Advantage Management

Hey I see Bill M. is posting on here LOL 5 stars huh Bill? Funny there was Bill M. who is or was the property manager for my building and worked for Advantage Management. Haven’t been able to get in touch with him in months. No big deal since I still have the hole in my ceiling that leaks water. Hey Neal S. Mr. Big time owner? Your actually worse then Bill M. I have only emailed you 5 times this week and called your office everyday. No big deal what’s her face Kim G. is handling your accounts as you are out «today». So what happened to yesterday or the day before? You know how to set up your email to let people know your out of town? Or just don’t care? It’s funny because I left her 3 messages today and haven’t heard back from her either… SHocker!

Horrible is all I can say. The managers of properties are so unresponsive. You leave messages and they simply don’t return calls or emails in a timely manner if at all. They are a disgrace to the property management business. All they do is get close with the board members and start raising your fees. Do not use this company, you will be sorry.

Advantage Management has been managing our Condo building for the past few years. Employees at Advantage are always very timely with responses to questions and requests that I may have with my Condo. I could not ask for better customer service. Whenever, a problem arises with the building, Jeremy is here to advise us and help find the best solution to the problem. If you are looking for Property Managers, I suggest you give Advantage Management a call.

Advantage Management has been managing my condo building for a number of years and has done a great job handling the management of both day-​to-​day tasks and emergency issues at our building. Jeremy is our primary contact and is always available to answer questions and help resolve issues. His many years of experience and relationships with a variety of contractors and vendors has been extremely valuable to our building. As both a board member and unit owner, I would definitely recommend Jeremy and Advantage Management to other buildings looking for a dependable management company.

No stars should be an option. Inept. Completely useless. I could go on and on but it’s not worth my time. Avoid this company, they are beyond terrible and I don’t see how a group this stupid is still in business.
I’m sure there a few good management companies out there, this is not one of them. I have talked with many of my neighbors and not one has said anything favorable about AM.

In additional to the other 1 – 2 stars… This management company is awful. For example, in our condo garage there was a leaky pipe above our car. They placed a tarp under the leaky pipe/​above our car as a way to «fix» this. Well, eventually the tarp filled and was leaking corrosive liquid along with cement onto our car. Mind you, we brought this to Eric Ruby’s (the «licensed property manager») attention on numerous occasions. His replies weren’t in a timely fashion (5 – 6 day wait with multiple emails/​phone calls before a response) and less than helpful. Basically we were told suck it up… Because it was winter… Nothing the building could do about it. When asked regarding additional parking to prevent further damage to our car… No response. EVER. After 3 – 4 emails and numerous phone calls and voicemails… We gave up. Said tarp is still above our car… It’s been 6 months… It’s currently August, I guess it’s still «too cold» outside.
If you want a company that will ignore your concerns and be generally rude to you with every exchange (especially ERIC RUBY), this is the company to choose… Otherwise, you’re better off having a homeless person manage your property.

Awful. I don’t know how long my association is going to keep this company for but I wish they had checked Unilocal first. They just sent me an outstanding bill for 900 dollars. I had to waste my time sending them all of my check stubs for simple assessments payments that I had paid on time every month. They had lost record of my payments over 4 times. Get with it people.

I am extremely disappointed with Advantage Management and would not recommend their services to anyone. They took over the association for my neighborhood in January and did not send me a welcome packet, nor did they send me any information regarding our new association dues. After calling numerous times and getting bounced from one office member to the next, I was finally assured that a welcome packet with billing information was in the mail. Even though I provided my updated contact information, the packet was mailed to the homeowner’s who I purchased my townhome from over two years ago, and live in another county!
To make a long story (of three months of arguing with this company) short, I still have YET to receive any information from this company, other than one invoice that was emailed to me, after I called yet another time complaining about their lack of follow through.
I would recommend steering clear of Advantage Management, as they are unorganized, careless and unprofessional.

