The Condo Shop

If you want a good agency go to Higgins and Welch or Home Starr… Not Condo Store ??? Never heard of them and when I did my first impression was «Dont walk away run». very rude to me and no broker reciprocity with
2200 Benjamin Franklin so my renters will go else where. I found my client a better place in a much safer area for less.

I have rented an apartment from Condo Shop on 2031 Chestnut Street Apt 4R for three years
and moved out in June this year.
Here are the some of the pitfalls any potential renter should be aware of —
— The building is infested with rats, look for mouse traps or rat droppings on your visit.
— There is no street parking, we had to park ten blocks away sometimes during cold winter months
— No elevators and no in-​unit washer dryer so good luck getting your laundry done.
— Front door is never locked, historical property he says. Welcome squaters and drunkards.
— No in-​unit washer dryer, no central air.
— The building maintenance is horrible, it takes weeks before any repairs are done. Once it took 2 weeks for the kitchen sink to be fixed, some repairs were never done.
— The heat never works and the rusty boiler from stone ages stops working during winter.
— The backdoor is always open, once we had an intruder who scaled the fire escape and came into the apartment. We had to call 911.
I regret having stayed there for so long, simply because I was lazy to move. Stay away, you can get much better place in high rises in the Museum area at the same price with all the amenities.

I’ve dealt with Ben and Gaurav and Anthony at
trying to find some suitable spaces in Philly, and these guys have gone out of their way to accomodate! They know Philly like nobody else, and the apartments they represent are gorgeous — just saw the 1352 Lofts and was blown away — modern, clean, cool, love it. Call them, they’re the right broker to talk to.

My wife and I just rented an amazing condo from the condo shop. Everything went seamless Chris Thornhill was a pleasure to work with.

Wow what a complete waste of my time. Reached out to Erik for some help locating some apartment options in the center city Philly area. I initially isolated 4 units in the area I was looking at from the listings generated by him (all of which were available from any of the other websites Zillow etc). It took him (after a couple of reminders) 5 days to arrange to visit one, out of the 4, so rather than driving the 45 minutes into the city for 1 viewing I suggested we let some more time pass so that he could try to arrange to knock them all out over a couple of hours one evening (They were all within a couple of block of each other). «No problem will do»… several days later with more emails sent ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

I have taken a little bit of time to debate whether or not to even write a review based on the experience had with The Condo Shop and ultimately have landed on the «you as the reader need to know» side of internal dialogue. I understand the struggles of finding the right apartment, finding the right listing source, finding the right neighborhood… after all, I’ve lived in 5 apartments in my 8 years of living in this city. When boyfriend and I got to the point where we decided that we should chip away at the cohabitation thing, our first thought was to obviously consult Craigslist. I wanted to move off of South Street and try out a new neighborhood, he having already lived in Fishtown and my adopting an affection toward it figured that this was where the search would start. After lots of back and forth emails and a few viewings, boyfriend found what we thought would be the perfect apartment. The price had recently dropped on a 2 bedroom, dog friendly place with washer/​dryer, a shower tall enough that he wouldn’t have to hunch like a hobbit, closets, and DOORS! (after living in a studio you really start to miss having rooms plural). JACKPOT!
He set up an appointment for us to visit and were met with an apartment that basically met all of our requirements… or so we thought. See, the listing stated that the apartment had central AC, there was exposed duct work that would indicate that sure there’s central AC, until we got to the bedroom and in the closet was a peculiar sight. A window AC unit. I asked if there was in fact AC because to me it wouldn’t make sense for the owner to only have blow heat if retrofitting the central AC system would have been a minimal cost and would have been in line with the advertised apartment. We were told that yes, there was central air and that they would have the window unit removed prior to move-​in when they came through to paint and do minor repairs, that the owner is a really good guy and would do whatever we needed him to. With that little tidbit aside we decided to go ahead and apply for the apartment, to us it had everything needed… we went through the process of paying $ 100 ($ 50/​applicant) to have employment verification/​background check/​credit scores reviewed only to receive a call the next day saying essentially «oops, my bad, the apartment doesn’t actually have central air».
**Record Screech**
Here are my issues with what happened next aside from the fact that the listing falsely advertised the details of the apartment:
1. When asking the agent about the details of the air conditioning (the reason why we decided to exceed the budget we had initially set for a rental with the thought that utility bills would be slightly lower than individual window units), she without hesitation gave inaccurate information about the unit. If she didn’t know the answer she should have said, «you know, I’m not 100% sure so let me find out for you and get back to you before you make your final decision».
2. We made the decision to apply for the apartment based on bad information provided by a very confident agent.
3. That $ 100 to verify information is non-​refundable and the credit inquiry cannot be reversed.
4. We asked if the situation meant that the only air conditioner provided for a large 2 bedroom high ceiling loft was the one we had seen in the bedroom, the answer was yes. We asked the agent to contact the owner to see if he would be willing to either provide a second AC or waive the pet deposit because now we would incur an additional cost to purchase an AC of our own… both negotiation tactics were met with «no».
5. The back and forth in communication was abysmal. Getting information took days at a time during a window of time in which I needed to decide whether or not I needed to pay rent on my current apartment or provide notice of month-​to-​month rent termination. Rent to my current landlord was late for the first and only time in the almost 4 years I’ve been in my apartment because we couldn’t get a straight answer in a timely manner from TCS and ultimately decided to pull the plug on the new apartment all together.
So what I’m left taking away from this situation is that TCS will tell you whatever they want to coerce you into renting and their owners are not nearly as «flexible» as they want you to think. According to the website of TCS, the agent that we dealt with is only currently responsible for pushing one apartment, so why lie about details when commission is on the line? Sadly for them they lost 2 excellent tenants and to date (exactly one month after this played out) the listing is still available for rent. Not only is it still available for rent, a quick google search reveals that the apartment has been listed since December… not sure what the deal is with the agent, TCS, or the owner but that diamond in the rough apartment now looks like nothing more than a huge lump of coal. My suggestion, use another company.