ICM Properties, Inc.

See what I found on #Zillow!
This apartment looks too good to be true. Sadly it is. No where in the ad. on Zillow does it say «photos are from a similar unit». I went with some hesitancy and also a bit of a level head about what to expect. I was suspicious it wouldn’t be what was shown.
What I was met with was a very pleasant agent, who warned me that the tenant wasn’t terribly clean.
The ceilings were patched and not painted. The walls felt looming and grey, the kitchen was old with a sink right out of the 1950’s and tiny oven. It was dark as dingy and looked like a student hovel. Not at all what are in the photos. I said that when I was 20 I wouldn’t have had a problem with this but I’m not interested. The size was good, but I’d want to buy it and fix it up, Not move in and put up with it.
I’m not impressed, not with the agency as such, I haven’t barely had contact with them. I’m more disappointed that they feel the need to use images of a much more charming apartment on the top floor.
When I asked about other apartments in the building I was told there wasn’t one, though the Zillow ad clearly has two listings.
Ho hum, I’m glad I’ve go time before j have to move. These experiences all lead to that perfect place.

The first year I lived in my ICM building I would have rated them a 2 – 3 on a good day, but I have to say I’ve been really impressed with the changes they’ve made over the past year to better serve their tenants.
We recently had three big maintenance problems at once: our central AC wasn’t working, a window was stuck open and our dishwasher was broken. I hadn’t called maintenance in a while, and was expecting to have to leave a message (even during business hours) and never hear back unless I called at least four more times, because that’s what I’d gotten used to in my first year on the lease. However, someone answered right away and the next day both the AC and the window were fixed, and they’d ordered us a new dishwasher. Again, I was expecting the dishwasher delivery to take a month and a few prodding phone calls at the least, but less than a week after my initial complaint we have a brand new dishwasher! I’m honestly so surprised about this, but I think it shows that they’re taking initiative and making big changes in the way they treat their tenants.
Like I said, last year was a bit of a nightmare when it came to maintenance requests going ignored and the apartment kind of falling apart but they’ve really stepped up their game in recent months. My rent is reasonable for the area I’m in, my apartment is spacious and nice and I like that I can pay for everything online. There are still things they need to work on but in general it really does seem like they’re making progress and taking their tenants’ criticism to heart. Hope this trend continues, thanks for the new dishwasher!

Whatever money they make they obviously spend it on making sure their office is really nice, while their properties suffer. It’s quite disgusting. I wish I would have seen these reviews before I signed my lease because I am absolutely stuck now. Awful maintenance, awful properties and they take a really long time to do anything, even if it is simple. I signed a lease at one of their places starting April 1 and I have been fighting with them over email ever since about fixing some simple stuff in my building and it still has not been fixed…2 months later. I even went into the office and talked to the «manager» and she made me feel a little better about the way they handled things, but here we are 2 weeks later — more shit is broken and they basically ignore my requests again. If I had known it would have been this difficult to get maintenance done, I would not have rented from them. Look elsewhere!

Do you think ICM cares about its Unilocal reviews? They do not. They’re not the worst landlords in town, but they sure don’t care about trying to be the best. If you want minor stuff fixed like a clogged drain, they’ll fix it right away. Want something major done? Good luck with that ish. Want your place painted? It’ll happen but it’ll look like crap. They won’t touch the ceilings and they’ll just slap some paint over whatever’s on the walls. Here’s a fun fact: if there’s a big old crack in the paint layer (s) on the wall, throwing up a new layer without peeling/​sanding the cracked paint just won’t work. Want your floors refinished? Not going to happen. One star for the apartment not falling apart and one for them doing a pretty good job keeping the heat on.

I had a good experience with ICM Properties over the last year. The leasing agent was good, maintenance and pest requests were addressed and all correspondence with ICM Properties were promp and respectful. The property I rented is old and falling apart, the pests are numerous, constant and absolutely horrible and the noise from alley is a nuisance. Be aware what you rent! Anything can be polished up for a 5m visit. Please update your property which may rid your building of all the pest and renter problems.

I’ve been renting from them for the past half year and cannot wait for my lease to be over. I shouldn’t have to send multiple maintenance request forms for one issue to be resolved. And some of the issues that I requested maintenance to check on have not even been addressed despite being requested weeks and months ago! You ask them to do one thing and it’s such a big hassle for them. The only time my maintenance request is taken seriously is when I bombard them with angry calls/​emails which shouldn’t have to be the case if they did their jobs in the first place. It’s been a headache dealing with the office and the untrained, uninformed staff. Seriously, look elsewhere.

