Kelly Grantham

Review of Fairlawn Real Estate

We used Fairlawn to find a rental apartment before...

We used Fairlawn to find a rental apartment before moving to Champaign-Urbana. Overall, I'm very dissatisfied with their service.

We did a Skype tour of an apartment on Main St. in Urbana, and it looked quite nice. We weren't able to see it in person, as we lived across the country at the time, so we signed a lease. When we arrived to move in, we discovered that they had shown us a different unit in the same building. The apartment we had leased was "furnished" (contrary to what they'd told us) with some horrible, worn-down bed frames, mattresses, shelves and tables. Multiple windows had been painted in place and wouldn't close all the way. To top it off, they had tried to conceal severe water damage with a drop ceiling, which had been water damaged and collapsed in the bedroom. We also discovered that a window in the common lobby was broken, and glass left strewn on the floor. When we complained, they said we just might not like older buildings' charm. They offered to add a new drop ceiling, and we refused.

We ended up threatening legal action, and finally making them transfer our lease to another apartment on Clark St. in Champaign. (We had just driven four days, and had nowhere to stay while we searched for another apartment, so it was our best option.) We will be leaving as soon as our lease ends. Each issue we encounter and report to Fairlawn, they blame on the property owner. We had a garbage disposal when we moved in (instead of the dishwasher we had in the first building), but discovered after moving in that it was broken. They temporarily bypassed it, but refused to replace it later. They claim the building owner wouldn't pay for a new disposal as we'd been promised in our lease. Their original bypass job failed after a few months, as it turned out a leasing agent had installed it. The washing machine was too full of coins to operate for weeks, but Fairlawn blamed the property owner once again. The central heat did not reach our apartment until December, their maintenance staff wasn't able to fix it, and they refused to send out a specialist for weeks. Last week, a lock was installed on the building garbage dumpster, apparently by the building owner to combat illegal dumping. Since then, garbage has predictably been around the dumpster, in the recycling bins, and in the parking lot. They've made no effort to clean it up thus far.

They've given tours of the apartment frequently, with exactly 24 hours notice on multiple occasions. This week, they tried to give us less notice than that, and said they would see if it was possible to reschedule when we refused, despite 24 hours being the legal minimum in Illinois. I only hope we get our security deposit back in full. They may earn back a star if they make that process easy on us.