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Stan Properties
Category: Home Services Real Estate Property Management Property Management [Edit]
2408 N Kedzie(between Albany Ave & Altgeld St)
Chicago, IL 60647
Neighborhood: Logan Square
(773) 276-1099
- Nearest Transit:
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Logan Square (Blue Line)
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
About This Business:
Please do not be fooled by the ratings shown, check out the filtered ratings for a true reflection of our services and commitment Good Steward… read more »
13 reviews for Stan Properties
13 reviews in English
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Review from Rebecca R.
Evanston, IL
9/9/2010
Stan Properties has gotten some negative reviews from people staying in their short term rentals. Coming from a long term tenant, I haven't had the negative experiences that others have noted.
My apartment was in a beautiful, brand new building with all the great amenities you could ask for. We had a deadline that we had to move in by, and Stan properties made sure that it would be close enough to ready for us to move in by then. They finished up all the last minute stuff after we were there, and were very responsive to our input about what to prioritize and how things should be done.
They were easy to deal with when things went wrong and the guys they sent by to fix things were super friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful.
Relu, the owner, is definitely a character; he likes to kid around a lot, and he can sometimes be difficult to keep on topic, but he's a lot of fun to talk to and if you have a clear message to get across to him, he gets it and will follow through.
Landlords are landlords. Stan properties won't be your best friend and bend over backwards for you, but they do their job well and I would recommend not being turned away by the bad reviews if they have an apartment that you're interested in. -
Review from Anna B.
Chicago, IL
8/21/2008
I made an appointment with them to look at one of their apartments. I showed up and the woman was 35-40 minutes late, she looked like she just got out of bed.
The place she showed was absolutely gross!!! It turned out that 2 apartments shared a bathroom. Absolute horror! The building looked nice from the outside, ivy on the walls, right on the boulevard. But once in the hallway it smelled like cat piss and human urine. It was dark and dingy, weird muffled sounds emanating from the walls. It was the most depressing place I have ever seen in my life. They would have to pay me $1000 to live there. Since then, the bulding has been boarded up. Thank god! This way no one has to live in cat piss smell and cockroach droppings. -
Review from Laszlo R.
San Diego, CA
6/26/2010
OK , reviewers, look into my eyes: are you yelpers or whiners? What's up with all this negativity and whining about Stan Properties? More than half of the reviewers complain about failed appointments, first impressions, and being rubbed in the wrong way. Well cheap whiners, bye bye. You're the kind who'd call the police because the fish in my aquarium are too loud. I am thrilled I won't have you as neighbors.
I am a Stan Properties tenant for almost 2 years now. The apartment I live in is the best I ever had. Not flawless, but what is ever perfect? I am happy with it and I plan to live here for a long long time. The location is awesome, right on the corner of Fullerton and Kedzie. This spectacular intersection might be noisy at times, but if you are a sucker for city life as I am, it'd make you proud to live in the heart of one of Chicago's grand crossroads. We get a lot of compliments from our friends who drool over our place. Alright, enough bragging...
I moved around quite a bit during the 20 years I lived in this city and most of my landlords sucked majorly. I hated my former management company with a vengeance: they were contemptuous and did not give a rat's ass about their tenants. Serious complains (such as large chunks of ceiling falling on our heads in the kitchen and bathroom as a result of rain and melting snow on a poorly insulated roof) went unresolved for months. I celebrated the day when we moved out of that place and I avoid to drive on Lincoln in the proximity of that management company because I am still afraid I might stop to burn down their office.
Compared to them Stan Properties is from a different, much sunnier planet. From what I understand, their small team accomplishes to manage a rather large number of apartments. Yet they are able to add that personal touch with their tenants: we are treated with warmth and friendliness every time we call, stop by their office, or meet with their staff in person. While they might not be ultra speedy in solving problems I can tell they do their best and never forget to keep their promises. I had a wiring problem at my place, and for a while I had to improvise to power up my home office. It took about 3 days, but eventually Stan Properties sent a very knowledgeable and courteous electrician who figured out the problem and quickly fixed it. Another time heating stopped working in the dead of winter, and the guys at Stan Properties came in no time and solved the situation.
