Chicago Apartment Place

TLDR; DO NOT rent from Chicago Apartment Place. Look at every recent review, the consensus on this company, their employees, and their practices is overwhelmingly negative. And for good reason.
My wife and I were tenants of CAP for 3 years. And if you had asked me what I thought about them a year ago, my opinion would have been very different. However, after the way Johanna Romero, Ellen Marquez, and the majority of the staff at CAP conducted themselves over the past 12 months or so — I can unequivocally say that, in my opinion, most of the employees at CAP are incompetent at best and unethical and uncaring at worst.
There were minor issues that we had to deal with, most of which are echoed by almost every other review of CAP. Individually, these wouldn’t be huge deals. But when you add these things up, you can really start to see why their reputation is what it is:
1. The laundry situation is absolutely ridiculous. Seriously the card thing is stupid. $ 4.00 + a load is a rip-​off, and there’s no way it costs CAP anywhere close to that per load. Just do everybody a favor and make laundry free. Situation solved.
2. Put drop boxes in your buildings for rent checks. Asking people to drive up to your office or relying on the USPS to send the check are archaic practices. Also, your pay online option is a joke.
3. The rat problem is real. There is a HUGE nest underneath the building at 1758 N Clybourn.
4. Their buildings are older and the «updates» are built with shoddy materials. We’ve had to call CAP for everything from «grey water» seeping through the wall to the siding coming off our building SEVERAL times.
5. The walls /​floors are so thin you could hear your neighbor’s conversations. So imagine when people have parties.
6. CAP’s office hours are terrible. If you have a 9 – 5 job, good luck getting a hold of these guys. This includes Cory in Maintenance, which is VERY inconvenient.
7. The move-​in /​move-​out process is unnecessarily convoluted and border-​line asinine. Next to ZERO flexibility from these guys. And if you have a positive balance on the aforementioned laundry card; good luck getting that back within a reasonable amount of time. (11 days just to put it in the mail).
8. The people that they generally rent to seem to be inconsiderate (barely) adults. Which makes me question how much they really screen people when they apply.
9. The construction in our building and the building next door was almost non-​stop for the past 6 months. Trucks unloading first thing in the morning, porta-​loos in the ally, not my favorite.
10. I came home one morning to see that the construction crew who were working on the unit above ours had decided to cut wood without laying a tarp down. Which meant our deck and all of our belongings on said deck were COVERED in saw dust.
11. Snow removal was SLOW. Like 3 days after it snowed slow.
12. Rented parking spaces are WAY too small. Nobody wants to play Tetris when they’re trying to get in or out of their parking spots. Especially when they pay extra for it.
If those were the only problems that we had with CAP, we probably would have continued on as tenants of theirs. (Who REALLY wants move?) At the very least I would have considered NOT taking the time to write a review. But, what I’ve had to deal with over the past year could only be described, in my opinion, as gross incompetency at best, and flagrantly immoral at worst.
Initially I wrote a 1900 word review on my situation. But given the 5000 character limit on Unilocal,here’s the gist:
It took a year, innumerable phone calls, ~100 emails, 3 separate «attempts» at serving 10 day evictions notices over 12 months, and the threat of a lawsuit for Johanna and CAP to not evict, but nicely ask our AWFUL neighbors to move out.
We are also all-​but-​certain that employees of CAP were in our apartment without our permission on multiple occasions. We can’t prove it; but given the evidence, we’re fairly certain.
PM me if you want more details or copies of emails.
In my opinion, these people are incompetent, rude, inept, and all-​around dishonest. Need more opinions on the matter? Google «Chicago Apartment People». Over 90% of their reviews are EXTREMELY negative.
I suspect this will elicit a response from Tiago (somebody I’ve never heard of). And it will probably be along the lines of «We tried our best, and did everything that we could, we regret that your opinion on us is so negative, etc.»
I call BS: because if you REALLY did care, your reviews wouldn’t be so overwhelming consistent in their content and tone.
Yes, I now have a deep-​seated sense of anger and hatred toward Chicago Apartment Place. So I guess one could make the argument that my review should be taken with a grain of salt. But to directly quote Johanna, «Whether you can trust that or not is up to you and I understand completely either way».

