The RentConfident Guide to Loud Noises and What to Do About Them.

Share Button

Apartment life in Chicago is full of weird sounds. When you pile this many people together in close spaces it's inevitable that the noises of daily life will intrude on each others' peace of mind. This guide lists the most common disruptive sounds and ways that Chicago renters can combat them. It isn't meant to be exhaustive, but I do hope to return to it occasionally as other noises cross my mind. If you are disturbed by a particular sound and want me to add it to the list, just drop a comment below and I'll see what I can do!

Stuff you should report via 311

Airplanes. File a complaint at Chicago Noise Complaint or 311.
Animal Abuse. A little barking is normal, but if you hear constant barking from a neglected or mistreated animal you should give a call to 311 or submit a 311 request. (Select "Pet Wellness Check.")

Published by

Kay Cleaves

Don’t Love Thy Neighbor Part IV: 10 different ways of complaining about your neighbors

Share Button

Emailing your landlord to get something fixed is never a pleasant task. You're probably dealing with a problem that has bothered you for days, weeks or even months. It's usually a problem that's made you really angry or at least annoyed. When you're writing to complain about your noisy, scary or obnoxious neighbors, there's usually also an unspoken request - you want your landlord to evict them, or at least cause them severe financial distress in exchange for the emotional distress they've brought upon you.

There's a lot of different ways you can phrase a complaint. You can be sweet or vicious. You can threaten or beg. You can state your case and try to make it seem like your peace and quiet is more important than your neighbor's social life.

When I worked in property management I was not someone who could do anything to fix tenants' problems - I was in the leasing department, not maintenance or legal. However, my email address was sometimes the only contact info that a tenant still had on hand, so many of them sent their complaints to me. I was on the receiving end of hundreds of angry emails. There was nothing I could do about it but read them, and then hit the "Forward" button to send them on to the right place.

Today I've combed through my old email archive to find some excerpts to share with you. I'm not going to say much in the way of judgment. The authors of these emails were angry, frightened or dealing with other extremes of emotion. I'll leave it up to you to decide which tenants got it just right, which ones were brown-nosing and which just took their complaints into the realm of verbal abuse. Just bear in mind that these were among the 50 to 100 emails I would receive and respond to each day.

By the way, if you have issues with high blood pressure you might want to give this one a pass.

Please! Think of the children!

I wanted to issue a complaint about my next door neighbors. They have been in the building since the end of October, and it has been a problem ever since. They are constantly loud in the halls (screaming, cursing) and play their music loudly. The final straw for me was being awakened at 3:30 a.m. last night to a loud, screaming argument right out in the courtyard. It went on for about 15 minutes and other tenants in the building were yelling out their windows for these people to be quiet and to tell them that the police had been called. [...] As long as I have lived here (3 1/2 years) I have never seen or heard anything that bad. There are children in this building and I really don't think that anyone wants their children exposed to loud, foul-mouthed, drunken behavior on a constant basis. This used to be a very quiet building, but there has been no peace since they moved in here.

Please! Think of the kitties!

I'm writing to complain about our upstairs neighbors in 3W. A while back we had asked them if they could be a little quieter with their feet and they acted like they had no idea what we were talking about and ignored us when we knocked on their door, so we called in and someone sent them a letter from your office notifying them of our complaint. They came down and we talked about it. They said they would try to be a little quieter and we said we'd try to have a little grace for them.
The catfight continues this way...

Published by

Kay Cleaves

How Great Tenants Blow Apartment Showings Once They Finally Get Inside

Share Button

This is the final installment of a three-part series covering what not to do during an apartment showing. Part 1 covered the biggest mistakes renters make when booking apartment showings. Part 2 provided some things to avoid when first meeting the landlord's agent and looking around an apartment building's lobby. But the meat and potatoes of an apartment showing happens when you get into the apartment, and it wouldn't be a complete series if I didn't cover all the things that can go wrong once you're finally inside.

As before, these are all things that I've seen renters do during apartment showings. While these actions may have meant nothing to them at the time, they weren't little things like leaving a light on. These are big mistakes that ensured that they wasted the few minutes they had to see the inside of their next potential homes.

  • Announce to the world that you know that "one trick to make sure your next apartment doesn't have mold" by opening the cabinet under the kitchen sink and peering around. Don't look in any other cupboards or cabinets, nor behind the shower curtain, along the baseboards, or behind furniture.
  • If the current tenant is home, ask them to provide their brutally honest opinion of the landlord and building while the agent is standing in the room.

More stupid apartment hunting mistakes right this way!

Published by

Kay Cleaves

RentConfident in … the Mysterious Affair at Skokie (The Conclusion!)

Share Button

Last Friday I posted a fun apartment research mystery that I solved for a RentConfident customer. I left the ending of the story unfinished, hoping that you would enjoy the mental puzzle of figuring out my reasoning. When we left off, I had determined that my customer's prospective new landlord was lying to her. Today I will explain how I knew. You should probably go read the first part before you read what follows, although if you're the type to read the ending of a mystery before the beginning I won't fault you. As before, names, dates and locations have been changed to protect the innocent. Warning, spoilers ahead!

Published by

Kay Cleaves

RentConfident in … the Mysterious Affair at Skokie

Share Button

The following is a true story. Names, dates and addresses have been changed to protect the innocent.

I am often asked how I connect the dots to assemble our apartment reports. I am also often asked why we charge $65 for our Signature Reports. The answer is simple - unlike other web-based startups that rely on a limited number of data sources and a handful of opinions, our reports require the manual assembly of the latest data available from over 60 different federal, state, county and city government sources. Not only that, but every report requires our researchers to apply all of their knowledge of real estate, leasing, residential rental laws and advanced research techniques.

Today, to give you an example of our work, I'm going to tell you the story of a recent case that pushed my "little grey cells" to the limit.

It was a sweltering spring night at RentConfident HQ. I was working late, paging through newswires about apartment litigation and flash in the pan web startups when the message light on my phone went red. Her name was Melanie. She might have been tall, leggy and gorgeous but I'll never know since I only spoke to her through text. What I do know is that she's got two kids, a husband, and a major problem on her hands.

"Landlord wants 2 move his family into our apartment. He's given 60 days. Looking in Skokie. Can u help?"

Now, I don't normally take cases in Skokie. They don't publish the data I need. Chicago may have her flaws but she's a complete stool pigeon when it comes to giving up the goods on bad landlords. Skokie on the other hand is a tight-lipped, closed-off town. No bona fides, no coverage, no dice, and I said as much to Miss Melanie. But she was insistent and promised to make it worth my while. I took the assignment. What can I say, I'm a sucker for dames in distress.

"Alright, sweetheart. I'll take your case. The federal, state and county level information is the same, but I'm warning you, when it comes to turning up city data like building code violations and construction permits I'm gonna be out of my depth."

I figured I'd never hear from her again. After all, what good is an investigation if it can only turn up half of the data? But three days later I get another text. "We've found an apartment! We applied for it! Can you check it out for us?" She passed along the address. I shrugged and got to work. Read on for lying landlords, ignorant agents and a cold-hearted condo association.

Published by

Kay Cleaves