J & B Management

Avoid renting from J&B Management at all costs!
I really liked the apartment I saw. It had a fantastic location and price, so I was really happy about it when I signed the lease with the realtor. However, when I called the apartment manager Joe a week later to schedule a time to pick up the keys and do a walk-​through, he had apparently lost my lease and forgotten about it all together. Rather than deal with it like a normal person, and just say he had to check with the realtor, he pretended he didn’t know about the apartment, who the realtor was, and told me not to call again. He then would not deal with me until I went through the realtor to prove that he had signed the lease and had already cashed a check for my first month’s rent. Only then did he rather begrudgingly agree to meet with me.
He was so strange and terrible to deal with every time I spoke with him on the phone I deeply regretted signing the lease without looking on Unilocal first. However I got lucky, despite approving my application and signing the lease, he really did not want to rent to a student. He asked me multiple times if I would actually be able to make rent (even though I could show financially that I could and have fantastic credit) and I would be holding wild parties all the time (I’m 26 now and in graduate school, more looking for a quite place to study than a place to party). But because of this, he asked to break the lease before I had even moved in which I more than happily agreed to.
He had promised to return all the money I had paid him for the first months rent if I agreed to break the lease like he wanted. However, he never did. He has since promised at least 10 times now to give me a check for the money, and then just doesn’t. Last time I spoke with him about it on the phone I threatened that I might take him to small claims court over it, and he started yelling and cursing at me and saying that he was going to counter sue me for 12 months rent even though he was the one who asked to break the lease and knew he owed me the money. I’ve thought more about it since then, and I don’t think taking him to court would be worth the fees, time, and stress, even though he really deserves it. I’ve basically given up on getting my money back.
Don’t deal with this «company”(really one person) in anyway. He will think nothing about lying to you and trying to cheat you. He is incredibly rude and difficult to deal with.

RUN FAR, RUN FAST!
If I could give zero stars I would. A few months ago in January 2016, I thought I’d found a great place, a 2 bed 2 bath place at 850 W. Margate Terrace unit 505 — a bldg that is an apartment and condo mix. Victor was the agent who showed me the place and signed me. He’d told me it’d been vacant since early December.
When I first saw the bldg, I was a bit taken aback since it didn’t look as nice as the other bldgs on the street, and the inside looked dated and questionable. I saw 505, and thought it was great — the time it was listed at 1275 and I couldn’t believe I’d found such a great deal. I ended up signing for it 2 weeks later in January 2016, to move into February 2016. I’d checked the building out on the City of Chicago’s Code Violations site, and saw it had a lot of reports, including a couple for BED BUGS from May 2015.
Here’s the thing: I asked Victor, and he said he couldn’t tell me whether there were or weren’t bedbugs, and said that the girl in 502 who reported them was a «troublemaker». So I thought, «Well, it’s been a awhile… and if she was…» Long story short…
I signed for the place, picked up my keys, only to run into 2 residents of 850 W. Margate who live on the 4^th (condo owner of 2 yrs) and 1^st floors (southern accent, apt. to left of elevator, rents from Joe Bucci from 1 yr) respectively, and BOTH CONFIRMED THEY HAD AND ARE CURRENTLY LIVING WITH BEDBUGS! The condo owner told me he tried EVERYTHING to rid himself of them, and they don’t go away. If people on the 1^st and 4^th floors are living with them, likely it’s bldg wide infestation. Joe Bucci doesn’t own the entire bldg from what I understand, but apparently most/​all (?) of his properties have this issue.
As soon as I found out from these 2 residents about the active infestations in their homes, I went home, talked to my roommate, spent a restless night conflicted about what to do, then emailed Victor the next day to say I could not and would not move in, and run the risk of getting these things in my stuff.
I’d experienced bedbugs twice before 2 yrs ago when I’d gone down south on a megabus, and had an EXTREME allergic reaction from the bites. I’d told Victor this before signing, and he still signed me. Here’s the thing: If there have been code violations or bed bug reports on a building within the last 12 months, ANYONE WHO SIGNS YOU OR ACTS AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE LL NEEDS TO DISCLOSE THIS BY LAW.
I was able to 2/3’s of my money back, but Joe Bucci has yet to refund me for over $ 400+ dollars. I haven’t had time to initiate legal action against him because I’ve been searching for a new place for an EO March move in, but when I’m settled, I will. He broke the law by not disclosing, essentially signing me under false pretenses, he’s had previous legal action against him, and Chicago says that if you’ve been found to breach bed bug code too often, you start accumulating fines. I want my money back from him, and since he hasn’t returned it, I haven’t forgotten and will take him to court once I’ve found a new place and moved.
Not only did Joe Bucci FAIL to inform me of the building’s multiple code violations ASIDE FROM bedbugs, but he also yelled and cursed at me when I told him I couldn’t move in. I have it recorded. He may seem «nice» when he thinks you’ll buy his bull, but when you find he’s been dishonest, and you try to talk to him reasonably about not moving in prior to the start of a lease due to a problem with the building – WATCH OUT. That’s when he starts acting like he’s hard of hearing, and when you repeat yourself, he starts cursing. He also denied there were bedbugs. A lie, as residents to that bldg can attest, and as he has exterminators out to spray every other week.
Another renter of his on the 2^nd floor also told me about her run-​ins with Joe, and how he was verbally abusive towards her for parking her car in the wrong spot one day. Moreover, she told me how the machines in the laundry room are always breaking down due to people overloading them. If you can’t wash your stuff, how could you get rid of bedbugs?
Personally, having experienced bed bugs a few years ago, I’d never run the risk of knowingly moving into a bldg with an active infestation. It would only be worse for me in court to break a lease after moving in, because his lawyer would likely ask why I took the chance and moved into a bldg knowing there was an active infestation. I feel MUCH better about my decision not to.
I’m writing this now because I’ve seen in the last couple days, 850 W. Margate #505 is again up for rent, and I’d like to share my experience with Joe Bucci and what’s really going on in that building for anyone who may consider taking it. If you don’t believe me, check out the City of Chicago’s building code violations site, and see for yourself.

