Friedman Properties

Do not rent from these people if you are a small business. They were the first people I rented from for my small company. They made everything seem like they were on top of things. They drove my insurance provider crazy to make sure we had the right coverage, the lease took almost 2 months to write up, they have a team for everything. Once I signed the lease I was ghosted and gaslit. I moved in in late June after being promised a late May move in, which put us a month behind in our production and then what they didnt tell us was the building (I was in the Boyce) was being so heavily renovated all day jack hammering, elevators being closed or just not working, door entry needing to be scanned 5x to get the door open. Anyways in September when they turned the radiator on it had a pin size hole in the pipe which meant when the radiator was on it sounded like a tea kettle going off. A high pitch SCREAM!!! Non stop all day until 3pm when they turned them off and it got to 40 degrees in the studio. I notified them immediately and they sent someone over to look at it but never fixed it for 3 months October, November, December, and early January I called or emailed every other week asking and reminding them. I paid rent. In December it got so bad we had to find a new place to work out of for photoshoots even thought we were wearing earplugs to manufacture in the space. So mid January I made the decision to move out of the space. When I notified them I was leaving they came at me with their lawyers demanding me pay them over $6k to break the lease. They were ruthless, blaming me for not handling the situation. How much different could I have handled it. If I called more they told me I wasnt being patient but then after 4 months of screeching all day I say enough is enough. They ended up keeping my security deposit because I couldnt fight them. Im a very very small business: in total they caused me 3 months delay in production, probably $15-20k in profit from issues getting the lease finalized and the lack of maintenance, and took $6k in rent while I wasnt even able to really use the space. These people have a monopoly over river north and they know it. If you wanna do business there they make it hard to not work with them. This is a discussing company and my only happiness is that the commercial values in river north are coming down and staying down and it brings me a little joy knowing this company has some hard years coming for them in the future. Xavier and Jim you two are the most heartless gas lighters I have ever had the misfortune of working with and while I dont wish you person bad will, I really ask yourself to look into the mirror and question whether this is the kind of company you want to work for and policies you want to be enforcing. You guys are modern day slum lords and are taking advantage of your small footprint tenants.
Mar 4th, 2024

Dec 5th, 2023

Jun 6th, 2023

Don't work for this company. They're word is worthless. They don't honor their own written contracts and they don't pay their bills.
May 7th, 2023

During the 3ish years Friedman "managed" the apartment complex I live in, the quality dropped drastically. The pool was always closed due to being "broken" (not a problem in the years before) yet still advertised it as an amenity, a playground burned down on the property and nothing was done to replace or further remove it or prevent children from playing on it, the potholes in the parking lot grew to car damaging sizes and depths, several dead or dying trees on the property caused damage to tenant and apartment property which they refused to take responsibility for despite having already marked many of them to be cut down, and a decent percentage of the units went without air conditioning for an unreasonable amount of time(a year or more for some tenants). Not to mention the water issues, mold, and general disrepair of the buildings, which again, got way worse after they took over. The only thing they ever did consistently was post the late rent notices on people's doors and tell tenants it's not their responsibility to make sure the grounds are usable. They ran the apartment complex into the ground, making the tenants' lives worse in the process and then sold it to another property management company. Im still waiting for the other shoe to drop(raising rent) but so far the new property management company that oversees the complex has replaced all the broken windows and are working on fixing some of the worse buildings so I know Friedman had at least something to do with how bad it got. If that's their idea of good business, they really need to find a different profession.
Jul 13th, 2022