Nordica Group

I have lived in Nordica Group Apartments for 4 years now (two buildings. MAC properties –which are an EVIL company– bought the first one so I moved to another Nordica Group building after living under MAC properties for a few months), and just moved away from Chicago. In searching for apartments in my new community, I realized how important reviews are, so I thought that I would comment on my past experiences.
This is a very small company, which has its positives and negatives. I would say mostly positives, though. When something broke, Harold himself would usually come to fix it, even late into the evening to work with my schedule. I never tried to get out of my lease early, or caused any damage to the apartment, so I can’t speak to how the company would react in that case (as mentioned above), but in my case they were always helpful, prompt, and professional. I arranged a forwarding address beforehand for where to send the returned deposit, and it was sent within a week or two of the end of my lease, including the interest incurred from holding it for 3 years. They’re way more attentive than any other landlord that my friends have had in Hyde Park, and way better than my brief experience with MAC properties.
There are indeed fancier apartments in HP, and fancier upkeep, but you’d pay a lot more for living in one of those apartments. Their buildings tend to be older, but from the era when apartments were built with quality. You’re not going to get pools, central air, doorman, etc, but you will get good quality hard wood floors, claw foot tubs, etc. Somewhat drafty, but curtains and that plastic window stuff helped. And they replaced the windows in our apartment this year (don’t know about their other buildings), so that will be a lot better for the future inhabitants.
I choose them primarily because they allowed pets (including dogs) and weren’t too expensive. I stayed with them because I felt that they were better than the landlords from my other friends (and it sucks to move).

I would not recommend renting from this company, headed by Harold Newton. The apartment I rented from him was in decent shape, for a student neighborhood – not the best, but not the worst in Hyde Park. The problem was getting hold of the landlord. He screened his calls and usually called us back when we were living there, but when we tried to move out, forget it! We called him for TWO months to get our security deposit and prorated rent back, and he didn’t return our calls. It took two certified mail letters – one of them was refused — for us to reach him, and even then we didn’t get the rent we’d agreed on. This guy is sketchy. Look elsewhere.