Chicago Property Services, Inc.

The condominium association that I was a member of engaged Chicago Property Services on May 1, 2023 and was forced to terminate the contract with them on March 22, 2024 due to the terrible and unprofessional service that we received throughout this time period. Here are just a few of the issues we encountered:

Lack of Internal Financial Team

Chicago Property Services has no capable internal accounting or financial team in place. CPS could not generate any type of month end financial reporting for the first eight months of the engagement. The Board had no visibility to the Association’s financials during this entire time.

Reliance on Ala Carte Pricing

Even though our Association signed up for CPS’ most extensive baseline, Zen Ultimate, plan, every item brought before CPS was almost always considered an “ala carte” item with an additional cost. CPS charged the Association tens of thousands of dollars in ala carte fees within the first six months of the service period. Since CPS couldn’t provide any type of monthly financial reporting, the Board had no knowledge of any of these fees until CPS’ service was terminated and a forensic accounting was undertaken. CPS even transferred dollars from the Association’s reserve account to the operating account, without Board knowledge or approval, and then paid themselves from these dollars.

Error Prone Account Payables

Vendors were not paid on time and on multiple occasions, Chicago Property Services paid the same invoice more than one time. The Association’s Treasurer was forced to review every transaction in an attempt to offset all of the errors made by CPS.

Lack of Responsiveness

Chicago Property Services was adamant that all communication with them should be done via their online ticketing system. This turned into a black hole. When we terminated the contract, we had tickets that were over six months old and that hadn’t even been opened yet.

No Formal Internal Processes

Chicago Property Services is forced to recreate the wheel for every item that comes up. As an example, they had no documented processes or even simple check lists for how to execute the transition from our previous property management company. As a result, they completely forgot to change our building’s utilities over to their address and ownership. This didn’t become obvious to us until the city of Chicago threatened to send our Association to collections for failure to pay any of our water bills. Once this was corrected, I asked for confirmation that our other utilities had been cut over. CPS ignored this for another month until ComEd started to threaten to send us to collections and shut off service.