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| - I have stayed with many different property groups over ten years in Champaign and I find this one is perfectly adequate. I stayed in the Birch Street apartments for about two years with no issues. Staff was helpful and very professional overall. I was shown the apartment in a reasonable time period, got a cosigner just fine, and they explained all of the processes for renting with them. Requests for maintenance were immediately resolved and I was not hounded for rent or any other payments if I forgot. The property itself was well kept with regular upkeep and more mature, quiet neighbors. These buildings are older (60s-70s) but they had huge bedrooms and ample closet space for a 1 bedroom. The building also supplied a parking space, laundry room shared with another building, and was super close to stores and UofI campus.
My only complaint about this group is the difficulty with subleasing. I understand that they would prefer folks to stay but Champaign is a transient town. Making it hard for folks to find a sublessee does not create a happy partnership. In their defense they do allow you to sublet at all. You have to find your own person, pay a fee for the application (I think it was $60 or so), and they (the sublessee) also have to give a deposit for the apartment (one month's rent). I think this was unreasonable (basically they get to keep double the rent, mine and the new person, and I'm not even staying there anymore) and they do not disperse this money to more than one person. Meaning if you find a stranger to sublease, you have to work out a legal contract with them about who the deposit is returned to as opposed to PPM just giving the money back to who gave it to them. Sounds simple to me!
Anyway, overall definitely not the worse property group I've stayed with and not the best.
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