Local by Laramar

Quite possibly the most unprofessional organizations I have ever dealt with as a business owner. I have been a working professional for over 20 years and engaged with hundreds of companies, not including the ones I have interacted with as a general consumer.
Laramar ranks at the bottom of both lists. I point this review to the individuals who have Director, VP+ titles, not the hard working agents who likely have done a terrific job for many of their clients.

Briana Rizzo was so attentive and great to work with!
She took the time to visit a property with us several times, and even show us other units in a building we were interested in to get a feel for the area. She was helpful every step of the way.
I highly recommend working with her if you can!

Living in a 1 bedroom at one of the properties on Halsted. While the apartment itself is updated and well taken care of, I have had such poor customer service by Justin, the area manager. It took a whole week for us to be programmed into the intercom in the building, and when I questioned when this would happen, Justin made excuses that there were 40 properties that they were managing and they had to prioritize. This is not my problem as a consumer and I was appalled by the lack of apology. Not only did he not apologize, he essentially blamed me for breaking the door on the day of my move in. I was not the only person to move in or out that day (April 30 — one of the busiest moving days in Chicago), and was so offended that a property manager would have the nerve to welcome me to a brand new building by blaming me for breaking the door. Upon move in, our apartment walls had not been painted (are still not painted 2.5 weeks later), and I called to inquire on a day Justin was sick as we need manager approval (still waiting to hear back from you Justin…). I would not recommend anyone live in Halsted Place Apartments solely due to Justin’s lack of customer service.

Worst experience we have ever had in dealing with a rental agency. To call Brianna Rizzo dishonest would be a compliment. She did not feel it necessary to mention that we were moving in to an apartment that is located above the dance floor of a night club that shakes our walls and floors with bass until 4a.m. Nightly !!
Further, as we have been trying to resolve this issue with Laramar by moving within the same complex she «showed» us another apartment (opened the door and that was the extent of the showing) and told us the rent would be $ 1600 per month while her coworker had previously quoted us at $ 1500.00 per month. Laramars greed definitely outweighs their responsibility to their renters. I would not recommend dealing with this company in any capacity whatsoever!

I was in a pinch to find a place and saw this management company. I called twice and left my information. I never heard back at all after the first call. After the second call, I received an email from them saying a Briana Rizzo would get back to me, and again I never heard from her. If you need a place quickly, this is not the company to go with.

I found a posting for an apartment in Logan Square listed as a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom and was contacted by Briana Rizzo.
I would describe her as flakey and disorganized. The best part is that when I went to visit the apartment it turned out to be a 2 bedroom, and not 3. She had no idea and said that it is an issue with their system. No apology, no follow up with more information as promised, and a joke in general.
Do not waste your time.

I am so happy Laramar bought our apartment building in Lincoln Park. The office staff are all incredibly friendly and helpful. Dave, our property manager, is always great to talk to and he genuinely cares about the residents. He takes pride in our building and that only makes for a better building, right! He is always reachable and quick to return messages. Donnie in maintenance always makes sure our requests are handled quickly and the issues are resolved. I call maintenance quite often because I’m the neighbor that always calls about the common area issues as well as those in my own unit and Donnie always promises AND delivers resolutions. We have lived in many high rises downtown before moving here to Lincoln Park and we have never had such a responsive office team and maintenance staff. You can call the office for 24 hour emergency maintenance which we never had in a high rise.
Laramar also has this awesome resident portal set up online where you can pay your rent and make a maintenance request. I receive an automated text when my maintenance issue has been completed! Very cool, especially when I am at work and wondering if our door lock has been fixed yet and tada. theres the text with a time stamp and a message letting me know its all completed!
When we started our lease in June 2014 with our landlord, only a short 2 months later the bldg. was sold to Laramar and we were scared it wouldn’t be the same personalized service and response time we had with the landlord who owned our unit, but it turned out to be even better! Laramar has a cleaning service cleaning our common area lobby every week and the snow removal these last few weeks was impeccable. During the storm of the century in the beginning of February, there was someone shoveling and salting our walkway as the snow was falling and they did so the entire snowstorm.
Thank you Laramar staff for taking pride in our building as much as we do!