bed bugs, roaches, dirty!
i am so glad i moved out of that slum!!!
do. not. rent. from. this. man.
dont be fooled by the cheap rent

I’m giving one star only because I’m forced to give a star to give a review.
Until today I didn’t have any issues with living here. I paid my rent on time and I generally am an ideal tenant. Keep the place clean, and it’s hardly used since I’m so busy all the time.
On 10÷7÷15 I came back from a week long vacation and my sink was backed up. The sink was filled to the brim with black water and I honestly have no idea how that happened. I called Joe Bucci (the building manager) and he said he would send over a plumber the next morning on ¹⁰⁄₈. At first he tried to pin it on me, claiming that I had clogged my shower with too much hair so of course I must have been the reason this sink is clogged. None of that was true.
I drain the sink the best I can so that the sink is pretty much empty. I go to work the next morning and come back and the sink is full of water again. Joe Bucci had not sent the plumber yet. I call him up again and ask that he help given that the entire sink is full with smelly with disgusting water and food particles. I tried to drain the water away and soon the pipe under the sink also started to leak. I helplessly called Joe several times but he refused to even take my call.
Absolutely unhelpful. If you are considering getting an apartment rental with JB Management think again. I wish I had paid more attention to the other Unilocal reviews. I am not alone in getting bad service from Joe Bucci.

Joe is the worst landlord I have ever encountered in my 12 years of apartment rentals. DO NOT RENT FROM HIM.
He is going to give you some «required deposit» amount that is arbitrary for keys, or a garage opener, or something — and then when it’s time to move out – he will NOT show up at the apartment and will make you leave your keys inside it. THEN he won’t give you back your deposit because he will claim nothing was left. I called him almost a dozen times starting from the week before my move-​out date and he never called me back. He had his janitor deliver the message as I was bringing the last items from my apartment.
I never had a bug infestation, but apparently the tenant before me had died in that apartment and I was not made aware of that, until a neighbor enlightened me.
He always turns off his phone so he doesn’t have to deal with tenants and didn’t even respond to a fire alarm in our building (which didn’t ring in my wing of the building, I happened to be walking inside to hear it.) The fire department had to break down doors to get to the source of the problem because no one was available to open it.
We had a huge theft problem in our building, and letters were being posted daily about stolen packages. I had 2 torn open packages appear at my door with letters from friendly neighbors who found it ripped open and discarded in the stairwell.
If you call him to discuss these matters, he will scream and swear at you, then hang up. If that doesn’t exemplify his immoral and unprofessional disposition, I don’t know what does.
All I can say is – if you are desperate for anything to rent, and MUST use him – document everything in writing or save the wacky voice mails he will leave you and do not move out without him handing you the deposit at that time. Otherwise, you can forget about getting any money back.
Nothing would make me happier than getting together all the people he has screwed and working to put this guy out of business, so he can stop stealing from honest people.

