Binghamton , NY
The only reason I am not renewing the lease is because my daughter has graduated and no longer needs property in the Binghamton area. Overall the rental property was an excellent experience the house was very safe and the character of the house was beautiful everything was renovated inside fresh and new!
The landlord was courteous and explained everything to me. There has been no issues since I have moved in. The landlord is just a call away whenever we call. I am pleased with my experience of dealing with the landlord and would continue living here. Overall, a good experience and I would certainly recommend to my colleagues.
My daughter has lived here for 3 months. Her locks were not working upon moving in, maintenance STILL has not fixed that problem. Now her refrigerator has not been working for 3 WEEKS and she is on a 10 day WAITING list to have the appliance fixed. the manager is a bald face liar!!! Sweet and kind when you are seeing the apartment before signing the lease and then she's an unreachable, screaming, nasty, inappropriate witch after she has your money!! DO NOT RENT FROM THESE HORRIBLE PEOPLE
Super helpful group. Loved my experience with Bearcat housing. The house was nice and landlords were very understanding, Would recommend to anyone in the Binghamton area,
Kept most of the security deposit Charged for things that made no sense! Very dishonest the house was a complete dump. The shower leaked, the kitchen faucet fell off, we had to mow the lawn and trim trees so we could park in the sham of a driveway! The house is disgusting!
Bearcats Management are a bunch of crooks. Jimmy only seems to care about his new project on State Street. He is no where to be found when actual business matters need to be addressed. He treats his property owner clients very poorly. Our property owner told us he didn't even make an attempt to collect rent from some tenants for months and then threatened eviction. Avoid these guys at ALL costs
Scummy and nasty. You’re guaranteed to not get your security deposit back for absurd reasons. Has scammed hundreds of students over the years, sticking them in shitholes that smell bad in crime ridden areas if their places weren’t ready for several months. Avoid renting with him. The “good reviews” are often fake, it’s embarrassing that he’s so bad he has to do that
I was really interested in an apartment from Jim, but I looked up these reviews beforehand and I always have my dad (a lawyer) read any lease before I sign. We noticed there was a clause about monthly inspections and that if he deemed it messy would clean it at $65/hr. While I’m a neat person, this clause wasn’t acceptable to us and I asked him if he could possibly take it out. I also asked to set up a timeline to get the security deposit back at the end of the lease as i heard of other people having problems with that. I asked kindly. He was really nasty in his response and that was the last string after reading everyone else’s reviews (glad I did!).
Jim is the worst ever and that girl in the Office is horrible. Rude and never calls back. All they care about is money and never does what they are suppose to. Please, stop renting from this drug dealer. He is nothing but lies and broken promises. Comes in without notice then tells you he did contact but that is a lie. Apartment cleaned on break yes they take everything they want. And then charge you 500 to 1000 for the cleaning”. He is the worst of the worst you have been warned.
My roommates and I have used Bearcats Housing for the last three years and I have had a great experience every year. I highly recommend to anyone interested in updated, clean, and safe student housing. Every year, they have a wide variety of availability that will suit any students needs or wants!
When first arriving at the house with a few of my roommates there was a strange odor and we could not get the WiFi signal. Called Jim and the 800 number. The strange smell was a died squirrel outback of the house in the garbage can that had rain water in it. Maintenance did take care of it immediately once figuring out the problem and after two days of maintenance coming and going trying to figure out the WiFi it ended up being bad router and modem from spectrum and they had to send out a Tech. Thank you Bearcats for being patient with all of us. Rough start better endings!
