Binghamton, NY
The apartment has no heat and it is 5° outside. The lobby is flooded. The key fobs don't work. My fridge is broken, the wifi is so slow, the water is dirty, works half the time and not heated. I regret renting from him, since now other tenants say he is the worst and doesn't fix anything. I wish I saw these reviews before. The fire alarms won't stop going off. Other tenants windows are frosted it's so cold on their apartments. Will update at the end of the semester.
After months of living here, it has been the worst renting experience going to BU. Me and other tenants have been outraged since the beginning with no laundry, no heating, piss leaking from the ceilings, no gym, slow wifi. Someone had a missing toilet. And the rent is expensive, he is a con artist who baits college kids then fucks them over. If you ask him about anything, he either doesn't reply or degrades people. Enough is enough with slum lord Jim. Don't rent from him.
He is the worst landlord in binghamton. Scams you for money and doesn't care about his tenants. Screenshots from several people being rude and disrespectful towards them and talks down to college kids after he gets there money. He never fixes any problems. He is incompetent and immature and there are such better landlords in bing, do not rent from him
As I said before, someone you don't want to talk to or do business with. He will try to go for the people who look the youngest to rent his apartments and never responds back when you try to contact him. Overall, I avoid him and his name on any of the apartments. AVOID bearcat housing as well!
Jim Slocum is a scam artist. A few months ago, I signed for what was advertised as a “newly renovated apartment.” I was falsely told that I’d be moving into the model apartment that was being used to give tours for project apartments. They switched the conditions of the lease at the last minute, and I was stuck with a project. They wouldn’t let me out of the lease until I threatened to sue them for misrepresentation. Jim holds back security deposits with no grounds for the charges. Vile person.
Upon moving in the apartment had broken lights, multiple outlets, the bathtub faucet, the radiator, and more! There was also no working Wi-Fi for the first two months of my living here. Multiple maintenance requests were sent in for every issue listed above I either heard nothing back or it took months for issues to be resolved, some never got resolved. Jim Slocum is a terrible person. In my last month living here he called me names and threatened me through emails I still have. He is a slumlord
Bad bad news prob moving due to non communication and no lack at all to help solve problems just the worst ever in a day of hate got a threat phone call cats were killed and now I've had 10 hospital visits due to my disability don't rent if you do you'll see give him a----- minuse 1000 on the bad ricter scale
I had the best experiences elsewhere. He is without a doubt the worst landlord in Binghamton. Do not rent from him. Avoid Bearcats Housing, especially his “luxury housing”, at ALL COSTS. He scammed hundreds of students having them sign leases for units at luxury housing that were not built yet, then put them in non-“equivalent or better” housing in bad areas for MORE THAN HALF THE LEASE TERM and expected them to still pay luxury housing prices. He only responds to you on all platforms if it involves money. Avoid him PLEASE. You will not get your security deposit back from him, many people I know that also lived with him did not get anything back. He is not the only landlord in Bing that has done this so please continue to do your research
Stay away while you can. He manipulates college students to sign a lease to a house that isn't even built (Aka 81 State Street). When you feel that he is telling you the truth he is not. All washers and dryers are broken (there is only 4 for over 50 people in the apartment), there is no fresh air in the house (there are no windows that open), most of the rooms do not have windows; further more there is zero parking. If you sign a lease here, you''ll probably get put in the slums where it is unsafe since the full house is not ready. You will get parking tickets if you live here considering there is no set parking that goes with the apartment. Highly advise you to not sign a lease to this complex , as there is zero communication and it might as well be a circus. As they say, "you get what you pay for" and there is no doubt in my mind that there are better places to live in this community. You can take my advice with a grain of salt, but I promise you if you don't listen, you will be disappointed.
Not sure how this company is in business. Their “head of maintenance” is awful! Lazy and all he does is say next time I come back I’ll fix it. Jim, doesn’t return a call, text or email but says it’s everyone else’s fault when you finally get to him. My friends rented from him a few years ago and it was great. But this company has gone down the toilet and all they do is collect money and speak down to the tenants. Don’t rent from them.
My girlfriend and I lived there last year. Please, please stay away from bearcat housing. How Jim Slocum gets any positive reviews is amazing to me. He is the definition of a slum lord. The amount of issues we had were endless, Absolutely disgusting apartment when we moved in, Our mail was stolen on more than one occasion. Appliances didn't work. The list goes on. We came from across the country so the only thing we had to go off of was the pictures. Which were just a bit misleading.... Again, if you are a BU student do NOT move into bearcat housing.