Maybe my standards are low because I came straight from hell when I moved into their apartment, but based on my previous experiences I never thought the words "landlord" and "buddy" would fit in one sentence. So far I must say that I would drink a beer anytime with Relu, Cera, and the rest of the people from Stan Properties. -
Review from Lorna M.
San Francisco, CA
8/2/2009
I'm an out-of-towner who did a vacation rental through Stan Properties about 3 weeks ago. Now that I'm over the shock of my horrible experience, I've worked up the strength to Yelp about it in hopes that no one else has to suffer similar misfortune.
Sadly, I see that 6 other Yelpers rated these guys 1 star -- perhaps because you can't just rate 1/1000 of a star... Anyway, here's my sad tale (and I recommend using Suite Home Chicago instead):
I just rented a Stan Properties condo at One Superior Place (a fantastic location, great building, nice views, and - fortunately - clean linens). But the place was so unsanitary that I never used the kitchen (which is 1/2 the point of staying at a vacation rental rather than a hotel), and I couldn't use my own unit's bathroom facilities until 2 full days after I checked in!!!
Fortunately there was a shower in the building's gym, but it was highly time-consuming and ridiculously inconvenient for me to bring my toiletries 55 stories down to a public shower to get ready in a public bathroom while being charged full rental price for a condo in the same building.
What's worse - yes, it gets worse - is that I had to make repeated calls several times a day for each of the 5 days I was renting, just to try and get some customer service!
Only after constant hounding did I manage to get Stan Properties to:
- Properly clean the bathroom and kitchen (which upon check-in looked like someone had just used it for a week - replete with pubic hairs on the shelf by the bedroom window). YUCK!!!
---- (Note that the person they sent to clean was actually using toilet paper without cleanser to clean the bathroom sink! When I caught him doing that and asked him what cleanser he was using, he said he'd have to go to his supply closet and get some cleanser - which he did. So you can see why the bathroom looked so bad in the 1st place!)
- Provide extra rolls of toilet paper - which ran out 2 days into my 5-day visit. (Why wouldn't they have left enough behind in the 1st place - especially given that the cleaning person mistook massive amounts of toilet paper for cleanser and sponge???)
- Give me a refund of some sort for ALL these hassles. In fact, Relu of Stan Properties promised some financial restitution (I had requested a refund of 2 nights' rent). But Relu never called about it, never returned my calls, and relayed through one of the phone receptionists (Monique) that he'd refund me like $50. Note that the cleaning fee was $60, so an offer of less than that obviously was just plain offensive.
In the end, it was only Monique who demonstrated any sense of customer service. She and I spoke several times after I returned to San Francisco. I was calling to try and speak to Relu re: the restitution I requested. Monique actually was sympathetic to my situation and granted me the equivalent of a free day's rent - despite Relu's ridiculously cheaper offer. She even ran the credit to my charge card while I was on the phone to make sure the refund went through.
Long story short: do NOT deal with Stan Properties! And I think Monique deserves to work at a far better company.
Moral of the story: Suite Home Chicago is supposed to be a much better vacation rental agency. I'll definitely use them for my next visit instead. -
Review from Samantha T.
Cincinnati, OH
5/17/2011
Had an appt for 10:30 am on a Saturday. Called agent at 10:40 to see if he was running late. GOT A TEXT MESSAGE RESPONSE BACK saying that the unit had been rented the night before and there was nothing else available. Really, Stan Properties, REALLY?
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Review from Allison K.
Chicago, IL
5/15/2009
My fiance and I set up a showing to see one of their properties at 11am. They got back to us and said 11:30 would be better for them, we said fine. 11:20 rolls around that day, Relu calls us asking us where we are (so he's either 20 minutes late or has the time wrong after switching it to 11:30.) He apparently thinks we want to see the apartment across the street from the one we wanted to. So we wait 15 minutes while he goes and gets the keys for the right one. Comes back, not the right keys. He starts ringing the doorbells of all the other tenants in the building. Bottom line, we don't get in. So we ask him if we can see the one across the street (the one he was apparently prepared to show us.) He doesn't have the keys and the tenants aren't home.