They are supposed to be professionals. To be honest, this is the worst leasing experience I’ve ever. From the early beginning and there is S.th wrong. Firstly, we agreed and signed the contract regarding a studio apartment in the 32 Edward st. The. I have paid the 1st month lease and the last month as well as the deposit. Then, I sent Jimmy an email stating that I want to have the keys and I will start moving by the 1st of aug. which is the first day of my lease. Also, I have stated to him that one of my friends will contact him to receive the keys because I was out of the country and I will arrive on the 2nd of aug. at the evening and that is friday night. Surprisingly, on the second of Aug, my friend called him to ask him how to take the keys. He was so rude to her. He told her you have to tell me early enough, one week early, and you just cant move in now you have to wait one week. Later on, I found that my apartment is not 32 Edwards as in the contract. it is 25 throp St. ya I know both of them are the same building. Anyways, no one came to give us the keys. He just left the keys on a lock at the front door. I found that my apartment is missing the two stools as well as the coffee table. I called Jimmy, he didn’t pick up the phone, he never did btw. I sent him a text he replied and told me go and submit a request on the online system. well I did this on 5th of Aug. Thank God, I received the stools on the 9th of Sept, one month later. This is not the most imp. thing. I realized s.th wrong with the Bathroom. I always clean it then I go and come back I find dirts all over the place. On the 18, I was talking a shower, and I heard s.th moving above the ceiling and tries to break the ceiling. I was scared and went out of the bath quickly. I , once again, submitted a request to the online thing as well as texted Jimmy. Of course, no one responded. and I keep sending him and he says things but nothing happens. You can't imagine how loud the noise and how dirty the bathroom gets. As the winter approaches, the situation gets worse. Right now, I have two or three squirrels above my ceiling. I don’t feel safe when I’m at the bathroom. On weekends I usually sleep at my friends because early in the morning they make a lot of noise trying to break the wall and the ceiling. I can’t sleep from them. I don’t know really what I’m supposed to do. It’s has been more than a month since I have submitted the first request regarding that squirrel thing. should I wait more. I need someone else to contact other than Jimmy, the landlord or the owner; I just can’t deal with him.
Thank you Bearcats. Rough start but bearcats has helped us along the way as much as they could. Horrible WiFi routers provided by spectrum could not get spectrum out for almost a week because of how busy they were Bearcats went and picked one up to get us WiFi. When I arrived all the keys were already at the house some worked and some did not was kind of annoyed but when I reached out to management they brought over new keys.
Scammer scammer never returned our Deposit. Kept saying it was the accountants fault but he is full of lies and broken promise. Along with his nasty side kick wife. They both lie and blame the other one. Save yourself time and energy and run from these two. Only broken promises and no return text messages or phone calls. Always an excuse. And I promise the good reviews they did. I have spoken to dozen of Sports teams or students that have rented from them and all the same outcome. Run and don’t truth them.
This company is the WORST! Servers maintenance requests and still nothing. All they care about is money. So nice until you move in and then they don’t care about you. His “employees” all follow his lead. Made up all excuses not to give our security back but after asking around it’s just what he does. Stay away from this company worst in the business.
Bearcat housing is the worst housing company I’ve worked with in Binghamton. It took on average two months for them to respond to service requests. The house was not clean when we received it. And they charged money from our security deposit without an explanation. Jim, the main point of contact for Bearcat, hardly ever responds and hasn’t gotten back to us in over two weeks. He is blatantly ignoring our calls and emails.
Between me and my group we all had different opinions, but over all Bearcats was responsive and helped with issues we had in the property. A few times we were left waiting for maintenance but it was nothing major it was things like lightbulbs, the one hallway light would not stop flickering and the dryer made a weird noise once in awhile but it was because we over filled it but they did get someone over to take care of it all.
I am convinced that the reviews on here are fake and written by Jim and the rest of his workers. Living with them was awful, they wouldn't respond for days sometimes even over a week with no explanation or solutions. Things would break and we would have to fix them ourselves without reimbursement because they just would ignore us. I know several other groups who have had similar if not worse experiences.
Can't stress enough that there are better landlords out there. As a BU student I've lived off campus for 3 years now and this was the first time I ever experienced this terrible of a landlord (and last time because I will not rent from them again). Jim seemee very nice when we first met him but that changed drastically once we signed the lease. He would disregard very serious maintenance issues and would just not respond to emails or not pick up calls. He promised us that the house would be worked on, and we even had a maintenance man come once, but then he just left his tools didn't fix anything and we never heard from him again. Honestly living there for a year was truly terrible. There are other landlords I've rented from in Bing that know what they're doing and genuinely care so keep looking and don't sign with these people.
