Westward Property Management

If you are considering Westward to manage your property — don’t.
They excel in one thing — collecting fee’s and making you feel like you are a second class citizen and that nothing is urgent. Repeated calls and requests for help have been addressed in a lackadaisical manner and no one at the firm exhibits any ownership of an issue to drive it through to completion.
I seldom leave Unilocal reviews but the service has been THAT bad over the last week in trying to get an issue fixed at our building that I felt compelled to try and save other from my frustrations.
Specifically — Sunny Park is terrible and if we could fire Westward from the management of our building right now — I would.
Run, don’t walk from these ineffective and unprofessional managers of «fee» collecting.

The worst property management company I have ever worked with. If I could give it zero stars I would. The people are 1) incredibly difficult to get a hold of, 2) rude, arrogant, and inconsiderate once you get ahold of them, 3) does not follow through on requests at all. By far the WORST customer service I have ever experienced. A management company is supposed to help make owning property easier. Not these guys. They ADD work to my already complicated situation.

This company shut off the hot water to a day care without notifying anyone. When asked about the situation the response was «I am sure the babies can survive fine without hot water».
I read your response. How do you explain your employee’s remark that the babies can survive fine with out water? Your company is arrogant and does not act like a service provider.
Furthermore, if you were a top service provider you should know there is a day care in the building you manage and lack of water might be an issue.

If I could give this place a zero star, I would. It has been nothing but problems since we moved in. First, nothing was fixed on our list when we moved in. Fixing these items were written in as contingencies and they were never dealt with. The night before were supposed to move in, the place was still filthy. I guess they at least cleaned the place sometime in the middle of the night, prior to us moving the next morning. Second, we can’t have a key code to buzz people in from the downstairs. So, every time we have a visitor we have to go downstairs and open the door for them. Third, there is constant complaining about everything we do and the Board actually takes them all seriously. It’s just awful. Check your management company and DO NOT live in a building managed by this company. It’s a terrible place to live and the people are an absolute nightmare to deal with! Also, before someone from Westward Property Management responds to this and says ‘It wasn’t us’ (as they have done with several reviews below) let me reassure you it is them! I am not confused in the slightest.

The only positive about this company is Joe Semany. He was the only individual that would even respond to me. Every appliance broke while we lived there and was not promptly fixed, if fixed at all. Security deposit took 30 days to get back, and the only reason we got it back was because I went to the office to get it, which should not need to happen.

On more than one occasion I have called this Property Mgmt company and asked to speak to the account rep that handles the building in questions. I have never received a call back. More than one time and the last two years we have had issues with their landscapers that the building uses and they end up using our property as their dumping ground. They blow leaves into our backyard under the fence and in the front. They have cut down trees and left huge branches, debris and what not overnight and didn’t come and pick it up until I called 5 times! The landscaping company they use is a direct reflection of the mgmt company thoughtless and careless.

Thanks David for the educational update. I’m on two different condo boards and while I’d like to think I fully understand what we can legally and legally not do, it’s always great to hear someone like you recite legal jargon but not add context to why I’m posting this review. In your reply, you stated «Our legal abilities end at providing access to the common room in which they are located, which we are more than happy to do whenever access is needed». The funny thing is, this is exactly what Westward refused to do. Provide access to the Common Elements. People’s Gas made arrangements with your firm to obtain access to the Common Elements where the meters are located, however your firm (i.e. Brandon) didn’t show up. So, feel free to add more legal jargon or attempt to show me your contractual obligations, but at the end of the day, you refuse to do what you are legally obligated to do and refuse to acknowledge it.
Again, anyone considering to use Westward, expect more of this rhetoric with them. Best of luck.

These clowns are a nightmare as a condo association property management company:
1) They charge exorbitant fees for the paperwork required to sell your condo. Then they charge exorbitant rush fees on top of it. Then they fail to deliver the paperwork on time. Then they fail to communicate with you in any way, shape or form about the missing paperwork. Alex, the person I dealt with when selling my unit, failed every time to perform the functions I was paying her to perform in a timely or professional manner. Then she got snippy when I called her on it.
2) They fail to follow up on any quotes, comparisons or other decision-​making support services when your condo board is trying to hire contractors. They promise during your board meetings to give you quotes on X or a list of vendors for Y. Then you follow up with them over and over and over again if you ever want answers.
3) They seem more interested in selling your residents add-​on services — and recommending the vendors they’re already cozy with — than in helping your board and your residents save time, save money or find the best vendors.
4) They fail to adequately keep records for your building when they switch reps on you. Ryan, my board’s original rep, was decent. But once he handed the reigns over to his successor — without giving us any warning — suddenly we lost all sense of continuity. We may as well have just changed companies since we were back to square one regarding pretty much everything.
Avoid dealing with Westward Management at all costs.