We didn't see anything even though we had an appointment. Wasted a half hour and drove all the way into the city for nothing. And he was kind of a sleezy guy, would NOT trust him. -
Review from Dane K.
3/4/2009
Horrible management company.
1137 W Pratt is the biggest dump on the planet (also referred to them as "Pratt Shore" corporate housing). I was there as an actual resident with a lease. It's like a cross between a college dorm, a mental hospital, and part prison.
The place looks like maybe your typical run down building, but when you dig deeper it's just gross. There were bugs. but that was the least of their problems. Apt. was filthy dirty when I moved in.
The freight elevator is out of service permanently. The passenger elevator is broken at least once daily when I was trying to use it... (And I lived on the 7th floor). There were two times when the elevator was completely out of service for over a week at a time. When I called Stan Properties, they didn't seem to care or had some excuse. They would always try to blame the breakdown on other residents who didn't close the doors, etc. It's one of those really ancient elevators that has a metal bar system to open/close, then each floor has an actual door... if anything isn't tightly closed the whole elevator is out until someone walks up 8 flights of stairs to figure out what isn't tightly closed. (and it's not that people would forget to close the doors, the air flow generated by the movement of the elevator was enough to push the doors to cause it to not operate). And if you lived on the 8th floor, you had to walk to the 7th floor to use the elevator. The elevator completely breaks if you take it to the 8th floor.
This place needs to be called into the Chicago Department of Buildings for a long overdue elevator inspection (there isn't a certificate posted, presumably because the elevator is so unsafe it couldn't pass inspection). Also, right now they're replacing the electric throughout the building without a permit.
The kid who lives in the building to handle maintenance means well and is nice, but isn't all that effective. When I first met him and was asking him questions, he acted like he spoke no English at all. Then after I moved in somehow his English skills were fine. I've seen him do really stupid things though. There's only one set of stairs in the building, and if the elevator is broken that's your only way up or down. One night I got home to find that the stairs had been taped off at the first floor so he could paint them. The problem is the elevator was broke. So nobody could go up, nobody could go down. Stupid. Even stupider that he painted a stairwell that gets frequent use bright white.
The trash in back constantly overflows. They at one point put a sign up saying if you left trash outside of the dumpster they would fine you $500. The problem is, half the trash that spilled out of the dumpster was there because homeless people walk through the alley emptying them out to find the goodies. Other times--around the 1st of the month when people flee for their lives--the trash is just too full and there's no better place.
I think he needs some better cleaning products. I've seen him mopping, but 5 minutes after the place would still smell like danky water.
Some of the residents mean well, but others clearly don't. People have puked in the elevators, etc..
The washer/dryers were $3/load, the dryers didn't work that well. But the one on the right had some problem and it would just work for hours and hours without putting money in.
Their "free" wifi didn't work about 70% of the time. The guy who worked on it was fairly responsive to fixing it, but there were weeks where it just didn't work at all.
My real issue with the actual management company came over Christmas holiday. I was out of town, and apparently the roof was leaking or the person above me let their bathtub overflow. So they came into my apartment and did who knows what in the ceiling of the bathroom. They caused a real mess, leaving a coating of red dust all over everything in the bathroom. They must have ruined my bathroom rug in the process, it was completely gone when I came home. They didn't even bother to call me to tell me they had came in. But the day after this happened, I called them. Their keys are marked "do not duplicate" so I was never able to make a copy of my key. but Brian was stuck at O'hare and wasn't getting out, so he needed a key to get in. I called them to ask them to provide lockout service, they refused (I was willing to pay). They told me they wouldn't give me a copy of a key for security reasons. I don't know what security reasons they are concerned for, they run a "corporate housing" operation out of this building where I've seen completely random foreigners come in and out for a night or two. (I trust that they're European vacationers mostly looking for a deal, but if you find yourself working for a company that uses them for any sort of corporate housing, I'd say it's high time to look for a new job).
Completely useless A-holes.
I got back from my holiday, went on Craigslist, and moved two days later.
Gross, gross, gross!! -
Review from Farrah V.