I CAN NOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH DO NOT RENT FROM THESE PEOPLE. I had what was easily the worst housing experience of my life with them. Besides things breaking throughout our lease and going unfixed. Our house wasn't fully insulated, something we didn't realize until November or so after moving in in August. We sent email after email, wrote complaints in the portal, called, and literally were forced to walk around our own home in blankets and layers all winter to make it bearable. We lost so much money on utilities because we had to have space heaters running and the central heat would escape through the cracks in the windows and floors. One of our housemates had to pay out of pocket to insulate the windows. Their contractor came once, unnannounced, didn't fix anything and left his tools in our living room. After that they just sat there, he never came back, and we continued to freeze. It's pretty heartless on their behalf to have such little care for their tenants. I'm staying in Binghamton for another year and did everything I could to avoid bearcat housing, I suggest you do the same.
Would not recommend Bearcat Housing. They wouldn't answer emails for days and sometimes not at all even after we'd call. Not sure who their contractor was but he would just appear unannounced and never finished anything he started. I had to pay for my own tools to fix things around the house. Felt like I didn't even have a landlord.
Finally in our new home. So worth the wait. It’s everything that was promised and so much more. In the middle of it all. Just wanted to give a shot out to Jim. Thank you for all your hard work and giving us such a great place. We look forward to many many years here.
We signed our lease for State St. It’s beyond beautiful and are so excited to have the best place around. Everything you could ask for. Not only is it the perfect location but it’s beautiful. And the bathrooms are like being at a resort. So looking forward to moving in. Thanks again Jim, for your patience.
I own several properties and as of a few months ago Jim took over Managing them. I have had the best experience since he has been taking over. I had vacant apartments and they were rented quickly. My homes are very well taken care of now and I can’t thank Bearcata enough for all of your hard work and dedication. I look forward to working with you for a long time.
FIRST OF ALL, JIM IS A SCAMMER, DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE PEOPLE LEAVING GOOD REVIEWS. MY T.V AMD WIFI DOES NOT WORK. I EMAILED HIM & ASKED TO SEND SOMEONE TO FIX IT & HE TOTALLY IGNORNED ME...NEVER REPLIED . MY HOME WAS BROKEN INTO AND HE LITERALLY SHOWED NO CONCERN AT ALL. HE SENT SOMEONE TO FIX MY BROKEN LOCKS/DOORS/WINDOW BUT NEVER TOLD ME THAT MY HOUSE WAS BROKEN INTO AND NEVER MADE A POLICE REPORT (I HAD TO FIND OUT MY HOUSE WAS BROKEN INTO WHEN I ARRIVED AFTER BREAK AND THE POLICE OFFICER ASSURED HE DID NOT FILE A POLICE REPORT). HE LITERALLY TOLD ME THAT OFF CAMPUS HOUSES GET BROKEN INTO ALLLLL THE TIME AND LANDLORDS DONT GET INVOLVED-THOSE ARE MATTERS FOR THE POLICE.
We just signed our lease this weekend. The place is amazing and has more then we have seen with other landlords. All furniture is brand new. Large smart tv and the bathrooms are beautiful, laundry on site and close to everything. The portal sure does make life easy. Thank you for our 2019-2020 home.
Avoid at all costs. All of these positive reviews are fake. I've talked to Jim's other tenants. NOBODY is happy with their experience here. It should be illegal for landlords to post fake reviews of themselves.
After months of living in a place and having a terrible landlord. Jim took over and fixed everything that needed to be done. We are very happy and just signed our lease for another year. Great to have a company that cares about us. Thanks for all your time and help.
Just signed our lease with Bearcats for 2019-2020 school year! It has a great location and newly renovated. After seeing different houses Jim keeps his houses maintained. Thank you, Jim for spending so much time with us showing the available properties.
