Kennedy Wilson Properties

If this place only managed campus apartments maybe it would be ok, but we lived off-​campus on the north side of downtown Champaign. Despite that, they still treated tenants like student renters.
Employees here are hit or miss. Some were efficient and friendly and some just clueless (one asked me if the fireplace came with the apartment when she was giving a tour to potential tenants). Many were slow to put in work orders or could not answer basic questions.
The company treated our building like trash (sometimes literally dumping 10 – 20 mattresses/​sofas in the parking lot for weeks at a time). It was a beautiful old school house turned into apartments 25 years ago. Clearly no work had been done to maintain or update the place. Wood floors could’ve been beautiful but hadn’t been redone in decades. At the rent that they asked, one would’ve expected them to be redone. Truly a shame how poorly they treated the property, especially at the price point.
Maintenance was a saving grace and deserves 4 – 5 stars. One of the maintenance guys thought the fridge that was in our very large, two bedroom apartment was comically small (it was). He took it upon himself to replace it with an appropriately-​sized fridge.
When I first moved here I rented from a non-​campus company and now rent from individual landlords. That’s the only way to go in this town if you can help it. Full disclosure we did get 100% of our deposit back.

There are not enough reviews that represent the majority of customer experiences when it comes to places that arent restaurants. There are only people who hate or love a business, but there are no reviews in between the two ends of that spectrum. I had a slightly above average experience with KW.
I was with a large group of people trying to live in the same building. A friendly representative showed me several properties that would accomodate us. We looked at properties from other agencies, but we liked KW’s.
Since we had a large group, KW was even open to the idea of negotiating a special group lease with different terms. We ended up not doing that, but their flexibility was noteworthy.
While living, they were helpful with responding quickly to repairs. The repair jobs were usually kind of mediocre patch jobs, but they handled more serious repairs very well.
My only issue was that they werent in the office when they were supposed to be towards the end of the semester. It was probably only staffed by one person that day and they were out to coffee both times i stopped by that day.
Overall, a little better than most agencies, but not that much better.

I’ve lived with Kennedy Wilson for two years since I’ve been in college at UIUC. The customer service is always very friendly and efficient. If you put in a maintenance request, you can expect someone to come fix it within the week (which is often times not common with other realtors on campus). They also have a grace period for when rent is due, which is really nice because if you are ever a day or two late when paying rent, they will not charge you an extra fee. If you call the office with a question, you can expect someone to answer the phone and get back to you as soon as possible. The apartments I lived at (905 S Second & 107 E Daniel) were very nice and conveniently located on campus. I definitely recommend living with Kennedy Wilson!

I lived at 1105 W Oregon. The property was always very clean despite how messy I am. No bugs! In addition, maintenance was always very good about fixing various issues in the apartment in a timely manner. Can’t beat the location, as well! I’m a bit sad that I’ll have to move out of this lovely apartment at the end of the summer!

There are multiple advertisements on this company’s website about «service minded professionals» working at Kennedy Wilson. Three phone calls not returned and several e-​mails later, I can’t get an answer to a straightforward question. I’m going to guess the answer is «no, we cannot accomodate your pets in any of our properties,» but I’ve not had any other leasing company not respond to the question. You need to work on your service, folks.

Our suggestion is to read the lease. It is VERY deceptive and goes against what is in the listing and what the leasing agent may tell you — at least it did with our experience with this company. And why you have to give your account number from the power company is the strangest thing to us. Huh? No.
We’re glad we didn’t go with them after doing further research of this company on Reddit as well.
…
And here
…
Also, on the listing we found on CL, they make it seem like you’re getting a year lease «August 2014−2015». However, when we read the lease, it was now for August 15^th to July 31^st, though they wanted us to pay rent on August 1^st! Haha! No. Sketchy.
They can try and try explaining their reasoning for that (it made us go cross-​eyed and quite frankly pissed us off), but we found an apartment in the same area (near Windsor) that *TOLD* us they have an 11 month lease and prorated it like a respectable company. Guess what, it’s an August 15^th move-​in also, PRORATED.
Sure, they are new to Champaign, but we didn’t like the way the whole situation turned out. We were so excited about what we could have had, but queue the sad trombone. Close one for us! Phew. I’m glad we have family and friends who are landlords and looked at that lease, too.

Earlier this month, I went through the process of finding a new apartment in Champaign-​Urbana. For numerous reasons, I found it necessary to do the search from afar and lease an apartment sight unseen. This review pertains exclusively to my experiences with Kennedy Wilson during this process. I will post an update once I have started living in my new apartment.
Kelsey, the Kennedy Wilson agent I interacted with, could not have been more outstanding in helping me lease an apartment. There were two properties I was interested in when I contacted Kennedy Wilson for information. When I explained what I was looking for in an apartment, Kelsey was able to provide me with another option I had not noticed in my online search, and she was able to provide information not available online which disqualified one of the properties I had originally been interested in. With Kelsey’s help, I was able to quickly decide which apartment would be right for me.
I prefer to correspond via email, which can sometimes be problematic. (People can take a long time to respond or can be unwilling to take the time to write a long email when it’s needed.) This was not an issue with Kelsey. She answered every single one of my emails promptly and with a detailed and substantive response. She even responded to a few of my emails after she had gone home for the day, which I think definitely goes above and beyond what one can normally expect from someone with her job.
To paint a clearer picture, I went back to our emails to get some statistics. Over the course of two weeks, we exchanged a total of 53 emails, and, in these emails, I asked a total of 41 questions about the apartment I ended up leasing and the lease for the apartment. Some of these questions required only a «yes/​no» answer, but she answered other questions with a paragraph or two of detail, as needed.
Kelsey happened to be showing the apartment I ended up leasing on the Saturday after I initially contacted Kennedy Wilson. Without me even asking, she offered to take pictures and to send them to me so that I could have a better idea of what the apartment actually looked like. The person she was showing the apartment to ended up having to reschedule, but Kelsey still took the time to go to the apartment and take the pictures she had promised me.
I don’t think it’s fair to judge an entire company based on one’s experiences with a single employee, but if Kennedy Wilson’s other employees are anything like Kelsey, I know that living in my new apartment is going to be a great experience.
Finally, I would like to comment on a number of bad reviews on this site and others that I have recently become aware of. As I understand it, Kennedy Wilson acquired their Champaign-​Urbana properties in December, 2011 from a company that has a terrible reputation. Many of the bad reviews I’ve seen center around the problem of things in the apartments breaking down or being otherwise deficient. I believe it’s probably a huge undertaking to bring dozens of properties up to a good quality after years of mismanagement, and I suspect this is something Kennedy Wilson has struggled to do for some of the properties that they received in poorer condition. I think it’s worth pointing out that it is possible that Kennedy Wilson may still be trying to get all their properties in better shape than the other company left them in. Time will tell whether these complaints are just flukes from the first few years of management or representative of more persistent problems.
Despite the other reviews, I remain optimistic that my experience with Kennedy Wilson will continue to be positive once I move in to my new apartment. As I said, I will provide an update once I have more experience with the company, but, based on the experiences I have had so far, I cannot speak highly enough of them!