issues. The building engineer Tom was really cool and generally fixed things pretty quickly.
I left happy to have lived there. Couldn’t beat the rent we were paying for the space we had.

Wish there was a zero Stars,
Slum Lords,
Slow to fix everything.
Unsanitary living conditions because they do not stop the partying in the building. Vomit all over every weekend.
Let someone else sign the lease to my apt and now I have to leave. I guess good riddance

I waited until my one year lease was up to write my review of Parliament so I could be as accurate as possible. I am also writing this on a day when nothing is wrong in my apartment, and the last person in their downtown office I talked to was surprisingly courteous (the one you talk to about renewing your lease– must be the only nice person in their office). So I am in a good mood.
If I were in a bad mood, I would complain about that beeping noise someone else mentioned and the fact that our radiators hissed like boilers on the Titanic for most of January and February. They were so loud they would wake us up in the middle of the night– and dozens of calls to maintenance did not really make it any better. While maintenance is prompt and our building engineer was a very hard worker, simply replacing these ancient radiators would have done the trick. But they didn’t.
The most frustrating part of this is that they spent all winter completely renovating the apartment just below ours (brand new kitchen floor and appliances, refinished wood floors, nice paint job, the works) while they couldn’t be bothered to even have ours CLEAN when we move in. I spent days cleaning my apartment before discovering years of grease build up on top of the kitchen cabinets. When I called the downtown office and told them that was just too much and I would like it cleaned, only THEN did they tell me that someone should have cleaned the entire place BEFORE I MOVED IN! So to all of you who are getting ready to move in– call them before and tell them the place is supposed to be spotless, because they send letters to all tenants before move-​out that they will be charged to clean this and that in the apartment. Knowing what I know now, I am sure they charged the previous tenants for everything and cleaned nothing.
Leticia is really, really rude and she seems to be the one in charge. Most of their office staff is rude all of the time. The only people nice to deal with were Gus, the guy who takes maintenance requests (and also follows up with them), and our building engineer Steve. I am sure the downtown office staff is this way because they probably do deal with a lot of low lifes, but we pay a lot of money for rent, so please don’t act like we are all irresponsible tenants. Evanston is really expensive, and its not just NU students with rich parents paying rent here. Have some respect.
We are moving out and I don’t expect to get a cent of our rental deposit back based on their record to date. They don’t provide a apartment-​condition form at move in, so take pictures, but they have no email (everything must be mailed, faxed, or dropped off in person) .
If you don’t mind paying a lot– they do answer maintenance calls quickly. Maybe moving into a recently refurbished apartment is wise; but I am guessing they jacked up the rent on those units since they did for our unit, which is in terrible shape. The windows don’t open like they should because the original chains were all painted over (along with everything else). Be prepared to make a lot of phone calls your first month or two.
One more thing– they are really rude with their correspondence– to the point of insult. Their letters are all written as though you are guilty of something, even if you are a quiet tenant. They are just not pleasant to deal with. beware– when you don’t renew your lease, they don’t bother calling you to tell you when a realtor is on his way to show it!