STUHO Student Housing

I promised Stuho that I would write a review, and I'm finally getting to it. I hope Stuho isn't surprised that I'm rating them badly. My experience with Stuho was horrible. Before getting into USC, I did my studies before I got my apartment and chose First Choice Housing because of all the bad comments about Stuho. After a year with First Choice Housing, they sold the apartment to Stuho during my third semester. There was nothing I can do.



First thing that happen with Stuho is that they blamed me for the building's plumbing problem and I had to pay $100 out of my own pocket because the kitchen flooded while I was gone for the summer and I had to call my own maintenance guy to fix it right away before flooding rest of the apartment units. The plumbing issue came from my neighbors upstairs.



That isn't the worst part. Before moving out, I asked Stuho manager about carpet condition and possible charges during pre-inspection. During the inspection, Stuho manager said that I didn't need to steam clean the carpet and he acknowledged from his checklist that the carpet was already in poor condition before I moved in. Everything seemed fine to me. I cleaned up the house for two weeks and left the apartment cleaner than when I moved into the place. So, what could go wrong, right? I got my deposit money and saw that I was charged $200 for cleaning and carpet. The poor carpet condition was stated before I moved in and they even had the checklist that I made for them. I had pictures of the apartment prior to moving in and they still ignored me. All the negative comments that I've read about Stuho is very true and I did my best to avoid them, but ended up with Stuho anyways.



Stick with First Choice Housing if you can. The staffs and managers at First Choice Housing are better than Stuho's.

With two kids in college, we have worked with many student housing companies in the last six years. Stuho is the worst of all. When it came time to return the deposit, we did not receive it. After many phone calls, they claimed to have mailed it. A month later it still had not arrived so we called again. They claim to have mailed it again, and now if we want the deposit back we have to pay the $50 cancel check fee. They say they have no control over the USPS but we don't either. It is very hard to believe the mail lost it twice. We also found out that other checks were mailed to wrong addresses. The person we spoke with was no help and most likely was not being truthful about the second check going out. We would not give us any information to

speak with anyone else. She also told us there is no way to prove that the check was

mailed twice. Again not truthful.

I would absolutely not recommend ever going with this company. They manage a lot of units around USC, and seem very student friendly when you view their apartments, but choosing them is the biggest mistake of my life. I moved in to my apartment only to find the last tenants food and bed still in the apartment, along rat droppings in the kitchen. The bed was removed, but everything else remained the same for two months. I called every week but eventually they just told me that it had already been cleaned. It hadn't, but they kept dismissing me and my claims. I had never experience just rude and unprofessional management in my life. They even tried "explaining" to me that what I was seeing wasn't there. It wasn't until I got a lawyer that they finally cleaned the apartment and decided to rent it to another tenant. They still expected me to pay for the two months that the place was a mess. After going through all this, I heard alot of other horror stories from their tenants. Avoid at all costs!!