The Philly Apartment Company

Consumer BEWARE by all means avoid all contact with the philly apartment company. If this is an actual business and not a scam to jip you out of trumped up fees then it is by far the worst most unprofessional disorganized banned of incompetence to ever hold a logo. SCROLL NO FURTHER. I wish to do my fellow man a favor and possibly save some poor person there hard earned money and time. They post and repost units that are not available communication between the so called agents is non existent and to add insult to injury, they will try to convince you that there application is worth your security deposit. Thank god for my boyfriend who has minimal legal knowledge and threatened to file suit against these hustlers. Lucky for us we were able to find another unit to rent on our own.

Avoid at all cost, they took my deposit when I decide to not move in. The things is they found another tenant right away and the tenant paid the deposit, then why keeping my money?! Super sketchy company dealing with other realities to steal your money.

Bait and switch, completely unorganized and bombard you with emails and texts more concerned if they are going to rent to you and get their commission than what matters to the client. 6 different prices on apartments, updated daily on Craigslist. This company is deceptive. Avoid

I’d found a place I really liked via Craigslist a few months ago and e-​mailed to inquire about move in costs and other issues. I was told my move-​in date was too far away (approximately 2.5 months) and that the owner wanted immediate occupancy. I understood and searched elsewhere.
About two weeks ago I found the same apartment was listed as still open. I e-​mailed again and said I was only a few weeks out now and wanted to learn more about the place. The response was to come see the apartment, but I also had to pay a $ 60 application fee plus the first month’s rent in advance to see if I qualified. If I didn’t get the place, I would get the first month’s rent back. So I was expected to pay over $ 900 to apply?
I’ve lived in three states and I have never heard of advancing the first month’s rent plus an application fee to apply for a place.

Made an appointment to look at an apartment. Between that time and the actual appointment the apartment was rented. I was not informed of this fact and had to wait in front of the apartment for 15 minutes before the leasing agent explained why she wasn’t there. Pretty representative of all of my past dealings with PAC. I am sure they have moments of competency, just be sure to call and double-​confirm every plan you make with them.

I’m sorry that other people were met with poor customer service.
I was lucky enough to get on the phone with Shantese Ash who was, simply, amazing. She was on the ball and a natural when it comes to working with people.
I told Shantese that I needed to move out ASAP from where I was living — like within the next hour — and told her the places I had looked at online. Told her my price range. She immediately got in touch with those properties and called me back. With such poor customer service abounding in the rental world, I was impressed. She also sent me confirmation emails with the places I was scheduled to visit.
Shantese gets five stars. The reason PAC gets three stars is that some of their companies listing with them didn’t get back to us… and then, after getting a place on my own, follow-​up emails were sent for over a month (even after I told him we had found a place).

What a waste. Drove all the way down from the NYC area to view some one bedroom apartments. I made appointments with philly apartment co to view two units. I showed up to the building and met with the building manager who said that they were only offering studios. The building manager was very apologetic and even called my leasing agent to see what happened. Even he said that they were looking for a new company to advertise their building since PAC is so unorganized. Go elsewhere.

Awful customer service. Found a listing online, was able to call and set up a showing with an agent. Got there right on time, waited and waited for thirty minutes, called her twice without any response. Finally she texted me saying she had sent me an email and she had to go pick up her son from school because he was sick. I looked everywhere through my emails but didn’t find any email of this sort. I gave her benefit of the doubt and texted back asking if she was still on her way or if we should reschedule. Never got a text or call back after that. I really like to give people benefit of the doubt, I can understand if there was an emergency she had to attend to, but it was extremely unprofessional to never hear back from her again. So shady and strange.

Nono, NO. No, no. No no no no ()

This company is absolute garbage. They are a waste of space and breath. After chatting with a representative to find the perfect apartment, she set up tours for us to look at the apartments and told us to meet her there at the first apartment — promptly — at 8am on a Saturday. We unfortunately accepted this ludicrous offer, and drug our asses to the city to tour for the day. Well, our realtor NEVER SHOWED UP, never answered the phone, never returned our emails or calls after that moment. There we were, in the city, apartment hunting with no realtor, and no reply. I actually hope she was seriously injured or had an emergency at the time, as that would be the only excuse for behaving so poorly to clients. But, judging from the reviews here, it appears they are just ignorant thieves who are inconsiderate of everyone’s time.