I can’t say enough good things about renting with ICM. Living in the city for 6 years, I’ve had some really terrible landlord situations and I’m just blown away by how amazing they’ve been. The maintenance staff is SO friendly and knowledgeable and incredibly prompt. I feel very taken care of :) Also, I was out of the country last summer and had given my brother a spare set of keys from Home Depot so he could feed my cat. Unfortunately, when he showed up, one of the spares wasn’t working. I panicked because it was Fourth of July weekend and I assumed the office would be closed, however, someone from ICM met my brother at their office and gave him their set of keys so that we wouldn’t have to worry about it. I’m so thankful they went above and beyond. I only wish I had found their properties sooner and missed out on some of my previous awful landlords!

The first apartment I rented from them, I had no issues. It was a newly renovated building, so when I had maintenance requests, it was in a timely manner and they were always polite. Then this summer, I moved to an older building of theirs.
It’s gross. I unfortunately couldn’t afford anything but something very vintage, but I figured my impression of them up until now was great and if I had any problems, they would handle it!
No.
I called twice the first week letting them know an issue going on with my tub. I wouldn’t even use it the first week it was so disgusting. I had to go to my boyfriend’s house and use his shower. They didn’t reply to either of my maintenance calls. So I had no other option but to deal with it. I can’t let the water hit the back wall, or debris falls off and gets all over my floor and the floor is constantly soaked too. There’s a huge hole where this has obviously been an issue before and created water damage in that area. Neither my kitchen nor my tub drain drains that well. I usually have water up to my ankles. I’m tried drain-​o and a snake but it doesn’t really help much.
I tried calling again recently and no reply. So we will see if the issue is ever resolved by the time I move out.
Anyways, my kitchen is pretty awful too. My oven and stove top pretty much just burn everything I try to make. My stovetop only has one option, high. So nothing that requires simmering can apparently happen. The tiles are all sorts of messed up, and I trip on them all the time.
They painted over a lot of drawers in my apartment too, so I can’t open like half of my cabinets (who does that?). Some don’t even have handles so I have to try to pry the cabinet open every time I want to eat.
The hallways of my building smell like garbage. The laundry room looks like a creepy dungeon. I wouldn’t go in there after dark.
I can’t wait to move out. If I had enough money, I would break the lease.

People… PLEASE BEWARE. Read the other reviews… we are being honest about our experiences. I will keep this to the point… from the day we moved in to the day we moved out, we had nothing but excuses, blatant untruths, unprofessionalism from the office to maintenance, having to continuously email and call about new issues… and worse yet reminding them about previous problems that never got addressed. And when they did, the average to come back out and truly fix the problem was 3 times.
The apartment was and still is filthy! This organization is understaffed, poorly managed, has no sense of leadership or customer service and could care less… no matter what they tell you. And my final statement is this… the first floor just caved into the basement unit causing this place to need a complete overhaul. They milked this property as long as they could and unfortunately for the tenants this happened to, but lucky for us we got out just in time, right before the cave-​in happened.
Again…please, we are trying to help you. There are plenty of other property managed companies in the city that know what passion, dedication and the general human desire to help people really means.

I’ve lived in 6 different apartments in Chicago over 10 years, and ICM’s lease was the most unreasonable I’ve encountered.
It was certainly the longest lease I’ve seen at ~19 pages, and they had unusually specific obligations like what exact model battery we had to use in the smoke detectors. There was also a clause in the lease stating that they had no obligation to help us with any telecom issues.
I know they were covering their bases, but it was a bit ridiculous. If the building wasn’t so nice, new, and affordable, that lease would have made me give up on them. Based on other reviews here, the state of the unit was the only thing that made me OK with using ICM.
When we had issues with getting the Internet to work, they pointed out the clause in the lease stating they had no obligation to help us with that.
I signed the lease, so it’s my own fault, but who checks every wall-​jack when checking out an apartment? Thankfully, DSL worked, so we got the fastest plan and were happy with that.
My stay with them was fine, which I owe to the modern state of the building that they had only just recently acquired, but I’ve definitely dealt with better landlords.

