Jab Real Estate

My wife and I have been with Frank for over 4 and a half years. We have loved having Frank as our landlord. Any time there was an issue he was very responsive and the issue was resolved very quickly. We were both sad to leave but would highly recommend renting from Frank.

Now that I have finally cooled down from my experience working with the owner of JAB Real Estate, I feel I can write a review. Please see the end of this, to see how terrible the owner of the company can be to work with. In the field of real estate, you need to be willing to answer questions about a lease, and about move in conditions. without losing it on your clients. It’s YOUR JOB!
My husband and I have happily lived in an owner– rented high rise, and have always been praised for being such easy tenants to work with. When we told the new owner of our condo (it was recently sold), that we were leaving, she said she would have loved to continue to work with us, as we seemed like the «easiest tenants ever».
My husband and I were excited to rent an apartment in the Southport area, and everything was a done deal (including a $ 1900 security deposit already paid) except signing. When we arrived to sign, we had our checkbooks ready to go.
As the owner of this company was presenting the lease to us, we stopped to ask what I felt were normal questions:
1.) What is the application fee going towards? It was 250 +50, per person (600 bucks), plus the 1900 we had put forward, so we were curious. He mentioned something about covering his fees, for out of state lease signers (we reminded him we are in state), and since it seemed this was non negotiable, we of course moved on (we anticipated paying these… hence our check books.)
2.) He mentioned the typical Chicago law of notifying us that they don’t know of lead paint in the unit. I said, «Oh, so do you check for lead paint?» To which he responded, something along the lines of, no, but we know there isn’t any. Again, we said, ok no problem.
3.) The owner then notified us that they would be completely repainting the unit. We asked if we could pick the color, and he said yes, but that we would have to pay for the complete cost of that paint. I asked, «Since you were going to paint the unit anyways, can we split the difference in price? And we are happy to pick up the paint.» He didn’t really have an answer that made us feel listened to, so my husband chimed in with «We are just putting a lot of money up front» ($ 2500 mind you),“and this is all we have really asked for in return.”
With that the owner stood up, very rudely ripped up our lease, and told us to GET OUT. We had to ask «are you kidding?», because the conversation seemed to go from a calm one, to a burst of rage in 2 seconds flat. We were in shock, and couldn’t believe someone would treat their clients, or any human being this way. He felt he had the luxury of easily finding new tenants, in this highly competitive rental world, which made him entitled to treat another adult person in this highly unprofessional way.
I feel like he was cornered without good answers to our questions. With 100% confidence, I can say that had he said no to the paint, we would have said ok, paid for it all, and just signed the lease (just as we had moved forward with the other questions we had). A simple no would have sufficed, but he decided to take it to an entirely different level of unprofessionalism. We could understand if he said «it is what it is, sign it or don’t.» And we would have. But instead he told us «you think you are special and I can’t work with people like that.» I don’t think we are special at all, rather we had a question (which may I mention past landlords have all been MORE than ok with.)
Thank goodness, this was a blessing in disguise. We found a WAY more beautiful and spacious place, with an amazing landlord, who hand picked us from 5 couples because we seemed the «easiest to work with.» Too bad for JAB, they lost some amazing long term tenants. Be careful if you go in to sign a lease, heaven for bid you ask a question, you may leave without a future home.