I’ve lived at the same building for over a year (Pine Grove and W Sheridan) and have not had any of the problems these other people are speaking of. There was some bugs last year (mostly because of the weather change), but they had exterminators out like every 2 weeks knocking on doors to look under sinks and in closets. Since then no bugs. I did notice before I moved in that the carpets needed to be cleaned and the place needed to painted. Since I had my mother with me when we noticed this she was able to tell the place had been painted when I finally moved in. Also recently the handle broke on my toilet, Joe came by as soon as possible to fix it and then sent a plumber to make sure everything was working correctly as he noticed the tank was taking a long time to fill up. Overall when I have asked for things to be fixed he is there pretty quick and will return my calls the same day. I see him in the building all time and he has been nothing but friendly often joking and laughing with other tenants. He was also really friendly to my parents when they helped me move in. The only weird thing was when my lease was up this past April/​May and I had not received any sort of notice to renew. Because I had decided to stay I just went ahead and mailed in my check for May and put a note in my rent check stating I had not received the lease to renew, within a week it was mailed out to me, rent stayed the same, etc. I do notice there are condo association meetings about once a month, I have yet to go, but the building manager Marcia is good about putting notices if anything is going to happen in the building. I also have yet to meet Marcia. I have talked to a few people in the building who rent from Joe and they don’t seem to have problems either. The building is usually quiet, well kept (they vacuum hallways and sweep the front lobby) and most everyone is friendly. Maybe because it is a condo building things seem to be nice than what others are saying about Joe’s other buildings, but overall with the location and neighborhood I say its an OK place.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Finally received the deposit check, with a $ 100 deduction for «cleaning» — the apartment was left spotless, but I don’t want to deal anymore with this disgusting crook, so I’ll leave it at that. BEWARE of renting from this guy!
UPDATE: No deposit check yet, it’s been FOUR months!!! Just checked the Better Business Bureau for this clown — seems his score is an F! Awesome. Small claims court, here we come.

I am glad Nicole B that you have not had the unfortunate dealings with BED BUGS! These reviews are true I experienced this personally and even after years I am still traumatized. Maybe you are at a newer one of his buildings that has yet to be infected. If he is in that building it will eventually become infested because bed bugs can travel in your clothes while you are wearing them. When I rented at 5301 W Ashland. He would sit in the office in the building and there is no way being in the building as often as he was that he would not personally be transporting these little suckers from one of his properties to the next. After having to deal with these bugs I have done a lot of research on how they travel, what to look for and how fast they reproduce and spread. These things reproduce quicker than roaches and are more indestructible! Obviously if there are this many reviews on here concerning THIS particular landlord there is something going on… that is just common sense. Joe seemed strange but nice to me at first also. Yet once I realized I was sharing my bed with bugs and began to complain he became very nasty. Four stars to this guy makes my skin crawl. I hope other people are not misinformed by your review and end up experiencing the same traumatizing events that I suffered!

The whole time I lived in this apartment I really had no complaints… yeah it got a little cold in the winter and the water pressure could have been better, but overall price for the location — AWESOME.
Problem is eventually I had to move out. Joe was such an easygoing guy that when I asked him to be there for a final walk through — he said he didn’t need to. **BIG MISTAKE**
I had put down $ 950 for my sec deposit + pet deposit. I had left the place cleaner than how I found it. At 2 weeks after moving out, I started calling him… and called him continuously for 6 mos before I saw a single penny. And then he didn’t give me the full deposit back. In Chicago law landlords are required to give you the full amount + interest back if they don’t say anything about damages within the first 30 days of moving out.
I tried contacting him several times after that… got through the first few times and then suddenly he was hard to get a hold of… hmmm, mysterious? I think not. Even tried to get through with the BBB… and nothing.
Best recommendation — if you decide to rent here, make sure to have him there to do a final walk through and ask him to bring your sec deposit with [like landlords should do legally]. If he won’t, take pics of how you leave the apt so you can pursue him if needed.
Sad to have had a good apartment experience end badly :(

I just read the other reviews on here and I don’t know what these people are talking about. My apartment doesn’t have bed bugs or any other kind of bugs (i’ve never even seen an ant in here), or mold, and the heat is kept at a normal level throughout winter and «spring».
As far as maintenance stuff goes, we haven’t had many problems. Once my roommate couldn’t figure out what to do with a clogged toilet and said someone came out to help her right away. She also forgot her garage door opener at her office once and Joe lent her an extra one (he still hasn’t come to get it). We were also originally told we would have to pay for a second set of keys, but were never charged.
Joe is kind of strange though. A friend of mine who also rented from him said that if you stop to talk to him he will go off into really strange stories and that he knows like a dozen different languages. He apparently owns a lot of different units all over the city.
Maybe a few of them have bugs, i don’t know, but i know two other people in my building renting from him (we are in a condo association) and nobody seems angry. Slightly curious about his oddities, but not angry.