Maybe my bar was set suuuuuper low due to my previous landlady, but it sure is nice to have a property management company that actually manages things, responds to requests, and maintains good communication. ICM has all of this.
I don’t think the folks here are lying with their negative reviews, but like Lauren W. says, keep in mind that people tend to post reviews (especially for industries like this) only when they’re frustrated with the business, and not when things are going smoothly.
For my part, Michael and crew have been responsive, professional, friendly, proactive in addressing repair (etc.) requests, and transparent. There have been some minor communication snafus but never anything catastrophic and they’ve always been easily addressed.
Trust me; you could do much, much worse.

I am disappointed that I’ve turned to Unilocal to voice my frustration with the mishandled communication and overall unprofessionalism I’ve experienced with ICM Properties. More frustrating is the fact that I am a new tenant at an ICM-​managed building and have, at a minimum 11 more months to endure. That being said, the problem (s) I’ve experienced with ICM, while numerous, have been manageable up until now.
My family and I recently moved into a newly constructed ICM building on June 15^th. Luck would have it, we experienced a few (minor) glitches as would be expected in a new construction. Albeit, some of these «glitches» seem to me could have been easily preventable had the company taken it’s time to open the door to new tenants (read gas lines to fire places not properly installed resulting in having to cut into sheet rock to address). Regardless, nothing could have prepared me for the run around we have gotten (continue to get) regarding cable and internet.
In order to properly frame the issue, you have to take into account that this is a new construction and therefore requires updating numerous databases as to what the new official address is. To that end, THE United States Postal Service did not officially have a record of the actual mailing address for the building until June 20^th (remember, we moved in on June 15^th, and others moved in prior to that). WHY the USPS didn’t recognize this address is not a mystery; ICM didn’t notify them in a timely fashion. Result: we had mail turned away for at least 3 days, some of which we still have yet to receive. Back to cable and internet. So with no address on file for some time, naturally the cable companies had no record of the building for which they could possibly service. The typical process for receiving service (if you already have it at your previous residence) is to request a service transfer. I did exactly that. What I quickly found was that the cable companies weren’t officially allowed to service the building until receiving authorized permission from the management company (ICM) to perform an assessment. In other words, ICM dropped the ball on contacting, at a minimum ONE cable company to perform this assessment. Interestingly enough, after numerous unanswered voicemails, Seth from ICM finally called me back to inform me that «they submitted a request to service the building back in May or some time…» So, according to Seth, profit-​hungry Comcast and/​or RCN was dragging their feet on coming out to assess the building and getting people set up with services so they can collect even more money. Oh, and I should also note that Seth also promised to stay in contact with me on updates regarding the situation as things unfolded. Calls/​emails from Seth since that call, ZERO. Now, I don’t like to idle on this type of thing, so I proactively reached out to the cable provider from my previous place to get an update on the assessment situation. To my surprise, no such request had been submitted. I performed further due diligence from other cable/​internet providers and found that NONE had any record of a request for service. Furthermore, each provider I spoke to informed me that had this request been put in place «back in May or some time…» the building would be equipped for cable and internet today.
I’ve gotten way into the weeds here, but I need to point out some obvious issues here. Internet in particular is a necessity these days. I work from home numerous days a week and this situation has led to a complete loss in productivity, thus forcing me to find workaround solutions to get my actual job done. Second, ICM did not adequately prepare the building for new tenants as has been evidenced by this ongoing issue. Had ICM been honest to new tenants prior to move-​in about the potential for units to be without internet for a number of days (I’m officially on day 15 now), tenants may have changed their lease start dates accordingly. I know I would have given the frequency at which I work from home. Third, communication is a significant shortcoming with this company. Any human being you encounter on the receiving end of a phone call to their office is either college summer help and/​or someone that cannot make a decision or quickly address the question at hand. The result is yet another voicemail to either Seth (or Eileen), hoping for follow up — if you’re lucky — within 7 – 10 business days.
This whole situation is really unfortunate and disappointing to say the very least. Given the impact on my job, I’ve begun investigating a case with the Better Business Bureau as well as with the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development regarding my rights as a tenant. I appreciate the fact that Unilocal offers a means to express one’s opinion, however this is statement of warning for those under the auspices of ICM Properties. Be sure to ask questions and get answers that you are comfortable with. And, know your rights as tenant in the city of Chicago.

I have had no real issues with ICM — keep in mind that people are really only motivated to write these reviews when they are unhappy, so there is a bit of a response bias.
My building is old and in need of updating, but the below-​market rental price reflects that. I also have gotten response to maintenance requests very quickly. ICM even upgraded my unit with a new oven and installed a new faucet when I asked. Danny has been a good rental agent for me and I just signed my third year with ICM. Another bonus is the ability to pay rent with direct deposit and e-​sign leases.
I would give 5 stars but for a couple of things I cannot overlook. Number one is the number of washer-​dryers at the Sedgwick and Dickens property. Having only 2 in a dingy basement for an entire building is not sufficient. In addition, having no-​heat should qualify as an after-​hours emergency in the winter (this only happened once and I had to stay with my boyfriend that night). However, they fixed the heat during the day the next day.