I wish I could give zero stars. I was very disappointed in how this company does business on a daily basis. They are slow to respond, and I only ever received responses after sending follow-​up messages. When I did receive responses, only part of my email was addressed, and other questions remained outstanding.
I represent a Seller of a property, and we need documents to send to the new Buyer. My client already had some documents in his possession from when he purchased, and he had access to many of them in the online portal, as well. I asked Westward for clarification on whether the Bylaws were included in the Declarations, as they sometimes are, but the document my client had physically and found online was named «Declarations.» The response I finally received was that every document is separate and has a separate fee, so I ordered and paid for the Bylaws. Not surprisingly, I received my order and the Declarations and the Bylaws were the exact same document. That is precisely why I asked for clarification.
After escalating the file, I was told by the property manager that he was out of the office and unable to call me, which is a cowardly move. He also told me it is up to me to know what documents to order. How am I supposed to know that a document named «Declarations» that made no mention of the phrase «Bylaws» was the same thing? It sometimes is included in that document, and some Associations don’t have all of the documents. That is precisely why I asked for clarification.
Westward easily could have requested and reviewed the document I had. Instead, they didn’t, and now we are out the money for their poor actions.

Westward was our management company for a few years. They were great at first, but then started slacking on a few things… overall though, not bad, and the one that our Board switched us to this year has been really awful so far. Most of the things that people didn’t like about Westward were really due to some really unpleasant and unreasonable owners in the building, so not really their fault at all.
A few notes:
* They have a website that has a number of handy features, like a list of contractors/​vendors they’d recommend and all your condo docs in one spot. However, it also has a discussion board feature which became the source of great consternation — imagine an Internet comments section run amok, and you’ve got an idea of how quickly this feature devolves into unbearable lunacy. I wouldn’t recommend this feature to other boards. It’s a great idea and sounds wonderful for transparency and easy communication but it is shocking to see how many unbalanced people can afford to buy a condo, and how many of them are your neighbors!
* They’d prepare really thorough packets of information for our association meetings — budgets (estimated vs. actuals), detailed income and expenditure reports, good predictions of what we would need to spend in the coming year, good explanations for what everything meant.
* They were very responsive, usually replying to inquiries or service requests within 24 hours.
Again, they did slack on a few things, and for about a year we had a really bad manager assigned to us, but then they assigned a new one and things got better quickly. Unfortunately a new Board fired them and moved on to another management company which has been underwhelming at best.

Okay, so it wasn’t a totally pain-​free experience, but we got the job done. For months I’ve had someone parking next to me with their huge truck making it very hard for me to get in and out. Working with Ryan, our property manager, we determined that they were in fact in violation of the building rules. It was determined we needed to address the issue with the board. Being that I’m not on the board, it was refreshing that Ryan walked me through the process and ultimately got things resolved. He was an amazing advocate for me which I truly appreciated.

If you are a homeowners association and are looking for a management company then Westward is perfect fit for you if…
— You get a thrill out of flushing money down the toilet
— You enjoy getting overcharged for everything, 3−4x the market rate (they charged us $ 480 to remove a few inches of snow in a small courtyard)
— Unresponsiveness, laziness, and inaction are how you get business done
I have not worked with a more useless, ineffective, and greedy company than Westward. If you have an issue, they will «overcharge» you first, attempt to fix the issue, then charge you again… reminds me of a crooked auto repair shop.
Our association’s dissatisfaction culminated in a foreclosed unit that had it’s heat shutoff during the polar vortex. After owners reported the issue Westward did absolutely nothing except running a tract search. We waited 5 days for that? Finally, one of the owners called a locksmith and found two pipes had burst and the entire apartment flooded. To say that Westward’s behavior was GROSS NEGLIGENCE is an understatement.
If you are even considering giving them any business, I would highly encourage you to reconsider. Just a horribly run company that couldn’t care less about their customers.