Do not live here! We were promised tons of things such as new windows, parking spots, working WiFi, a nice basement with laundry and instead have no new windows, only street parking, a very creepy basement with laundry that barely works and a bad building that has thin walls on a very busy street. Jim has lied to us on multiple occasions. I would not live here again
I'm pretty sure all of these "positive" reviews here were written by Bearcats Housing themselves. Submitting maintenance requests are useless, they hardly ever read or respond to any of them. I regret ever signing a lease with them and within a month of living here, I wanted to break the lease. I honestly feel like I've been scammed.
A BIG shout out to Bearcats housing. We moved into a house with another Property Manager that we had a very bad experience with. But a few weeks ago Bearcats housing took over and things have definitely improved. Thank you for doing all you can for us to make our living arrangements better!
Jim Slocum has proven to be nothing less than a conniving, manipulating scumbag. A group of students paid him for housing. The lease states that I would be able to move in on August 1st. August 1st passed and the house was no where near finished. He scheduled a new move in date to September 1st, that passed. From here Jim continued to feed me lies while he put me in his "alternative housing" located in an area where students have no business being. In my time at his alternative housing there were multiple shootings that took place just a block away. Scared for my life, I decided to wait it out for 1.5 months. Jim's new move in date for my apartment is now November 1st. This whole time while this crack smoking, degenerate scumbag is sitting on $100,000 (which he manipulated us students to pay) and is not making any progress on the building. In addition, the few units that actually have some sort of infrastructure, are different from the original floor plan/drawings. Although, I have to give it to him, this man is a PROFESSIONAL liar. His actions along with his promises seem to me as if this man graduated Harvard with a master's degree in fraud. I advise for anyone who is thinking of giving Jim any money for housing is to run far away. You might as well light your money on fire. Well done Jimmy boy you got me.
Great Year!!! After dealing with a crappy landlord (I wont name names) this was a relief! The house was beautiful, any issues we had were taken care of quickly. Furniture & Appliances were new condition. So long as the house was clean for their showings we had no issues.
As an international student I was trying to find a nice apartment online. I contacted Bearcats and was directed to their website where many of the houses had video tours. I lived in an apartment with other similar units so I asked them to send me a quick video through email of my exact apartment. They did, I rented using their online portal and the rest was history. It was a positive experience. All of their other units were rented to individuals who were quiet (No fraternity) . There was a weak WiFi Signal when I first moved in but they adjusted the router and fixed it quickly.
I lived at a house owned by Bearcats Housing not Bearcats llc which is the only one I found on here. Its confusing as I know there is also another rental company that goes by Bearcats Services........ I lived in a 10 Bedroom house on Edwards St. It was right by the OCC Bus which was a huge bonus as only 3 of us had vehicles. We did not have a ton of interaction with the landlord- Jim but when we had minor issues they were responsive. Their online portal was easy to use and a huge bonus for us. The bedroom's were big and the furniture was nicer than other places I have lived. I would recommend Bearcats Housing.
My daughter rented from them while attending Brooke University with her boyfriend and numerous times they reported a squirrel living in their wall. Nothing was done to remedy the problem and squirrel had babies in the wall now! Still nothing done. Landlord took it upon himself to let himself in while they were home on Spring break and steal their TV. Claiming he evicted them. Bulls**t! They got no calls, no notices on their door when they went back to apartment. No notices in their mail at all!!! Fire Escape is a death trap and broken. If a fire, they would never get out. Reported to Code Enforcement. No one set up an appointment to do anything about it. Apparently he has quite a hold on everyone there. No one wants to say anything against him. Their refrigerator broke, and 150 to 200.00 worth of food spoiled and was ruined. They filled out a repair request were told that is not landlords job to take care of that if he does it will cost 65 an hour!!!! Inches of disgusting backed up water in their tub that leaked into downstairs apartment that was reported to be fixed. Told not landlords responsibility. WTH is the landlords responsibility???? Just a creepy slimeball landlord. Did call cops regarding stolen tv. We will see what happens. They will not be renting there anymore
I rented a 1 bedroom for 1.5 years as I graduated at the end of the Fall Semester. The apartment was quiet and clean. The walls did not have new paint on them but there was nothing wrong with them. Thanks Jim for helping me find a place to accommodate a lease ending in December.