I’ve lived at an ICM-​managed building for nearly five years. I’ll be moving out in the next couple of months, and will miss it greatly!
Our agent, Jodi, was always incredibly helpful, the property was super nice and almost bafflingly affordable for the area (Ravenswood), and any maintenance requests we had were handled incredibly fast!
I hope, if you sign a lease with them, that your experience is just as good as mine has been!

Where to begin? How about a short maintenance story.
My experience with ICM hasn’t been all bad, but it’s been far from satisfactory. They’re really slow and unorganized with maintenance requests. I had a leak in my ceiling and a guy came out to check on it. He said it was a serious leak and that I should call ICM and ask for a plumber. OK… can’t the maintenance dude tell his supervisor to send the plumber himself? So, I call ICM and they send a plumber… 2 days later. He fixes the leak but removes a section of my wall, and then tells me to call ICM and request someone to come fix my wall. Dammit. I leave a voicemail and it goes unreturned for two days, so I call back and demand to speak w/​someone. Dude on the phone says «sorry, but the maintenance department is out. You can leave another voicemail, though.»
That was earlier this morning. No call or email back, and there’s still a hole in my ceiling.
The people I’ve dealt with at ICM are friendly enough and they try to be helpful, but it seems to be a case of a big property management corp. trying to run things as minimally as possible. Several hundred reviews and a sub-​2 star rating is pretty indicative.

My roommate and I have been renting from ICM for about 9 months now and have had a great experience. Although the apartment itself is old and outdated, we have had a wonderful experience with the maintenance and administrative staff. Harvey, our maintenance guy, is always timely with our apartment needs!
The online payment portal is a dream compared to sending checks in via mail.
I would definitely consider renting from ICM again in the future!

Well that was unfortunate! I want to be clear I did not rent a unit from this company but I was being showed a unit by Laura during a snowy day and the lack of any professionalism caused me to just say «forget it.»
My partner and I were supposed to see two units in one building and today is a very snowy day! So we arrived at one and Laura informed us her previous appointment was running late. Okay fine no biggie. But she proceeded to show the late appointment without even offering to let us inside from the wet, snowy weather. So we wait annoyed but hey things happen right? So she finally meets us and let’s us stand and wait while she fumbles through keys because the «locks had been changed» on the unit. Odd… oh and just to be clear this is still for the appointment prior to us. We overhear her saying another apartment won’t be ready until much later now and she won’t be showing it. But wait… that’s one of he units we were supposed to see? I wasn’t told we could only see one prior and that it would no longer be ready. So wait in crappy weather and then not even be able to see everything I was told? Okay wonderful… the cherry on top when my bf asks why she hasn’t told me that sooner she condescendingly says,” I’m letting you know now…” If you’re this awesome before we have even signed anything I can only imagine the service we will have should we have become tenants that pay! No thank you! And if the hallways were any indication the building wasn’t being maintained that well either… so maybe I should thank Laura for helping us dodge a bullet?

If I could give them 0 stars I would. From the second we started renting from them it has been pure torture. They have straight lied to us on multiple occasions and falsified gas reports of what previous tenants paid. I have complained multiple times about multiple things and nothing comes of it besides pure attitude from everyone who works there. This company should not be in business because they do not know what they are doing. I will never be renting from them again, ever and always telling people I know to do the same. I have never felt so betrayed by a business before.
DO NOT RENT FROM THEM!!!