DO NOT RENT FROM CHICAGO APARTMENT PLACE. I do not even know where to begin. Since living in our 5 bedroom in Lakeview, the fridge had to be replaced 3 times, dishwasher was replaced twice, sink pipe broke in the bathroom flooding it twice and ruining personal items, and every situation was handled extremely poorly. Very run down place, and none of our concerns ever seemed to be taken seriously. Also laundry is an issue, and you’re better off going to a laundromat, as it’s very expensive and you can only pay via prepaid card which can only be reloaded from their office using cash. Save yourself a years worth of trouble and frustration and avoid renting from Chicago Apartment Place.

DO NOT RENT FROM THESE PEOPLE. I was going to wait until we moved to post this, but what happened yesterday made me want to post asap.
Yesterday, CAP was replacing the doors in our building. When I got home, my apartment was left completely open. There was a knob, but no lock on the door. There was no one in the hallway, and no one on the floor below. I had to pull a worker from the stairwell who clearly had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him why my apartment had been left unlocked and unattended. He told me the other workers had gone OFF SITE to «fix the pins» in the lock for the door, leaving my apartment open to whoever! I had to call CAP and yell at them in order to get them to come back and put a lock on the freaking door! Furthermore, they could not give me an answer as to why this had happened. I was livid, and the only answer I got was «we know who lives in this building, don’t worry.» Well, it’s easy to worry when the workers leave the downstairs doors propped open and frequently leave the premises! Completely unacceptable and very dangerous.
We rented a 1 bedroom in Lakeview. The ad currently listing our apartment shows a fireplace and a patio door with a glass insert. Neither one of those things exist in real life, so don’t be fooled by the cute photos. Our leasing agent extolled the virtues of the building, and promised that we’d be able to load up the laundry cards (washer-​dryers in the basement, $ 2 for each) online. «Very soon,» he said. «Probably a couple of weeks. We’re working on that now.»
When I asked a CAP receptionist about this after a few months and no update, she said: «I wish they would stop lying to people. We have no plans to implement that at this time.» You must travel in person to the office to fill laundry cards. They are $ 5 each, and the max is $ 50. Bring cash; sometimes I’ve been told they can’t take a card that day.
We worked with Brittany on the leasing process. I’m not sure if she was incompetent or messing with us for funsies, but there were three instances where we were told, «Congrats! You’ve been accepted and the apartment is yours!» only to discover there was a caveat and if we didn’t rectify the situation by the end of the day, the apartment would be lost. We’d already paid the several hundred dollar non-​refundable application fee at this point, so there was no way I was going to let that happen. I spent hours on the phone with previous rental agencies, begging them to call CAP so that we wouldn’t lose the apartment. It was incredibly unprofessional.
Then there’s the construction. About two months into our lease, heavy construction work began on the building. CAP was gutting the entire basement/​first floor. We live on the third floor, and the noise was extremely disruptive. The workers were literally pounding on the metal support beams of the building with sledgehammers, which was an instant migraine and it went on for weeks. We asked how much longer the construction would go on and only received a «you’ll get periodic updates as we have them» in return. No final date, no schedule, nothing. Often the construction would start as early as 6:30am. The noise limit in Chicago prevents loud work from being done before 8am. When we reported the workers to CAP, they promised to fix it. Of course, nothing happened and the work resumed just as early as ever. So we contacted our Alderman, who advised us to call 911 and report noise complaints. As soon as we did that, bam. Problem solved. Thanks again CAP!
The construction sometimes interfered with the wires in the building so there were times when our internet connection was lost multiple times per day. I often work at home via VPN, and this caused me to lose a few days worth of work.
The construction also interfered with electricity and water. There was one day where the power was supposed to be turned off from 8am-​4pm. They didn’t turn it back on after 11pm. The construction workers also turned off the hot water in the building for days and it wasn’t until I’d sent 3 emails to maintenance before maintenance discovered the workers were leaving the hot water jet off ALL DAY because it interfered with their work. When the maintenance workers would turn off all of the water for hours, sediment clogs the filters and kills the water pressure. Each time the water was turned off, we’d have to submit a maintenance request for someone to come and rinse the spigots.
There’s no online rent pay. You can set it up online through your bank account, but CAP does not offer the option on their site.
When they started showing our apt, the leasing agent was consistently 30 – 45 minutes late. After 5 confrontations about tardiness, we compared schedules. Demetra and Maria in the CAP office were giving him different times than the times they provided to us. Thanks for that, guys!
The only person worth dealing with on the staff is Cory, the maintenance manager. Pity Cory does not run the office.
Avoid at all costs.