I’m finding as long as your condo board stays on top of Westward-​things improve. I’m adding a star. Our weekly cleaning team is doing a good job & are very courteous.

I am so happy to update this review! We had the most amazing experience with Westward for the first 2 years that we had them and then they switched the contact for our property. They have since parted ways with that employee and things are back to the good ‘ol days. We now have David and his team taking care of us and they are really great, I must say. I can’t yet give them 5 stars because we did have that really painful period, but they really have worked very hard to get back to 4 stars and I commend them for their efforts. As long as they continue down this path, I will continue to recommend them for property management needs in Chicago.

In truth, I would assign 1.5 stars, but I am not inclined to round up for these folks. I will start with the good:
–They attended the board meetings as discussed.
–They made handouts for every board meeting including all relevant spreadsheets.
–The lobby/​shared spaces were cleaned per the contract.
However, the bad far outweighs the good.
–The financials were usually wrong, generally not resulting in huge discrepancies, but enough to be noticeable. The building manager’s standard response at the meetings was, «Huh. I’ll look into that.»
–Fair to poor responsiveness on repair requests. In one case, it took 7 phone calls over 3 weeks to get reimbursed for an emergency repair on the shared condo plumbing that I had paid for out-​of-​pocket. On several other occasions, email responsiveness was very slow.
–They charge outrageous fees for simple tasks related to moving. I recently sold my condo, and they charged me $ 150 for the paid assessment letter, which does NOT require legal or notary processing, and which their representative informed me takes 5 minutes to print out and send. That results in an hourly rate of $ 1,800 for their help on something that should be a COURTESY. They told me that «these fees are standard.» According to my lawyer, SOME companies charge fees but he had not seen $ 150. My husband, who was selling his condo as well, was given his forms for free by his management company. Beware if you are moving into or out of a building managed by Westward. (They also charged me separately for the 22.1 condo disclosure form, which I had expected).
–I had to pay my lawyer for an extra hour of service (albeit nowhere near $ 1800 per hour) to take care of something related to the title that they failed to do and which was their responsibility as the building managers.
I am very displeased with their service. I would not recommend them.

I have never worked with company that is less responsive than Westward. They manage the building for our condo assoc where we have had many problems in our unit. Each time, getting the unit fixed is major, major pain along with sub-​par work.
This last time, our entire kitchen needed to be ripped out due to broken pipes under the floor. The grey water from all the units in the building sat under our unit causing mold and warping the floors which now need to be repaired. We have a quote in place to get this fixed and I have 5 separate emails into 3 different people at Westward. Not one has gotten back to me. Terrible way to run a business, stay away.

Westward was our property management company when I lived in Chicago. They were responsive, efficient and courteous. Their online service is also handy.
I cannot imagine what it must be like dealing with the various boards & associations they have to deal with in their line of work. Ours was nuts, so I can only imagine what it was like to deal with others.
They handled all issues very well and I would recommend them in a heart beat. Keep up the good work guys!

After several years of sub-​standard management by Rosen, our association made the switch to Westward Management.
Ian Duni of Westward was both courteous and professional while facilitating the transition (which could have been smoother had Rosen been more cooperative). Since the switch, homeowners have voiced their happiness with having a management company that responds to emails and phone calls as well as maintenance requests.
All in all, we’re very happy with Westward Management and would definitely recommend them to any association looking for management.

Westward stinks. After 2 years of shoddy service & condescending, obnoxious treatment from Ian our building finally dumped them. Thank goodness.
But hey, if you want a guy who’s going to talk down to you, make promises he never keeps, and outright lies to your face, by all means, hire Westward.

We’ve been using Westward in our building for about 2 years now, and I have to say I’m very impressed.
I’m the head of our condo association, so I have to deal with them a lot, and everyone there is very nice and professional. Building problems get fixed quickly and properly, which is exactly what you want/​need in a management company.
The online building complaint system works very well, you just enter your issue on their webpage, it gets fixed, and then they send you an email to let you know it’s done!
Overall, no complaints at all, I would recommend them highly!