Real Property Management

We have been renting from them for about six months now. I like the fact that they have a maintenance phone number you can call ²⁴⁄₇ to put in work orders. Their maintenance staff is always very friendly and informative and try to fix the problem. Overall not a bad place to rent from.

We – me, my husband, and our two four-​leggers – have been trying to rent an apartment in Chicago. I found an ad for an apartment near 45^th and California. It was appropriately close to transportation, pet-​friendly, looked decent, and was in our price range. And so I clicked «contact property».
That was two months ago, and I have STILL not set eyes on this apartment.
See, I keep getting the same response. «Hey! We’re glad to hear from you. Schedule a showing at (link to automated site). Just select a show time from the site! Yay! Happy happy! Easy! Yay! Woohoo automated site!!»
When I go to the link – EVERY TIME I’ve gone to the link – I get the same response:
NO SHOWTIMES AVAILABLE.
So I send them a message. «Hey, your site says…»
And I hear… nothing.
Repeat.
Seriously, repeat. Several times, in fact, repeat.
I did get a response, once; it said that the person I was trying to reach was unavailable, as they were doing cleanup after the Coal City tornado. Which is HUGELY admirable, but… seriously, I can’t imagine business just comes to a dead grinding stop because of it, and suddenly they can’t answer simple e-​mails or show apartments???
And after reading the reviews, I’m kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda thinkin’ that maybe it might be a good company to avoid.
Why are there so many «good company to avoid» companies when it comes to real estate and property management? Am I just seeing things here?

To preface, this is the first Unilocal review I’ve ever written. The customer service at real property management is so awful that I feel compelled to pile on the other terrible reviews as it seems to be the only outlet for feedback since they clearly don’t care about customer service. It’s so easy (not to mention cheap) to have good customer service, something as simple as being friendly when you answer the phone. Every person I’ve talked to at real property management over the past year acts as if it’s a burden to be talking to me. They also do not seem competent whatsoever. They just transfer you from person to person, where you have to explain the situation all over again — we’ve had this problem from maintenance issues to re-​signing leases. They don’t communicate up front at all and then act annoyed when you ask them basic questions like why they raised the rent without telling you or why no one’s contacted you about maintenance a week after submitting a request.
Again, customer service is one of the easiest and cheapest things a company can do and it goes such a long way. There is no excuse for poor customer service and this is one of the worst I’ve ever seen.

Probably one of the best buildings I have rented in in a very long time! When submitting a request online for a repair the office is very quick with sending out Rigo the maintenance guy, who does a very good job with repairs.
I only have two issues. The first being not enough washer and dryers for all the buildings that share a laundry room but with a nontraditional schedule I make it work; compared to prior locations the coin wash is a lot cheaper too! The second would be that some of the neighbours seem rather inconsiderate. Some are potheads and it can stink up the building while some in the other building don’t clean up their dog poop in the winter.
Other than that I love my apartment and renewed my lease. My building is in the perfect food delivery and CTA location, and my friends that visit can always find parking on the streets! I highly recommend renting with RPM! Some of the best classic apartments in the city with HARWOOD FLOORS and ceiling fans! Also being able to pay rent online is a super helpful tool!

One star is too many for these people. This office made more money than me by renting my apartment. They look for ways to overcharge on anything they can. There were always issues with me getting my money– sometimes it would be over 20 days late, always after I had to inquire about it.
As an apartment owner, I feel like I had no rights. They only cared about the tenants who were paying. The most recent example is their last inspection, after the tenants moved out. I was charged $ 75 and was told that everything was left in proper order. However, my unit was everything by such. The tenants left holes in the walls, a broken oven window, even shoeprints on the ceiling! Everything was absolutely filthy. The heaters were broken off. But according to Andrea, who supposedly did the inspection, there was no damage.
My advice is to never trust them and be there for their inspections-​when asked if she could take photos for me, she said no.
Actually, my advices just stay away from these people. I wish I found my current management company before going to these guys.