I didn’t come across these Unilocal reviews for the Philly Apartment Company until after I had already started correspondence with them, so I expected to be disappointed… but I was pleasantly surprised (for the most part).
They have A LOT of listings on Craigslist. If you are willing to put in the legwork and find the place you want to see and reach out to have an appointment scheduled, they can make it happen. I wouldn’t necessarily rely on the listings that they send you based on your criteria — most of the apartments I ended up seeing were as a result of my own searching.
I worked with Heather, who was very pleasant to work with and generally very responsive, excluding the fact that her direct line always went directly to voicemail. With that said, she was always prompt in returning my calls and responding to my emails. I think a big reason I had a good experience was due to the fact that the owner of the condo I am renting was very invested and was actively involved in scheduling the showing. I could see how the overall experience would turn sour if landlords and/​or owners were difficult to reach or flaky.
PAC cashed my deposit check the same day they received it and kept me up to date on the status of my application and pending lease agreement. As a «broker» of sorts, they met all of my expectations.

I have nothing good to say about this firm. While they made the process of viewing an apartment simple all they care about is signing you up. Once you have signed the papers you will not hear from them again until they need something from you.
The lease you sign will be in the name of Blue Square Realty, who have one representative and who is the opposite of helpful and often downright combative.
At time for move out I was forced to leave the apartment quickly at which point the company kept my entire security deposit and refused to honor the lease I had signed.
If at all possible I would do business with any other listing company and realtor than The Philly Apartment Company.

Three years passed by since the last review and this company has not changed.
The only reason I gave this 2 stars because they are smart about advertising their listings, especially on Craigslist.
Here is my experience with this company: their touring specialists are basically someone to show you the house, I experienced two, one actually ditched me, he did not show up twice; the other one has zero knowledge about the places she is showing, even the fucking locations for Christ sake.
And the guy at the company itself is not better.
Don’t bother unless you can suck up terrible customer service for a rental.

Unprofessional.
Let me first say that I am writing a review purely based on the perspective of a prospective renter, not a current tenant.
To make a long story short, if their response time and communication skills to prospective renters is any indication of their management of their properties, this company is most likely either A. Very short-​staffed; B. Very unprofessional; or 3. They don’t check their e-​mail. In all 3 cases, I wouldn’t really want to live somewhere where it’s managed by an incapable company.
The tardiness is specifically referring to a guy named Jeff! After he took like 5 business days to respond to my initial inquiry, he asked me some questions, to which I responded immediately, and now it’s been another 6 days with no response!
Oh well. The early bird gets the worm, and this company will rarely get it.

Very frustrating to use and poor communication within the company. We looked at two properties — the first they later said it was «against Philly law» to rent to us, despite showing us the apartment in the first place, then realizing there was no such law and they were wrong. For the second place we received a verbal ok from the agent, only to find out the next day that some other agent had shown the place earlier and it was off the market.
Their service is free, sure, but I would not recommend them to anyone. We got a real agent and had zero stress in finding a place. Using Philly Apartment Company was a massive waste of time.

I tried to use Philly apartment company in the past few weeks to find a new apartment in the area. I contacted the company and was put in touch with one of their agents, who forwarded me a list of apartments. I went through them and picked out the ones I wanted to see. However, when I tried to schedule an appointment for a Saturday, he repeatedly blew me off and then told me he was waiting for the agents schedule to come out. He never emailed me back and never responded to an initial email I sent. I will not use this service again and will tell others about my experience.

