Bilmar Properties

PRO: a $ 780/​month rent for a large garden studio in Lakeview is about as good as you can do.
The laundry room was well maintained.
Also, my entire security deposit was returned without any issues.
CONS: the building is in bad shape and management is more prone to patch over (literally) problems than address them.
My unit had a constant rodent problem. There are too many holes in the walls (around radiator pipes, inside wall-​mounted radiators, inside cabinetry) that couldn’t all be closed. Mice came out every night. I was able to coexist with them peacefully, but not everyone is a Buddhist pacifist. If you don’t want mice playing in your apartment while you’re trying to sleep, avoid this building (or at least the garden level).
The heat in my unit simply didn’t work. The radiators would only come on infrequently even on the coldest days. When I didn’t use electric heaters (adding $ 50 – 75 to my electric bill each month) my apartment would fall to 50 – 55 degrees.
Water infiltration was a big issue that was ignored in my unit. I brought this to the attention of the management midway through my two years, when the wood of my under-​counter cabinets was almost completely rotted through. (This left giant openings to the masonry shell of the building for rodents and insects to enter through.) The solution was to cover the rotted wood with a new layer of ½ particle board, thus ameliorating the issue for about a year. When the new layer started to fail, I was so close the end of my lease I didn’t care any more.
Additionally, at about the one year mark of my two years, I pointed out to the management an active water leak in the corner of my living room. This not only caused water to occasionally drip from the ceiling, but also caused plaster to come loose and fall frequently (weekly or more often). The building engineer’s response was that he’d address it when the radiators were turned on for the winter; needless to say it was never addressed.
You could blame me for not being more aggressive with management about these issues, but after my bad experience with management (and their less-​than-​profession contractors) who «fixed» the water infiltration issue the first time, I was reluctant to have them tromping through my apartment to address issues I was willing to live with. That’s on me. Seeing their track record on the stuff I brought up, I’m not sure being vocal would have made any difference.