Cons:
1. No online rent pay. YOU MUST go to the office on Lincoln Ave with either a check or cash to pay your rent. They also do not accept credit cards, even though they have a card reader.
2. In unit washer and dryer is $ 2.00 minimum, payable only by using the laundry cards that are given to you when you move in. Laundry cards cost $ 5, have a max of $ 50 that can be loaded on, and YOU MUST go to the office on Lincoln Ave to add value to your laundry card.
3. CAP lost our deposit when we moved in, claimed to never have had it (even though it was paid in person) and provide any paper work until week of move in.
4. Fire alarms don’t work properly and are frequently going off when cooking (they are placed so closely to the oven, it’s insane) and even randomly going off. Yet, we were recently fined for not having working fire alarms in place.
5. CAP maintenance workers communicate by notes left on one of your doors. There is no email sent to you letting you know someone will be in your apartment, just a pink slip written by someone whose first language is not English, creating some difficulty in comprehending what is happening within our unit.
6. Customer service is just awful. I would love nothing more than to never have to deal with any of the people working for this company ever again.
7. CAP keeps inconvenient office hours for anyone working a day job.
Trying to think of something positive to add just so it doesn’t seem so bad, but we can’t. Do not rent with CAP.

We wish we would have read all these reviews prior to signing a lease. I have to agree with a majority of the reviews. Chicago Apartment Place is not a reputable company at all. Customer Service and the Employees are so condescending, rude and disengaging. You would think with all the Leasing options available in this city they would want to compete and outshine others. It has been a great learning experience and now we know that reviews should be read and when there are this many complaints and negative feedback it is not just one disgruntled tenant.

After speaking with maintenance and Johanna, we recently resolved the issue of our smell and CAP worked with us in order to resolve other issues that we experienced upon move in. We were compensated for the two days we were unable to stay in our unit. Johanna was very accommodating and apologetic, and we appreciated her assistance with this issue as well as the assistance from the maintenance manager Cory. Thank you for working with us through these issues and we appreciate your patience and attentiveness.

DO NOT RENT FROM THIS COMPANY.
I read the reviews on Google and Unilocal when I first found my apartment, but figured people were exaggerating when they said Chicago Apt Place was a horrible company.
They were NOT exaggerating.
CAP has the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered (their employees are condescending, rude, ineffective, and unprofessional.) More than once my roommates and I have been charged late fees when we’ve done nothing wrong (and in consequence had to write long detailed emails explaining why they are wrong).
Our fridge has been leaking and freezing since we moved in A YEAR AGO and CAP says the only thing they can do in unplug it and put our food in a tiny mini fridge for a week (no freezer, all our food would go bad).
These are just a few of the long list of qualms I have against this company. At all costs do NOT do business with them!

Most unprofessional workers I’ve ever had to find out about until I was stuck in a year lease with them. Hired very sketchy cheap construction workers to «fix our roof» but instead ended up with a huge hole in my room and with an email to the leasing company with such events happening I got a reply with «Ya we’ll fix it later» like… wow I can’t believe I’m stuck here for another couple months it’s living hell

DO NOT EVER RENT FROM THESE PEOPLE.
I had nothing but issues from the beginning, and ended up breaking my lease and moving two months after my lease commenced. The office is completely unorganized and unprofessional. I’ve worked in property management myself, so I understand it’s not a pleasant or easy job all the time, but these people and their level of incompetence is just staggering.
The quality of the apartments they manage is sub par to begin with, then on top of that they failed to properly address structural issues with the particular apartment I rented. My apartment was flooded no less than 6 times in two months because they did not keep up with drain maintenance OR with the interior pipes (I was flooded repeatedly with both rain water and water from a burst and leaking pipe under a sink, less than 10 days after I moved in — then it took almost a week to fix the kitchen sink, which was constructed with PVC!).
I wasn’t even able to move into my apartment when my lease started because they were replacing the flooring due to flooding — so they were fully aware of the problem, and apparently thought that replacing the floors would be good enough. I assumed they were addressing the actual cause of the flooding issue as well, but I guess that was expecting too much.
They moved me into a weird temporary apartment for two weeks, then rushed me out of it because they had rented the place to some other unfortunate soul.
When I finally moved into my apartment and the flooding kept happening, that was when I lost it. I would come home from work at midnight and step into a pond in my living room. I would wake up and walk to the kitchen only to find a huge puddle seeping from under the sink. Even the maintenance guy (who was probably the only competent person I met) said «oh damn» when he came in to help me clean up on the worst flooding occasion.
Maintenance guy gets the one star I HAVE to put on this review — thanks for the wetvac and dehumidifier, maintenance guy. you’re the only reason I didn’t end up with mold on everything.
Then finally I moved out, and thought I was at last done dealing with these people. Which brings me to why I’m writing this review a couple months after I moved.
Earlier this month I realized that they never sent me a refund for the remaining balance on my laundry card, so I grudgingly called them up again. After a WEEK of leaving phone messages and never getting a human on the phone, I finally got a text message (a whole new level of unprofessional) today from the girl who handles the laundry card refunds, and supposedly she «accidentally pushed hold when printing the check» and would be sending me a refund — but the amount she quoted was too little. After much back and forth, she said she was able to give me a little more in refund, but for some reason not the whole amount… which makes absolutely zero sense. She couldn’t give me a solid reason why she could only partially increase the refund. I would have pushed more for my full refund, but at this point I’ll take a small monetary loss if it means I never have to talk to these people again. (God help them if I don’t receive my refund soon.)
After I moved out, I resisted writing this review because I thought maybe this was just a really bad one time situation. Maybe I just picked the worst apartment ever by chance, maybe there was something else going on that I didn’t know about, maybe anything… so I resisted. But after arguing with this girl today via text message about an honestly measly amount of money in a refund, after I already lost hundreds of dollars by having to move three times in two months because of their flaming idiocy, I just can’t let it slide. People of Unilocal,you deserve to know.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU RENT FROM THIS INCOMPETENT COMPANY.