Oh god these people! Let me back it up a bit and say that when we first started working with this company, as tenants, we worked with Angelique and she was awesome. Friendly, helpful, everything you’d want in property management. Then within a year we got a new agent to deal with and it was all downhill from there.
We rented from this company for 4 years and they still couldn’t figure out how to schedule inspections, on days we were off, so we could let them in without getting bit by our dogs. Every 3 months (yes, they inspect every 3 months) they would send notice that they would be there in 2 days to inspect and it was always on a day we worked (we only worked 2 days a week how hard is it to schedule??) even though we gave them our schedule many times over. So we’d call and email and leave a message that that day wouldn’t work and which days would and then we wouldn’t hear from them for several months. And then yet again they would try to schedule on a day we weren’t home, with less than 48 hour notice. Really?
Upon inspection we’d tell them things that were wrong with the house (they stated that’s what inspection was for) but they never took care of it ie: dead tree in back yard that years later fell on roof of the house causing unnecessary cost to the landlord (I’m sure he was thrilled about that).
The customer service was always horrible, HORRIBLE! For a tenant that paid rent on time for 4 years you’d think they’d be a little nicer. Nope, the last year was the worst! We got yet another person to deal with and she was colder than a witches tit. I mean just no emotion whatsoever and not a drop of niceness. You know who you are!
Lastly, the house we loved and rented for so many years was being put up for sale. We wanted to buy it but the agent (another RPM representative, ugh!) priced it at $ 150K more than it’s worth. We were devastated. They told us they didn’t want to show the house with tenants so our lease was not being renewed. Our last month of moving and suddenly we got a call that they would be showing the house and several times tried showing the house with less than 24 hour notice (Evanston law is 48 hours notice). Not only that but at least once we saw an agent accessing the property without our permission to show to a client of his. They thought we weren’t home. Since we moved they have lowered the house by $ 75k. Thanks for the awesome offer to your long time tenants, assholes!
I hate this company. They don’t care about their tenants and from other reviews I’ve read, about the landlords either. Stay away, stay far far away!

Originally, I considered a one-​star review for RPM. But then I decided that was a little too harsh. After all, they did find me a GREAT tenant and, overall, my place was in good shape when I moved back into it.
I had to quickly rent out my condo in 2012 when I decided to go home and be with my Dad while he underwent a bone marrow transplant. If I hadn’t had to move so quickly, I may have done more research (and after seeing a few of the other reviews here, may have thought twice about going with RPM).
First the positives:
As I mentioned, they did do a great job of screening potential rental candidates. And, considering I was putting my place on the rental market right smack in the beginning of Winter, I thought they did a good job of getting it rented out quickly.
And now the negatives:
You won’t always get accurate information with regard to your home/​account. I was given entirely incorrect information with regard to the terms of my lease. Since they’re unable to share a copy of the lease with you, I asked Joshua Barr (the realtor assigned to me) if it was a standard 12 month lease. He shot back a one line email saying «yep, standard 12 month» when, in fact, they had my tenant sign a 14 month lease. Considering I was basing my own living situation off of those rental terms, correct information would have been greatly preferred.
You’ll have to work VERY hard to get answers to your questions. And sometimes, you’ll get no answer at all. When you do finally get in touch with someone, you’ll be made to feel as though you’re entirely inconveniencing them with your questions.
You should also be prepared for a few surprises here and there with regard to charges in your portfolio — sure, it’s only natural that stuff is going to come up – but it’d be really nice to know about these unexpected charges before you’re looking at your statement wondering why you’re $ 200-​$ 300 short this month.
Overall, I’d say I’m pretty lukewarm on my experience with RPM — for being in a service business, I’d say they fall a little short on their delivery of service.