Possibly the worst real estate company out there.
This is how the company works: You call and are assigned an office agent. The office agent is great, the so-​called ‘bait’ for which you fall for. He is interested, knowledgeable, will match you with apartments that fit your needs.
Then you go to see an apartment, and only one real estate agent out in the field is assigned to show that particular apartment so you have to work with them to schedule a viewing.
If you like the apartment, you then pay an application fee (the most expensive in town, $ 50 per person) and are assured they will get back to you in 48 hours. WARNING: by applying, you also have to provide a one month deposit in the form of a certified check, and if you are approved and do not move in, for whatever reason, they reserve the right to keep your one month deposit.
Once you are approved you will work once again with the listing agent (the one who showed you the place) to get your contract signed and voila, the apartment is yours.
In essence, it sounds simple enough, but is, however, completely dependent on who your listing agent is.
In our case, the company took 1 week to let us know if we were approved (from later conversations with the owner of the place, he wasn’t even aware we existed until the lease was made), and then took 3 more weeks to produce a lease, that then took another week to alter with the things we had specifically requested when we applied for the apartment, which ultimately cost us a ‘free month if lease signed by x’ as we clearly signed three weeks after that due date. In the meantime, two other units had rented through another real estate company and the owner was just as flabbergasted as we were.
Thank you, phillyaptco, for making what could have been a streamlined process, into an extremely harrowing, stressful, and painful process.
I understand that it all depends on who your listing agent is, but that is exactly why this model doesn’t work. You need to have one person in charge of everything for you, of selecting places, then showing them to you, then running your credit and then producing a lease, to have any sort of reasonable expectation that they will be held accountable for you.
Veer away. In most cases the owners of a place will be working with more than one real estate company. Look up the address on the internet and go with more respectable companies that will be oh-​so-​much less painful.

Friendly. The company seems a little disorganized. Nice to have one stop shopping for alot of the apartments. I suspect there is an increase in rental cost because of the service.
Pros: Found a great apartment without much searching. They accommodated us by adjusting the move in date.
Cons: We went to a showing and nobody was there because there was a lack of communication between employees at PAC. Their phone /​internet service went down when I was trying to sign the lease and I had to do alot of communicating between my previous and current property management companies.

«Meh» is an adequate summation of my experience with Philly Apartment Company. They were friendly and professional during my first interaction with them, but they also introduced me to the Adelphia House.[1] That’s like dating a hot girl and later discovering that she gave you the clap. I think that’s an accurate analogy…
Recently, I called ‘Aaron’ to let him know I wasn’t happy with my current lodgings and was searching for a new apartment, he never responded (by phone or email). I found this to be rather odd because the first time around he hassled me over the course of two months repeatedly asking if I was still interested in finding an apartment. Now he can’t be bothered to even send an email? It doesn’t matter. I don’t plan to use Philly Apartment Company again.
So once again… Meh.
P. S. Also, the «our e-​mails were blocked» bit… Hmm…
[1]See review:

I’m going to go kind of middle of the road on this one…
My timeline of moving was pretty flexible as a friend of mine was moving into my old apartment and wanted to move as soon as possible, however I was already paid up through the overlapping month. I have lived in Chinatown for the entirety of my residence in Philadelphia and have had some pretty sketchy/​ethic questionable landlords and units in the neighborhood. I figured with this move as I was going out on my own this time around, I would go with a real agency that would walk me through and take me by the hand through the process.
I already knew what building I wanted to move into, it was more or less just a question of what would be available and when to make the move possible. I wasn’t being stubborn, I just knew that this would be convenient to work, social life, and the roommates that I was leaving behind. I called Philly Apartment Co. and spoke with Andrew who understood my reservations about living elsewhere for monetary reasons and made setting up appointments very quick and easy. Rick showed me two available units in my time frame and was quick to answer any lingering questions I had.
One thing to be known is that if you want to complete an application on a unit, the security deposit is due with the application to hold the unit. Whether you want it or not after application submission, you are locked in if you are approved so you can kiss other options goodbye or kiss your deposit goodbye, either way you need to know for certain what you’re getting into. I guess it worked in my favor knowing what building I was moving to and having had first hand knowledge from former building tennants on life in that residence.
My only minor issue was that my bank is not a real bank, I mean it is, but it isn’t. There are no local branches and so if I want a certified check I need to pay a massive draft/​mailing fee which tacked onto the already heft deposit that I put down. The building owner was a little cautious with my situation as my rent would be higher than the percentage of income typically accepted into renting a unit, however after putting down the last 2 months of rent secured his knowing that I could afford my rent. Neither of those issues were the fault of the rental company, I understand their wanting to be sure that initial checks will clear.
The only real complaint I have and this is what knocks the service from 4 to 3 stars is that after the total down payment was made on the apartment and after I was given the property manager’s contact information I have yet to receive a return call on a few lingering questions that I have. Pretty much I just wanted to know whether or not they had received my payment as it was coming priority mail to their office, I’m assuming they got it in full as I’m all moved in now and happily settled. If they had better post-​process communication I would be a little bit more comfortable, however all in all had a positive experience with the company and would be willing to use them in the future.