Completely unorganized. They’re not even sure which keys go to which apartment, and they have it set up so that getting an apartment is like some race to beat other people, which shouldn’t be the case. Within 3 days of us having looked at the apartment and deciding to take it, they contacted us saying we needed full rent ready and everyone present as soon as possible if we wanted the apartment, otherwise it would go to someone else. Considering this was our only good option we could find at the time, this was extremely unnecessary stress. They clearly don’t care much about their residential spaces. If you’re planning on living in any of their spaces, find another company.

Literally the worst place I have ever lived in my entire life. I have been renting for about three months now, and we have had multiple problems like from dirt covering the floors when we moved in, a rat infestation that they refused to deal with, and a major leak that caused massive amounts of mold. These problems started right when we moved in. When we moved in they gave us the wrong keys, oofta.
The only thing that is worse than the apartment is the management staff that owns it. These people care so little about their tenants and constantly ignore calls to fix problems. Devon, a chicago apartment place worker, has been assigned to our apartment and has proved to be completely useless. I hope you see this Chicago Apartment Place, and decide to actually do your job. That would be super surprising.
Anyways, stay away Chicago renters, spending a few extra bucks might break the bank, but at least you won’t be living with rats.
BK

I’ve been renting a commercial space from Chicago Apartment Place for over 3 years and have ways been completely happy with them. The building is well maintained, secure and clean. Any time I’ve had an issue it has been dealt with immediately. I usually deal with Demetra or Ellen and both are super friendly and helpful!
I would highly recommend CAP for your rental needs.

This company is simply appalling and should not be in business, no one should rent from these people. When I moved into my apartment it was not cleaned, there was rat feces all over the place. Not to mention when I needed to find who to talk to about this no one seemed to know, I ended up hiring my own cleaning company to come and clean the apartment because it was not livable. Now on to the maintenance issues. One of the showers was broken enough to be unusable, it took two weeks of calls, emails, and maintenance requests before anyone came to fix it. It lasted about three days before it collapsed again. No one should ever rent from these people, they have no clue what they are doing.

If I could give them 0 stars I would. My apartment is great, but dealing with them is a hassle. Demetra is the WORST, so rude and never around to contact and she’s the one in charge. It’s taken her a week to get back to us when we called her everyday for a week. The people working here are horrible and don’t know how to do their job. They take FOREVER to get things done

We are currently living in one of their buildings now and we can’t WAIT to get out. From old cat urine (we don’t own a cat), to fly infestations… this apartment unit has been through it all. Sadly, the Chicago Apartment Place staff has literally done nothing to help my roommates and I with the situation. Not only did they avoid helping us with our particular issues, but they chose to avoid the problem all together.
Similar to another post, when the maintenance company would come to «fix» the bug/​fly/​cat urine problem, they would simply leave random traps all throughout our apartment… the flies saw said traps, laughed, and went on their mary way. Even getting the maintenance staff to fix a light bulb was an act of god… and I am not talking normal light bulbs, I am talking huge, complex, globe like lighting structures. Which they will try to make you fix yourself.
We have lived in Chicago for the past 5 years and this is by far the most unprofessional, irresponsible company I have ever had the unfortunate pleasure of dealing with.
If you decide to rent with this company… good luck!