My wife and I moved into a building managed by the Laramar Chicago Urban group in June 2014. The building is well kept, and the property manager David Hackett has gone out of his way on several occasions to help my wife and I out. Most recently my wife and I discovered we had to relocate for work the suburbs before our contract with Laramar was up (roughly 6 months into a 12 month contract). Based on the circumstances David allowed a new tenant to sign a new contract (not a sub-​lease), allowing us to get out of our contract this month with no penalty to us! David genially cares about his tenants and it was a pleasure to do business with him and his company.

I can barely begin to put into words how awful my experience with Laramar Chicago has been. Our initial property manager has since left the company, but I feel compelled to leave some experiences as it does not seem as though much has changed. Here is a sample of our experiences:
— Lock to front door of apt. broke – no way to shut door completely on a Sat. When I spoke to Laramar employee, she asked if the lock could wait until Mon. This type of response was completely unprofessional & unappreciated when you are paying money to rent from a company.
— Called 3x about issues with new door lock; no response from PM – When PM finally responded, he insisted lock had been changed (it hadn’t.) The lock FELL OFF OF THE DOOR as I was getting ready to leave. After I left the PM a frantic voicemail, I got a response that someone would come right away. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to deal with this during business hrs, rather than at 8pm on a Fri. night, inconveniencing all parties involved.
— On-​site laundry broke multiple times throughout lease with no urgency to fix. Worse, no notice was given to tenants, so I went outside to find an entire load of my clothes sitting in water that wouldn’t drain from the washer. I would not have lived in this building if on-​site laundry was not provided, yet I have spent ⁷⁄₁₂ months taking my laundry to a Laundromat due to the inconsistency of the outdated washer & dryer.
— Car was plowed into paid parking spot by company hired by Laramar– no response from PM when I called about paying to park in a spot that now made my car undriveable.
In June, we received notice that our former PM had left Laramar & received contact info for the new mgr. We contacted the new PM at the end of June, as our lease ended ⁸⁄₁ & we wanted to discuss renewal. After countless voicemails & e-​mails, we heard back from a different Laramar employee saying that our new PM was on vacation. She wanted to raise our rent 3.5%– we had issues with this because
— None of our apartment issues that we’d reported had been fixed.
— No changes had been made to the onsite laundry.
— We spoke to neighbors throughout our complex & found inconsistent rent prices. Some units in our building were renovated with new floors, kitchens & in-​unit washer & dryer. When we asked if there was the potential for any upgrades to our unit, we were told «no.» We found out tenants in a renovated unit were paying only $ 25 more/​mo. than our anticipated rent increase. Tenants in another unit that had not been upgraded but contained 2 full baths, instead of 1.5 like our unit, were paying less than our current rate (without taking the raise into account), AFTER their rent increased.
We knew our PM was supposed to be back in town 7/​7, but we didn’t hear back to our countless e-​mails & calls to him for over a week. We finally showed up at address we send our rent checks & left the PM a handwritten note begging him to contact us. We heard back after that, & after hearing our concerns, he said he’d like to come to our apartment to discuss (almost a month after we reached out). We told him we wanted to renegotiate our lease on a monthly basis, because we hadn’t had time to find a new apartment while we were waiting for a response. The PM was very polite & apologetic & offered $ 100 off next month’s rent for our troubles & took notes of our issues with the apartment (broken bathroom fan, etc.). He also renegotiated our rate to stay at the current price for our inconvenience. He mentioned that he would look into adding a shower & washer/​dryer in-​unit. When the PM left, he promised to send our monthly lease & written confirmation of the $ 100 rent credit via e-​mail, as well as sending a maintenance person to repair our bathroom ASAP. A week later, we still hadn’t received any of these and had to reach out again for a response.
Unsurprisingly, we decided to sign a lease with another mgmt co. after our Laramar experience. We contacted our PM via e-​mail about our intentions & never heard back. This week, around 7pm, a realtor knocked on our door asking to show the apartment. She returned with a 2^nd group shortly after to tour our home. We were given ABSOLUTELY NO NOTICE that people would be touring our apartment. We have valuables in our home & also have lives that shouldn’t be interrupted with strangers entering our apartment without any notice. I would hope that 24 hrs would be standard practice to treat your tenants with the slightest bit of respect & courtesy, but I guess that is too much to expect from Laramar. When we contacted our PM, he insisted that he fwd. our e-​mail addresses to the realtor, & she should have contacted us. As a PM I think that should be his job.
Living in a Laramar property has been awful. We are respectful tenants & it is unbelievable that the smallest issues have caused so many problems for us over our time in the apartments.