ALMOST rented here. Thank god i didn’t. Especially after all these reviews.
I was w/​the apartment people, and they took me to this building, there were 3 units whos doors were unlocked so potential renters could look. Well i found one i liked and as we were discussing the application before leaving the apartment, the landlord comes in and says «this unit is not avaliable» then why the hell was it open.
Either way, this guy seems to be a shady business man.
Also when i was looking at the garden apartment i noticed in the bedroom that there was two 2×4 stacked on the bottom edge of the room (like molding), pretty much taking away a foot from room. But then i read these reviews and realized that its probably to keep the BUGS OUT! *puke*

Yep, the same thing happened to me! BED BUGS! What a dump!
After I finally figured out that I was getting bitten by bed bugs I was infuriated. I talked to several other tenants that told me it has been a problem at 5301 for years. I couldn’t get any of them to organise and seek legal help so I had to do it myself! I contacted Metropolitan Tenants Organization and they advised me that I could reduce my rent — which I did — and thus, I recieved an eviction notice! What a nightmare!
Well, it is illegal for a land lord to retaliate against a tenant for enforcing his rights — but that didn’t stop Joe Bucci! He even had his lawyer accuse me of interfering with his ability to do business! Well, My legal council (REFFERED BY THE MTO) assured me that they would seek a settlement — which they did, but it was still 8 monthes of stress and aggravation!
Not only that — there was a crack dealer on the third floor and his clients would yell up to him at all hours of the night to open the back door for them to enter the building!
Yeah, I would have to say that J&B MANAGEMENT (JOE BUCCI) provided me with the worst rental expierience of my life!

I moved to a place near Lakeshore and Grace intersection, Joe is my landlord. My lease is now over, and I am moving out soon, THANK GOD! The last year has been HELL. So much has gone wrong, that I probably wont cover all of it, because it would take me DAYS. First of all, he never cleaned the apartment before we moved in (it was obvious) (one clue was the dog hair all over the carpet. A few days after we moved in we started noticing we had a few friends, and then a lot of friends… THE PLACE WAS INFESTED WITH ROACHES, SPIDERS, FRUIT FLIES, and BEDBUGS they made you scratch to high hell. The roaches were everywhere, and Joe didn’t do much at all to help. he sent someone to put a few roach traps around BUT DID NOT EXTERMINATE… in fact, one year later we still find roaches in the hallways, laundry room, in our kitchen and bath and even in the apt elevator and my bf FOUND ONE IN THE MAILBOX! Our toliet and sink leak, our microwave and stove don’t function, the air cond unit spits water and is filthy inside, and every door has rusted off the hinges (including the bath door) (Joe refuses to fix anything… or he claims to be sending someone and they never come) Once the door knob to the front door was so loose it fell off and I was trapped inside the apartment. We froze in the winter because he never turned on the heat until the very end… to top it all off some mysterious leak happened under our carpet (it had nothing to do with us) the leak soaked through the carpet and it was so wet there were puddles on the middle of the floor. It was coming from underneath the floor and it spread clear across the middle of the place (we couldn’t walk without getting wet) to make things worse the place began to mildew and we felt sick from breathing it in. When we told Joe, he said we must of poured the water on the floor with a bucket of water… (WTF?) He barges in whenever he wants, demands to come in your place, or bangs on your door. The apartment hallways stink, and he always has construction going outside your door (saws and tools at hours you are trying to sleep) also, the front doors to the apartment are always stuck and broken. HE DOESNT CARE ABOUT HIS TENANTS… he is the definition of a SLUM LORD. Our place was never worth what we paid for it, and I feel bad for the person who moves in next. Like the others, I found this place through Chicago Apt Finders, so my advice is to not use them, or make sure you are not in one of Joe’s owned apartments (if you must use the service) DO NOT RENT WITH J & B Management!

This is a horrible place to live! I recently moved to Chicago and rented my friends apartment here while he was out of the country for a month. After about two weeks of staying there, I started to itch like crazy, and these welts appeared on my arms. I thought they were hives, and went to the doctor twice, trying to find medicine that would make the «hives» go away. In the meantime, the welts got bigger and moved from my arms, all over my back, and my legs. I looked like I had a very nasty skin disease and it was embarrassing trying to go and apply to jobs around the city! It wasnt until a friend told me that they really didnt look like hives, that I started doing some research about what could be causing the bites. I then discovered that they were bedbug bites, and that every night when I slept I was being eaten. Anyway, long story short, it was a very traumatic experience, and every time I itch I have a fear that bedbugs are attacking me. Please, spare this experience in life. Do not live here!!! Getting rid of bed bugs is a pain, and next to impossible, and is very costly. Oh, and lastly, when I asked the landlord, Joe, he said that he had never had bedbugs before. Yeah, right. It seems obvious that he was definitely lying. Scumbag!

We were broke and needed a low-​rent place to go. We saw one of Joe’s hundreds of owned apartments, it seemed clean, freshly painted, what the heck! We moved in, only to find a few months later that some neighbors were moving out because they were infested with bugs, including cockroaches and bedbugs which caused them to lose thousands of dollars in furniture, and to which Joe said he’d rather they moved out than pay for exterminators.
The heat is always off or low on winter («heat included in rent» the ad said), hallways stink and front doors are always stuck because he refuses to fix the lock.
The man is a slum-​lord, you’re better off renting from someone else. Take it from me… don’t waste your money.