Review Title: Why can’t I give negative stars?
Here we go, I could write a novel, but i’m trying to keep it short, I was like you, reading Unilocal reviews before signing, thinking «Most of these people are just bitching about their respective unit, ours is fine! Let’s sign!» nope nope nope nope nope:
Upon showing our unit, before move in: ICM Employee was really nice, cool, even said he’d try to talk his boss down on rent, and he did! Likely just a tactic to get us to sign asap and get on his good side, but whatever. Signing: Went just fine. So far so good.
Morning Move-​in: March 31^st, 2013, I had all my stuff out of my previous apartment by 9am, had to wait until about 10PM for ICM’s tenant to be out, I lived in my Uhaul with my Cat all day, no big deal, not their fault I guess.
Move-​in day: Absolutely disgusting, previous tenant didn’t clean at all, filthy walls, floors, bathrooms, etc. ICM said they’d clean within 24 hours, but what was I supposed to do, live in my Uhaul for a day? We cleaned ourselves for 2 days straight, and moved in, still giving them a ‘pass’.
First Month: Sent ICM a giant list of things needing fixed, reasonable things like: None of the window locks work, our back-​door window is a flimsy plastic not even glass, bug infestations, most blinds broken and awful looking. After reminding them again and again and again, they did fix about 75% of the issues, the rest they just ignored.
Few months in: Flooding, flooding, flooding, our apartment flooded from external rain 2x, and our basement sewer backed up into our basement 2x. I realize the flooding is tough to prevent, but after asking them what preventative maintenance could be done for the next downpour, they had no answer and didn’t seem to care. Each time this happened it cost me probably over $ 100 in clothes, pillows, blankets, mops, buckets, cleaning supplies, etc that were ruined from dirty poo water, not to mention hours of cleaning at 3am in the morning. We had some random drainage system in the basement that used to leak poo water on a daily basis, this took them over a month to fix.
Now to the fun part, Rats: We had a basement that was shared with a ‘utility room’ for the entire building which was rat infested, it was separated by a slim wall, fine. Anytime work was being done in there, I could hear it. We also had a bathroom right next to this utility room and the room/​outside world was separated from my basement by one piece of flimsy plastic under my bathtub. Rats and mice were getting in, we had killed our first 2 and then requested an exterminator come out. No exterminator did, they laid traps under my bathtub, and then neglected to tell me OR follow up on it.
After about 3 weeks we noticed a strong and stronger smell, I borrowed some power tools and removed 5 long-​dead rats on one trap. Absolutely sickening, picture provided on this review, not for the faint of heart. After I emailed them about this, and asked if they had a plan to ever follow up on these traps in our basement OR notify us that they were there, they simply responded ‘we will come by tmr to lay more traps’. They declined to inform me of the traps on the OTHER end of the basement which I found ANOTHER week later containing 2 more rats. All in all, I removed a total of 12 rats in one month from my apartment.
Move out: I opted to move out early and pay my new landlord rent, and still pay ICM’s last month of rent, so basically paid double rent for a month just to get out of there ASAP. My fiancé and I made sure to deep clean the ICM apartment for the poor souls who moved in next to hopefully make their experience a little better than mine. I waited for them to come after me for charges related to move out, after all that went wrong, I just expected something bad upon move out, after waiting a few months, nothing, so I felt it was safe to write this review, let’s hope they don’t come after me for just being honest!
Overall: I feel like they need a few upper management changes and they COULD be a good company, they have the technology, I could pay my rent online, maintenance was ‘kinda’ responsive. When my washer/​dryer broke they fixed it within a few days, they ‘kinda’ tried, but they just must be stretched too thin, there is not much organization. Their units from what I have read are just too outdated, they don’t feel like they should put in the time/​money to update them or invest in them, there is zero preventative maintenance, from a business perspective, I get it, every dollar they put into your unit is another dollar out of their pocket, but there is something to be said for investing in your tenants, your customers, and your business reputation, and the way ICM handles it is clearly not the right way. Avoid at all costs.
Pics:
Rats:
Rats Entrance:
Flooding:
Poo Water:
Outlets:

I don’t even rent from ICM, but I had applied for a place despite already reading the awful reviews below and thought «well MAYBE it won’t be a hassle/​horrible/​trouble». WRONG!
I had applied for an apt in Ravenswood with a roommate and the cosigner the roommate needed for the place via a leasing agent from an outside company that works with ICM. I was told it would take 24 hours from when I submitted the application and the first month’s rent. I was in constant communication with the leasing agent and he was very helpful.
A WEEK went by and I had to CALL ICM asking about the status of my application, to which they told me they were not renting to us, and were looking at ANOTHER applicant, without notifying us, because of the bad credit of my roommate. I told them he has a cosigner. They did not care — so WHAT IS THE POINT OF A COSIGNER THEN?
I should have read the reviews first, but then again I was only APPLYING for a place… which was a hassle.
And the man on the phone could care LESS about WHO was actually going to live in the apartment. As long as they get their money. I hope you tear up my check too because I WOULD HAVE NO IDEA IF YOU DID OR NOT.
Jerks. STAY AWAY FROM ICM.