Love the manager and her assistant Nola, and Nick. Helped me get my new place with no problems, they were very helpful and treated me with respect. I never had such a easy move like this one. I recommend this management to everyone. Thank you Nola and Nick.

Overall very pleased with Halsted Place Apartments. The location of the units is awesome (right by the North/​Clybourn Red Line stop) and are nice with the new refurbish. Management is easy to deal with, they even threw everyone a holiday party at Kincades this year 100% on them. Only downside so far is the Washer/​Dryer situation is less than ideal. The platform they use is convoluted. In order to add money to your card, you have to walk to the main office with a code from online. Its a tedious and unnecessarily cumbersome process.
Overall, I’d recommend them.

So far, I have had both good and bad experiences with Halsted Place Apartments. My sister and I rented a large 2bd/​1bath in Lincoln Park in July.
Good:
No security deposit, not required to put down 1^st month’s rent, and very minimal application fee (I think it came out to $ 100 total) = very little up-​front money. This was great for us, since we were still paying on our old place for a month and were not getting a deposit back there.
Friendly staff, and generally very responsive. Nick is in the property management office most days, and is usually reliably responsive via email. We noticed several small maintenance issues (loose door knobs, towel bars, etc) when we first moved in, and they were corrected within a week.
Quiet space. We have very high ceilings, so that may help, but I never hear any of our neighbors or the busy Italian restaurant directly below us.
Bad:
W/​D in-​unit is not as advertised. When we tried to do our first load of laundry, we discovered that the dryer only runs for 15 minutes before stopping and reading an error message. Maintenance came to check it out a week later, and explained that this machine is junk and doesn’t use hot air to dry your clothes — it just spins them around for a long time. The maintenance guy actually brought up the manufacturer’s website for the W/​D machine and it says «will not dry your clothes 100%». So we have been hang-​drying everything, which means you can only do 1 load of clothes at a a time. There is no way Halsted Place Apartments didn’t know this machine was junk, since the manufacturer’s website explains outright that it will not dry your clothes, and the previous tenants must have noticed this too. We were explicit in our search that W/​D in-​unit was important to us, so it is upsetting that Nick more or less lied to our faces and kept secret the fact that the machine is junk. We complained pretty aggressively, and management has said they are looking into a solution, but 2 weeks later we’ve gotten no response yet…
This could be good or bad, but they took 3 weeks to cash our rent checks (August rent finally cashed on ⁸⁄₂₃). It just makes it a little hard to budget when you think you have an extra $ 1,000 in your bank account, and then one day surprise it’s gone.
OVERALL, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from renting from these guys, but I would recommend inspecting the place closely to make sure you are getting what is promised.
UPDATE: We are now 3 months into our lease and still do not have a working dryer. It still runs for only 15 minutes before stopping and displaying an error message, which management has been notified and reminded about for 3 months. It took 6 weeks to even get them to look into the problem, and it has been another 6 weeks waiting for a solution. A «part» was ordered over 2 weeks ago that should fix the problem, but it’s been radio silence since that update from management. For a place that was sold to us on the idea of getting an in-​unit W/​D, it is incredibly frustrating and disappointing to have spent ¼ of our lease without it.

I lived here for two years. Like other reviewers, my rent started at a relatively reasonable price, $ 1150. Then it went up to $ 1200 and when this renewal time came up, they wanted to jump the price to $ 1450, or $ 1700 for a renevated unit! Here is the problem, this building has ZERO ammenities. No outdoor space, no security, poor laundry system, etc. Within the last year, at least two apartments on the first floor were broken into and robbed. I’ve had two packages gone missing, to which management had no response, and seemed not to care at all. The office refuses to accept packages, even for special request highly important items.
The one thing I really like about living here, was the neighborhood. Its awesome. I would look elsewhere, though.