This is our second year living with Chicago Apartment Place. In our first apartment, we had an infestation of mice that was never resolved. They would come and lay traps a few times, but never fixed the situation — meaning we just learned to live with mice, never leaving food out, always a little scared to go in the kitchen and occasionally hearing a roommate screech when we saw one. Delightful!
We made the unfortunate decision to try again and this time, I was prompted to write this review because it has been over five weeks since we have had functional laundry machines. Management does not seem to care.

Absolutely one of the most mismanaged apartment companies I have rented from. First of all there payment method is ludicrous, they do not accept credit cards, as opposed to all other apartment companies. This can be difficult if it is not convenient for you to mail checks.
Next is one of the most annoying and frustrating services that the uncompromising Chicago Apartment Place has to offer. Laundry machines. They might as well not have them. They are like a zit in between my buttcheeks, a royal pain in the ass. First the washers and dryers don’t accept coins or any form of money. You must get a card to run the machines, and of course you have to pay C.A.P. to buy a card. You must then money on the card, which is only accepted in the form of cash, and only at their place of business. So, if you want to wash your clothes, you must treck out to their headquarters and put deposit cash into your account.
The reason why I am writing this comment is because I did just this only hours ago. Oh, I also forgot there is a max of $ 50 dollars that you can put on the card, so you cant simply stock it up all at once. So, if you do your laundry regularly, at $ 2 a wash and $ 2 a dry, you must go there at least once every two weeks. As I was saying, I just made the hour commute there and back, only to get home try and use my card, and receive an error message. Naturally I call into the office, to which I am then told I must come back and get it fixed.
So… unless your patience is that of a Buddhist monk, please do not rent from Chicago Apartment Place.

I am surprised by the ratings this place received. Overall, I agree with people that it seems like they have pretty good value in their places. I signed a lease for a 2-​Bedroom in Lincoln Park right by the North and Clybourn Red Line Stop. Overall, the rent seemed very reasonable. However, upon living in this unit, I have noticed many major problems.
The biggest problem is RATS. There are rats that live on the premises and you know how fast rats breed. At night, they are all over the alley. We have called MANY times to get them to remediate the problem, and while they have tried, they have been unsuccessful. It’s probably one of the most disgusting things I have seen.
Next, some of the issues are due to cheap design — paper thin walls. Not only can I hear everything in my apartment, but I can also hear everything from the neighbors. And the neighbors, well, when I first moved in there were people in their late twenties in the building. Now, four months later, it is a bunch of college students who party on Monday nights, Wednesday nights, and the weekend nights. I am not sure why this agency does a credit check if they are renting to college students.
Overall, I would never rent through this Property Management Company again.

SO unorganized. Had a no show to show an apartment and then after I called them back to figure out what happened they said «oh that apartment is already leased, (it wasn’t yet), «and so our employees have no obligation to contact you or show up at an appointment for this apartment».
Seriously? I talked to Gustavo yesterday evening and he said its the earliest anyone could see it. The girl at the office then became catty and rude and saying jts not their problem that its already leased and that they did nothing wrong…(maybe a phone call to cancel as 2 roommates drove 45min downtown to make the scheduled appointment!) Long story short the apartment wasn’t leased and the Chicago Apt Place had a mixup with the no show.
This is 1 of many complaints I have about this business… Completely unprofessional, unorganized, rude, and unreliable.

If you like being treated like a turd and don’t care that things do not get fixed at your apartment this is the place you should rent through. I just got off the phone with Demetra who is the «manager» and wouldn’t let me speak with anyone else there when she wouldn’t listen to me. Something straight out of the PopCopy handbook. Literally, she has listening problems where she speaks when you have something to say and if you get through half of your statement before she interrupts you that’s a pretty good run.
Aside from that if you need things fixed at your apartment and they aren’t an easy fix they just won’t do it. It’s been two years and they have never fixed the dishwasher at my place. We have had someone come out to look at it within the legal time period but they just look at it and leave it broken. Now that we have been fed up with their crap and are moving out they have decided to send in people to fix stuff which is creating a bottle neck of maintenance people and moving boxes. It’s just terrible.
Thank you Chicago Apartment Place, I will be spreading the word of how terrible you treat your tenants to all my friends and relatives.