Tenant Reviews for 512 W BARRY AVE

I was gonna take an apartment in this building, but when i told them i wanted to go ahead and get it the lady who showed me the apartment told me that maybe i should think about it overnight. This was mainly due to the fact that she told me she wanted to go home cause it was friday and she would take care of me and the lease when i came back saturday morning at 8:30AM.(as if i´m gonna get up that early and take an train from the burbs cause she doesn´t want to do her job.) The way i feel is if this is how they conduct themselves now then they´ll be worse later if something else goes wrong with the apartment. And after reading these reviews i´m glad i passed on them now.

I´ve lived in this building for 5 years and although it´s not perfect, it´s a good building in a great location. The on-site maintenance man is friendly and works hard. (He´s not perfect, but he tries.) Once, I locked myself out and even though he & his wife were en route to Wisconsin for the weekend, they turned around and came back to let me in. The building common area is relatively well-kept. The rental office personnel are very nice but the building management office personnel could not be classified that way! The office staff is definitely not up to par--they are often rude (and I´m actually a nice person to deal with, at least that´s what my mom says). Rent is due on the fifth of the month, and there are no good faith exceptions to the late charges: a bank error (not a lack of funds) caused my check to bounce once but that was not good enough, another time my check was postmarked the 27th but did not arrive at the office until after the 5th so it too was late. Basically, it´s a trade off. I feel that the rent is reasonable for the neighborhood so I´m willing to put up with their lousy attitudes. Before you move in, decide on your priorities.

I have lived in this apartment with my boyfriend for about 6 months, and we have had many negative experiences, but overall, it´s not the worst place we could live. <br>I would expect better management from an apartment in Lakeview, though. <br>Whenever we have had a concern or repair, the office does not respond or is quite rude. It took four months for our original repair requests to get done, although the repairs themselves only took two days. <br>It was mainly writing, calling, and threatening the office that took all the time. Once we even called the emergency repair line because our toilet was overflowing, and since we had nothing to stop it, it began to flood the bathroom. The woman who answered said someone would call or visit that night, but we never heard from anyone. <br>Finally, after a particularly cryptic message regarding "serious issues with our apartment" Pam Neely called us back and fixed all of our problems. <br>There are other things I could complain about, like the fact that we were never told we were signing a lease for a year and a half (Who wants to move out February 1?), but the most important thing is that my neighbors all complain and write angry notes about the management. <br>I would not recommend this building or any Banner Properties to my friends.