These buildings seem nice until you live in them. High rent does not equal a high quality product. Decent apartments in desirable neighborhoods in a tight rental market don’t have this consistently high of turnover.
Maintenance — At first, the maintenance staff and the water pressure were high points of living here. That is, until Mitch, the resident maintenance guy since the ‘90s «left the complex» in 2012. The water pressure went away with «energy efficient utilities upgrades» this past winter including sink aerators and «massaging, low-​flow shower heads.» My stove never worked properly the entire time I lived there. Property Management and the revolving door of maintenance people that followed Mitch failed to acknowledge or fix the stove despite repeated maintenance requests. Painting over water damage does not fix a leak.
Quality of unit — Don’t let new carpet in common areas or granite countertops distract you — the floors and walls are thin and building construction is shoddy. The floors and walls are so thin that I knew intimate details about my neighbors despite never meeting them in-​person. Now, a little bit of noise comes with the territory, but this was like living underneath Jurassic Park. The people upstairs were loud all of the time — flat feet, domestic disputes and the exact details they were fighting about, music blasting well into the designated hours of the city noise ordinance. Property Management’s response? «This is normal.»
Property Management (provided by Golub) — Paying above market rate rent should entail above market rate service — it most certainly does in other buildings. This proved to be my misconception. I received a lot of lip service when I could get their attention, but little substance ever followed. Property Management allowed grills on balconies until, suddenly, they started citing city fire code in the middle of January and tenants had to scramble to find a place for their grills in the dead of winter. I overheard the leasing agent try to sell a walk-​in closet as a second bedroom. You aren’t allowed a second front door key. I once thought Golub was halfway reputable, until I lived in a building they manage. These people have a lot to learn. It will be a hard sell to get me to ever consider another Golub building based off of this experience.
If you think, «this guy just had a bad unit. It will be different for me,» I urge you to check the reviews for Halsted Place Apartments on
, or search for reviews for Willow-​Dayton Apartments (as the complex was known prior to March 2012). I thought my experience would be different from the previous tenants too. Until I lived there. If you’re willing to shell out this kind of coin for a rental, keep walking down the street to SoNo East. At least you’ll get brand new construction, the same neighborhood, concrete between the floors and a pool at this rent range.

DO NOT RENT FROM THESE PEOPLE, THEY LIE TO YOUR FACE!
Short bullet points:
1) Apartments are very small for the price (by Chicago standards).
2) Virtually no utilities are included in the rent. I calculated that the utility bills would be approximately $ 200/​mo for a 1br, if you count parking then $ 350.
3) Many of the units do not have storage lockers available, if they are then it’s an extra $ 120/​year.
4) They will tell you that the move-​in fee is refundable if you don’t move into the apartment. That is a lie, they will cash that $ 250 check.
Here’s the whole story:
My girlfriend and I were looking to rent a 1 bedroom in Lincoln Park starting in April. I met with Nick from their front office to look at some apartments. While their normal 1Br apartments are overpriced, I did like the feel of their lofts. The rent for the loft was still pretty high at $ 1450 with virtually no utilities included but I still liked the open feeling. I put in an application for myself but I needed my girlfriend to see the place before we could go further. Nick said that I could put down a $ 250 move-​in fee to hold the apartment for 3 days, if we moved in then it would be processed, but if we didn’t move-​in then they wouldn’t cash it. I had gotten an apartment scooped out from under me already and it was getting down to the wire to find an apartment in time so I went against my better judgement and put down the fee. Again, I had Nick’s word that it wouldn’t be cashed if we didn’t sign the lease.
Well, we ended up finding a much better place (over 200 sq feet bigger with granite counter-​tops, brand new appliances and in-​unit washer/​drier) for the same price and I told them on the third day that we wouldn’t be taking the loft. Going against their word, they cashed the check right away. I should have canceled it earlier butI was running around getting the new place in order. When I called about the «refundable» move-​in fee Nick said that it’s actually not refundable after they process the application, WHICH THEY NEVER TOLD ME. He said that he’d talk to the manager about it and get back to me. They never did. I called again and they basically told me that I’m out of luck. Now, I don’t think that it’s worth my time to find a lawyer for my $ 250 so I’m just going to eat it.
But, before you rent from Halsted Place Apartments, ask yourself whether or not you want to do business with a landlord who doesn’t keep their word. If they lied to me about my «refundable» move-​in fee how bad will it be once you rent from them?