This is the worst management I have ever come across. They hire complete idiots who are unprofessional and never get the job done on time. Our condo manager never gets things done timely if at all, talks about and complains about the tenants openly in the lobby, the staff downstairs are unprofessional without manners and always on the their cell phones. Total joke.

If I could give zero stars, I would. I own a unit in a building they manage and I am still unsure of what exactly they do for us owners. Andrea is quite possibly one of the rudest «professionals» I have ever dealt with in my life. She once told me that I would have to write down all of the information she was relaying to me on the phone, because she simply «did not have enough time» to send me an email. We’re all busy, lady. It’s just appalling — if you’re thinking of using them, DON’T.

This is my 2^nd review and I hope that Unilocal will not remove this review as it did the first because it is truthful and to the point. All these other Unilocalers have basically stated the same and should be believed, so this is evidence of honesty and truthful information. Facts are facts and should not be removed.
First of all, the manager at 4300 N. Marine Dr. is extremely rude to residents. She has the inability to answer a question regarding any situation or give a straight forward answer, and turns a simple answer to a question into a situation that doesn’t or never existed. She consistently lies about what you have said and you are left wondering at her incapabilites to answer a simple question. If she doesn’t like the question, that’s how she handles her answer. An answer that has nothing to do with the question. Her attitude, sarcasm, and insensitivity towards people is unprofessional. I have literally seen her make faces at people when they leave her office. She is unprofessional, confidentiality is unheard of with her. As many other Unilocalers have stated lying by this management company is normal. She talks about other residents to other residents, and their personal business. She will look for anyway to write someone up and has the staff keep a watch out for anyone that she could fine. She is incompetent and lacks in her skills in being a professional manager. Her dislike for pets is quite obvious with constant write ups and warnings to people and her insensitivity to special needs of pets and handicapped people is quite evident. Don’t expect this management to go out of their way for you for any situation. In my past years living here, I have never seen the manager get up from behind her desk and leave her office. Besides her unprofessional attitude and phoniness, priority is given to members of the board and their friends in turning a blind eye as far as the rules being enforced. This is an awfully poorly run building, and you will never get a truthful answer from the management, the incompetent board, or staff regarding anything. I would stay away from any building run by this company. As long as Advantage manages this building, this building will always be doomed as far as reputation and value.

These guys are really awful. In the course of a year living in one of their properties,
I’ve witnessed a contractor they hired cursing out a tenant, dealt with massive delays in anything I’ve asked them to do, and usually have had to call at least twice (usually three times) to get a call back on anything. Oh, and I think they might have shoveled around our property one time all winter. Better off hiring a different company or doing it yourself.

RUN do not walk away from this company. Would give it no stars if I could.
As an appraiser I deal with numerous management companies. I spent OVER 2 weeks trying to get information from this company regarding a property they manage. After speaking with the owner, Neal, he assured my I would have the information. The person who called me back (the following week BTW) was unable to answer my questions and agreed to forward my email address to the property manager. When I sent her an email she wanted me to pay for the info that the owner, Neal, assured me would be FREE.
The result: She was UNABLE to tell me basic property information. A manager’s job is to know the property and this is not the case with Advantage.
Two weeks for basic information is ridiculous, only to not be able to answer my questions is even worse.
It is RARE for anyone to answer the phone.
You cannot wait «on hold» for someone when you call. According to the receptionist (who is rude) the system does not allow for that. Which between you and me is odd — you have to put someone on hold to transfer the call don’t you???
Neal, the owner, did apologize for my frustration, as it was definitely showing during our phone conversation. He explained with the holidays he had a skeleton staff. Nice of him to let his business grind to a halt so people can take time off for the holidays.
Bottom line, if the person with the answers isn’t there whoever is covering for them should have been able to provide the answers. If NO ONE is available that owner should have been able to open a computer program, go to the specific property and answer my questions.
I doubt I would have received the information in a timely manner had I paid the exorbitant $ 195 fee they wanted for answers in writing. Maybe they are unclear on the concept that this is their JOB, they are PAID to provide services for the unit owners. Like it or not knowing the property the manage and responding to an appraiser is a part of that job.