Oakland, CA
12/10/2008
Never rent from them!!!!! I rented 1137 W Pratt for 5 days. The place looked great on the internet BUT it looked nothing like it in person. It looked like a fraternity house. The hallway was dirty and smelled horrible. The bathtub was filthy and there was urine in the toilet when we arrived. I called to have us moved and they refused to accomodate us. After yelling and cursing on the phone with the manager (which I never want to resort to) they finally refunded me 200.00. I still ended up paying those scum bags 300.00 tho! Never stay with them!
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Review from Doggy F.
FOREST HILLS, NY
8/21/2010
I lived at 1137 W Pratt. It was a very shady experience that ended with a harassing phone call. I was paying $50 extra to be on a higher floor. Later I wished I had taken a unit on the second or third floor and saved the money because the elevator never worked and I was essentially paying more money for more inconvenience. That elevator was around in the early 1900's and should have been retired long ago. As the previous review by Dane K. entails, it was a pain in the butt to walk up that many stairs every day; With snow on our shoes, up the slippery metal treads; Or even worse, sometimes in the warmer months they opened the windows, which had no screens and pigeons would fly in and crap everywhere! They carry diseases! Not to mention, I often had so much garbage accumulated in my unit because every time I wanted to throw the trash, the elevator wasn't working. I remember the signs Dane K. speaks of threatening to fine $500 if they found out whose trash was outside the garbage can. Doing laundry was also a pain because many times I'd start a load, grateful that the elevator was working again, only to have to drag it back upstairs, pissed off!
My sink was frequently clogged. It often took a while for them to get it fixed, but the plumber was nice enough. I just started learning that the whole building seemed to have infrastructure issues. The water pressure to my shower was sometimes nonexistent. The water would flow straight down so I'd have to lean against the wall of the shower head. During the winter, the poorly installed windows are also a problem. I've lived in six other vintage Chicago apartments and never had I felt such strong drafts from the windows. The plastic I put to weatherproof them, would often bubble up, and the cold air would force the double-sided tape to give. It's one of those things you won't notice until you live there.
But I think most concerning of all is how shady the whole operation was. When I moved in, I saw wires poking out of opened electrical boxes in the hall ways, but I also saw lots of work being done, men with paint cans and ladders. They told me they would have an exercise room and a new elevator in a few months as well as all the other finishing touches done. That never happened. One day I walked into the lobby only to find there was about three inches of water covering the entire ground floor! Apparently some pipes had busted on the second floor. Another time, in the middle of winter, I woke up without any electricity or heating! I later found out that nobody in the building had electricity or heating and it lasted almost the whole day. One tenant told me it was shut down because of some fire hazard and shoddy electrical work. Whether that's true or not, I'll never know. But I do know that the management failed to do things by the book with regards to ComEd. We were supposed to set up our own electricity accounts, and I'd often see memos reminding us to do so in the hallway, but nobody could because when we called ComEd they'd tell us that the meters weren't installed by our landlord yet.
While I did get some good service at times, like a few days extra grace period on my rent, I just couldn't believe all the problems in this place. Also, as far as that hotel operation they run, their guests were often locked outside of the building because the key to the gate didn't always work, or they were unable to take their baggage up the elevator. It seemed everyone who lived there regretted it. Often times we'd kinda bond, talking about our miserable experiences, or we'd share dirt on this crooked company.
When I turned in my key, I wrote a simple letter just stating the facts. I said I hated living there and I hope for future tenants, the building tries to fix all its problems because I felt I was tricked by the attractive photos and the promises of a workout room. I thought that was the end of that and I had made my peace with it. Then I get a phone call. "I read your letter. How can you write that you hated living here? You owe us $1200! And you're complaining that you hated living here?!" I was shocked because I did not owe them anything. I told him "I sent you the check weeks ago. And yes I hated living there. I'm moving to a better building, a block away, that has much better management and two brand new elevators!" He actually began yelling at me! He kept saying I owed him money and that I was ungrateful. I hung up on him and I guess he realized I had paid him because I never heard that angry voice again and I have never had a worse living situation since then.
It was a good learning experience not to just go by nice pictures and promises that things will be renovated. Read reviews, take it in as is condition and go for solid management companies! I have a friend that had an equally ugly experience with a management company run by Russian immigrants. Is it just me or are there many buildings in Chicago run by crooked foreigners that get angry if you complain? -
Review from Sarah E.