I love where I live. Has it been perfect? Nope. But nothing is perfect. I feel safe in my place. I have always gotten a good response from Jim. Sometimes I had to wait a few days but understand we were not his only tenants. But I would like to thank Jim for all he does for us. Let’s face it having students as tenants definitely isn’t the easiest but we appreciate you.
Bad experience from day one. Moving in we noticed some small bugs. Called dirty Jimmy, comes out and said they had this exterminated twice in past year. Come to find out this was a lie. Neighboring units also had bed bugs. Constant problem in many of dirty Jimmy houses. Called again and was told that exterminator would be over. Numerous calls and 1 month later, exterminator arrives. Said Jim called him that morning. Apparently daddy controls the purse, as little Jimmy likes to spend too much on coke and entertaining several prostitutes in basements of these rental properties that daddy set him up with when he got out of prison. Many plumbing issues in these older run down properties. most properties they own have been updated with new paint and things cosmetically repaired. Dirty Jimmy does most of the work, a quality craftsman he is not. Sometimes he has his half sister, who he calls his girlfriend show properties off. She like dirty Jimmy, has a rap sheet and has no issues lying to your face. Do yourself a favor and find one of the many respectable landlords in this town. One with less drama, quality workmanship and free of constant bug infestations from these previous welfare rentals.
Overall the house was "livable," but not the best. There were numerous times repairs had to be completed multiple times due to poor installment and overall just lazy, low quality work. Communication was okay, but his responses were often vague and didn't help the situation. Definitely overcharged in rent for the property we lived in. He was cordial, and my housemates and I made it through the lease but wasnt the greatest
Going to be living downtown in the new beautiful State St. It’s more then we expected and so happy to have signed our lease for June. It has everything we could want and are so happy to be calling this home is a few weeks. Thanks Jim, for being so patient with us and doing everything you could for us!
Don't sign with this guy. He's literally just out to prey on students. Takes ages to respond to messages and ignores them on purpose. Pretends to be a nice guy but really doesn't care about any of his tenants. Threw us in a random house for months with no other options. If you are genuinely considering signing with him or any associate of Bearcats housing I strongly recommend that you find somewhere else to live. Don't make the same mistake everyone else who has signed with Jim made.
I am not a Student but I do rent from Jim. I just want to say thank you for being so helpful and going the extra mile to make sure everything got done. I know you just took the property over less then 30 days ago but have done so much. Thank you and I hope you have a great New Year.
Jim has been very unresponsive and it took us 2 months to get a maintenance request to be fixed that was very essential and should have been tended to before we moved in. The house has had construction done on it but not great- there are rodents and cats getting inside various nooks and crannies of the house, he has done nothing about the mice but there is definitely holes for them to get in. Because of these odd nooks and crannies that we cannot see and cannot cover up, we often feel drafts of the cold wind coming from outside and makes our house cold. He specified that we would receive at least 24 hour notice before he came to the house and on the lease it says we would get a day's notice, but he showed up to our house with less than 24 hour notice. We have submitted multiple maintenance requests and many have been ignored. The few times the maintenance people come to fix something, it would be after countless requests after some time period. We told Jim our door lock was broken but he refused to fix it and said it still worked, which put our house and ourselves in much danger. When a maintenance worker came by to fix something, he noticed the door lock was broken and immediately proceeded to fix it. Everyone else clearly saw the door was broken, except Jim didn't want to, putting us all at risk. Our outside light did not even have a working light bulb, something Jim should have tested and known, and we bought and changed the light bulb. When we were still looking at the house, we were told we were going to have an extra television on one of the floors and there was even the stand for the TV, but even after moving in we still did not have the TV.
When we rented out current place things didn’t turn out as we thought. Things weren’t what they were suppose to be. But about 2 months ago Jim took over and after a house meeting things turned around. Everything that need to be fixed or replaced has been. We also signed our lease for next school year. We are very thankful and look forward to another School year here!
Stay away from Jim Slocum and the company Bearcats Housing. Like other reviewers have mentioned, the state of the house that we lived in was horrible! It was clear that corners were cut. In addition, Jim charged us to repair them. We were probably overcharged, but we had no choice but to pay as this was our only living option for the year. When attempting to work issues out, he would often resort to calling us names, which is highly unprofessional. His workers came into the house unannounced multiple times to perform shady work to make things worse. Stay away!!!
Jim Slocum is a thief who will try to bully college students into dangerous houses. He does not properly get houses inspected, uses the cheapeast parts and labor possible (which often break), threatens his tenants, and has him or his workers come in unannounced. He even went to jail for cocaine dealing! Stay as far away as possible from this person.
"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 dish 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.