I have the unfortunate experience of renting a unit in a condo building they management. Does the word inept mean Advantage Management? Even when I have a problem with a common area of the building — like the laundry room — I am told that I must contact my landlord who has NOTHING to do with landlord and is not in his control. You would think they would WANT to know something is wrong but no, they don’t. The building is dirty, they are rude people and make living in a building managed by them feel like they are doing me a favor. Repairs are never made, and they only have excuses. They are worthless. Even lonely tenants and not owners have to use the parking lot, elevator and laundry room. But then, I am a second class citizen.

My husband and I have joked that these guys should be called Disadvantage Management because that would be a more accurate name. They can’t seem to get anything right. They post signs in our building advertising the next condo meeting — with the wrong date/​time. They send out budget paperwork with poorly laid out tables that are impossible to make heads or tails of. They send notice of a special assessment due with 8 days notice and an enclosed letter dated a month and a half before the postmark (I guess so that they can say they gave the legally required notice). Our designated representative, Michelle, is impossible to reach by phone, and when you e-​mail her a few questions, she answers just one of them and ignores the others — if she responds at all. I asked if I could get the date of my assessments’ automatic debit changed from the 10^th to the 15^th of the month when I get paid — NOPE. I could go on. They’ve been managing our 18-​unit condo for about a year now and we are about to fire them in favor of another company.

Advantage managed our building for 1 year, and we spent the next 3 managing them to varying degrees of success. If you have a larger association, you may have better luck than our 12 unit association did. I felt like I had to do far too much work as a board member, and later president, including re-​doing budgets, financials for special assessments and charge-​backs, etc. I will say that Amber, who assisted our property manager, was a life saver. Very prompt and helpful as could be!
In the 3 days since our new management company took over, every item on our to do list has been addressed, including a slamming front door that Advantage tried and failed to fix on at least 3 separate occasions. They’ve already re-​negotiated agreements that Advantage let lapse to lower fees.
If Advantage was still the company we originally hired, I think this would be a 4 or 5 star review. I just think their rapid expansion has left smaller buildings like ours behind, to our detriment.

Wildly incompetent, lazy, and shady company. The hoops they make you jump through are either there because they are too stupid to make logical rules, or because they are criminally shady and trying to steal your money… or both.
Why have a management company at all, if this is the one you’re going to choose? In two plus years of living in a building under this management, they have never done one single thing for me. Not one.

These people suck. After phone tag with the co-​owner and manager of our building, I got his voicemail that told me to press a number for his cell. WHen I got his cell, he said he didn’t have time to talk to me because he was at home eating dinner with his family. It was about 4:45pm. Wow. their office is downtown and he lives in a far burb. Must mean this guy works a pretty shortened schedule.
I echo the thoughts of others regarding call backs. Other residents in my building and I have all had issues getting them to get back to us.
We had a bum washer and it took 3 weeks for them to get it fixed.
Pardon my french, but THEY SUCK! I’m going to run for the board and change companies!

They only get back to you on issues that are easy to deal with — when we ask simple questions, they call back right away and are very responsive. The moment they face an issue that requires coordinating more than one person, or using a little bit of brain power, they shut down. I currently have a plumbing issue and after three weeks, still no response, no status update, and no returning of my calls. And they have the cheek to tell me upfront that they will charge me for sending someone to look at the problem. Many plumbing companies out there give free estimates. I’ve decided to call my own plumber.

I was on the board that hired Advantage and stayed on for a couple years. Took a couple years off, and am back on again. Advantage has managed our 110 unit complex in Lakeview for all those years, and has done a good job.
I have experience in property management, and need to spend some time telling the manager what our expectations are, but they do learn and deliver what we need.
Our property is well managed and well cared for by Advantage. Our manager returns calls promptly. Our bookkeeping is all in order. Advantage’s maintenance department takes care of things that need attention on our property promptly.