One star is a generous rating, considering that because of RPM’s negligence of our property during a tenant eviction process, we have incurred nearly $ 20,000 in loss costs (only 6400.00 of which were covered by insurance), a ding on our insurance record with a significant premium increase, and a lot of headaches and hassles.
Basically, they managed the property just fine when it was tenant occupied. However, when we had to proceed to an eviction they became very negligent to the property. Even though they went to court and received an order of possession, they did not ever go back and check the property to see if the tenants had moved out. They were basically waiting for the Sheriff’s department to do their job for them and 8 days later sup rise surprise the police department called them to notify them that the unit had been thrashed, vandalized, all the appliances stolen, a window broken, and was filled with garbage and completely destroyed. This damage went unnoticed for at least 8 days and they never even sent someone out to check if the unit was vacant after the court appointed eviction date.
To mitigate this damage we paid them $ 1500 and here is what that paid for:
–changing front and back locks
–boarding up 1 window
–hauling garbage and tenants abandoned items to the curb in front of the unit
Also, they are trying to double charge us for the junk removal because we paid for that in October, but then were billed again for it in December, (right before we told them we were coming out to look at the unit from across the country). We wish we had just surprised them because we are certain that NOTHING would have been done, they were so negligent with this property. Also, we managed to get a licensed, bonded, insured contractor to come out and estimate the damages and give us a quote in ONE VISIT to the until with a 24hr turnaround for the final quote. RPM charged us for SIX contractor visits to give «bids» for the work which we never saw, and that obviously a competent contractor could have done in ONE visit. To make things even better, during this «six» visits to the unit, they never performed an inspection, never sent us any pictures of the damage except for the window they boarded up, and ANOTHER window was broken and the place was vandalized again!!! This was also during winter and that window was broken for an unknown amount of time so of course we received a HUGE gas bill. Now, when we came and tried to cancel with them they are charging us another $ 600 for all of this stuff that we are sure we paid them for before, given how little they did with the money we gave them. We consulted with other property managers and legal services and we should be getting a refund, not another bill.
I guess when your unit is vacant they just have to nickel and dime you to death to get their money. It was an additionally nice customer service touch how after this negligent, terrible management they charge us $ 10 for postage to send us back our keys and garage door opener. Basically, this was very negligent management and we feel they are responsible for much of the damages we have had to deal with.

Aw, man. I hate writing negative reviews. But, if you’re a renter, I would steer clear of places run by RPM. They took over the building I was living in, and things have gone downhill ever since. The lock on the front door was broken and it took them months to fix. Every time I have a question — they always say the person that needs to help me is not available. I keep trying to call them, and go out of my way to stop in their office during office hours, but for some reason, no one is ever able to help me. I feel like they’re purposely trying to be unavailable. I’m a good renter, always pay on time. I don’t get why they are so unwilling to actually manage properties.

Avoid this criminally negligent and incompomptent landlords at all cost!
We moved in from TX with 3 year old child. Unfortunately we renterd a house from them under the condition it will be prepared by the time we moved in. All they wanted was our security deposit and the lease. They did not fix anything.
Even left asbestos and loose electical wires handing in the disgustingly dirty garage!
We have never dealt with lazier, more obtuse, greedier, less responsive, more and more criminally incompetent landlords in our life.
We have never sued anybody in our life but are considering suing them for criminal negligence.
This company would not be allowed to do business in a different state.
We hope you don’t make the mistake that we made — especially if you have small children!
AVOID al cost these parasites.

I had the unique experience of both renting a property that was managed by RPM and then hiring them to rent out that property for me when we decided to move to our house only about half way into our lease on the rental property.
As a tenant, RPM was very responsive an easy to deal with for any issue that needed to be addressed. Maintenance response was quick and efficient. Everyone I dealt with was responsive and followed up in a timely manner.
When we decided to move only about half way into our lease, I elected to hire RPM to re-​lease the property as opposed to attempting to sublet the unit. Again, the interaction with RPM was very positive and they were very efficient in get a new tenant into the property. They made sure the property listing was frequently updated and were able to get a steady stream of showings for the unit. They were very good about keeping me posted on the prospects we had gave me good notice before any showings. The unit was on the market less than a month and they had it under a new lease.
I have nothing but positive feedback for RPM as both a tenant and a client.