Chicago, IL
5/26/2010
I was rubbed the wrong way by the agents at Stan Properties. I had made an appointment to see an apartment and the agent never showed up at the appointment time and location but when I called the office I was told that they didn't have the keys to the unit and I had to schedule an appointment. This is a bit weird since two days prior I had scheduled an appointment. After I told the man on the phone that I was no longer interested in doing business with them, I received a call telling me that we can meet a couple of days later. I really feel like this business needs to get their act together or they will lose a lot of potential clients.
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Review from Andrea K.
Chicago, IL
6/10/2010
Like some other reviewers, I should say at the outset that I was only a prospective tenant. Like some other reviewers, I only got to look at what seemed like fairly well kept up apartments in two buildings in Logan Square. I made an appointment to see an apartment, but was told it wasn't available, though on the phone it was apparently.
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Review from Kelly Q.
Chicago, IL
7/29/2009
Stan Properties added to my many misfortunes I experienced while living in Chicago. It seemed like a good company when we went in to sign the lease and everything. We dealt with a man named Bogdan. They informed us that they would install a dishwasher for free as long as we bought the dishwasher. My roommate got one from a friend of the family so we called for maintenance to install it right away. While they were at it we had a large list of things that needed to be repaired, including our door buzzer and smoke detectors. We had no hooks or racks in the bathroom for towels, no toilet paper holder. They were nice enough to put those in..while taking out chunks of the wall and never fixing it. Our back gate was broken the whole time I lived there, as well as the buzzer and our smoke detectors. Real safe. Anyway, back to the dishwasher..in the process of installing it the man realized he didn't have proper parts to install it. He left to get them from Home Depot, took about 4 hours. I had to wait all day for this guy and then when he finally came back he just said he would work on it the following day. He never came back. We called several times and nothing was done. Finally in October (we moved in July) they installed it. Somewhere down the line Bogdan was no longer with the company. I had no idea who I needed to talk to about issues. Whenever I would call the office they would either put me on hold for a really long time or just keep passing the phone along to other people. I will say that Monique was very nice to me. She actually came through for me on some issues. I ended up subleasing to a friend for our last month there and that was a headache. People in the office kept telling me something different about their policy and what I needed to do to make this happen. Things are just very unorganized there and it makes it very frustrating for the tenants. They didn't have any spare keys to our apartment because they kept losing them and they were contacting my roommate trying to get a copy of the keys. It is not our responsibility to provide spare keys for them, especially when they are just losing them all the time. It also took me forever to be reimbursed from the month I paid for and ended up not living there. Why is it that they expect prompt pay from us but they can't do the same? Many of my neighbors were moving out around the same time I was and each one had something bad to say about Stan Properties. I am just glad I finally got reimbursed and I don't have to deal with them anymore.
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Review from Erica N.
Chicago, IL
8/4/2010
I wish I could give 0 stars! Anyone who gives 5 is an employee of Stan Properties. Relu Stan only cares about money! From the beginning, we have forgiven a lot that he has done in terms of the Winthrop unit. It is advertised as a "brand new unit," however it is none other than a glorified, painted over basement. Relu asked us to move in 15 days early though nothing was ready. I sat in the apartment on a hot day waiting for his maintenance worker to come back from Home Depot and change the locks because Relu did not have our keys. I was handed a bag of keys to try because they did not know if they had the keys to that unit. Soon other things started occuring. The dishwasher stopped working, there were no blinds in the windows that faced the alley, on top of that the windows did not lock and it was a garden unit! Anyone could enter if they wanted to. Later mold started to sprout. First it was just in one bedroom, but after three months it spread throughout. Calling and emailing Relu to get over there to fix everything was a nightmare. He even yelled at me on the phone for calling his office on a Saturday and said "it's just mold, have you not seen mold before?" No, actually, not unless you count moldy bread. What's worse is that after we started taking the steps to break the lease, the floor floods and the floorboards rise. The ramp (yep ramp, not stairs) that was in our unit rose completely off the ground! He is now trying to blame us for "considerable damages." The damages are on his end and it is BS that that unit is not one giant code violation! He has had many issues with people and with units and if he wants to make things right he better get his act together.