Great property. I don't know why there are bad reviews from others. Any issues we had went on there tenant portal and we would get a repair or notified the next day about what was going on. We were able to pay right online or submit maintenance. We received a partial security back with a list of deductions which was fair. Based on knowledge from other friends landlords I would highly recommend!
Jim is the worst landlord you could get. He regularly ignores messages, does not legally get his houses inspected when necessary, and has resorted to calling me names. My house was a month late before I could move in and he demanded we pay for the month that we couldn't live there! Work done on the house was done poorly, using cheap parts and labor. Plumbing breaks often. TV's in bedrooms do not work. Not to mention he is a convicted cocaine dealer! Would never deal with him again, do not trust him whatsoever.
Where do I even begin? The property manager never responded on time to anything, sometimes it would take weeks at a time to get any sort of reply (if ever). Our house was broken into as a result of the landlord leaving the basement unlocked (~$700 of stuff stolen), and when prompted about installing a security system, the landlord said instead that he'd lock the basement door. 80% of the deposit was kept for nonsense charges like 'mattress' charges (our mattresses all had covers on them, and all were left in the condition we got them in, old, lumpy and dusty), 'cleaning' charges (we left the house cleaner than we got it in. there were dishes left in the dishwasher by the last tenant, an issue they never dealt with despite our complaints). Do not rent with this company, do not trust them - not even for basic things like your safety.
The worst living experience I ever had in Binghamton. As a student, I feel like I was taken advantage of the entire time I was leasing from Bearcats Housing. They consistently lied to us about fixing various things, never true to their word, rude, would sometimes come over to show the house without notifying us, or notifying us and never coming, or never coming on time. I would urge any and all Binghamton students to not rent from Bearcats Housing, they are the absolute worst, the very definition of slum lords. They want the money, but they're unwilling to put any money, or time into the property. I would urge Binghamton students to rent from local home owners, or private real estate agents, not from companies! All they're concerned about is the bottom line. I can't stress this enough, do not rent from Bearcats Housing, under no circumstances would I ever recommend this renting company.
Jim appears to be nice at first, but it's just a matter of time... We requested things to be repaired several times and he never repaired them and now he is trying to use some of those same things against us. At the end of the day, his ultimate goal is to keep your deposit and then some! Who kicks you out a week before you supposed to move.
This article and blog pretty much covers everything you need to know about Bearcat's Housing Founder and Landlord, Jim Slocum: http://www.wbng.com/closings/51240942.html http://outofmymind6466.blogspot.com/2009/07/once-jewel-now-just-hunk-of-coal.html
Jimmy Slocum sounds nice when you first meet him but he's not nice. He is one of the worst landlords in Binghamton. He always goes for your deposit. He kicked us out of the house we never lived in because the guys we were supposed to live with did not wanna live with us. He then increased the rent rate and gave us some intances. He is not a good landlord and i wouldn't recommend for anyone.
We had a great 2 years with Bearcats Housing. The house was big, in good condition, and located in a cluster of other student housing owned by this company. The tenant portal allowed us to pay rent online real time and avoid any late fees. We could also submit maintenance requests through there as well.
Creepy Landlord James Slocum. Often found him in our house "Doing Repair" but nothing was repaired. I believe he came in and snooped at our things while we were gone. He is very strange. Acted like a nice guy in beginning, but that changes. Often see him sitting in his black truck, almost stalking like behavior. He hinted at sexual favors in lieu of rent. I knew it was time to move at that point. He likes to refer things to his lawyer. Recently found out he was arrested in a big drug ring in 2010 and did time in prison, than Daddy set him up in business.
"Jimmy" James Slocum...Our "property manager". I had a great impression the first time I met him, but was shocked to uncover his true character as the months went by. Jimmy left the property in bad shape before I had even moved in. I've never had a problem in a living situation but when he began blaming "damages" on my housemates and I, we knew there were going to be problems living under this lease. Claiming to have put "thousands into reparations" Jimmy overlooked cracked walls, flaking paint, faulty plumbing, inexcusable electric work, and a broken washing machine. All of the tenants including myself wanted to work with him but as soon as he began having house showings, he started tacking these problems on us.