University Area Housing, eau-claire-wi

Do not ever, under any circumstances, rent through this company. It is hard to know where to even begin with how terrible my experience was with University Area Housing. My partner and I rented through them from June 2024 through May 2026, staying in the same unit throughout that time. My first red flag was upon initially moving in in early June. We arrived at the unit to find that our shower was being repaired and therefore unusable (I have included pictures). We promptly contacted UAH about this, and it took them almost a week to resolve this issue. It became evident that this rental company has no urgency to ensure their tenants’ maintenance issues are resolved promptly. Maintenance requests are a whole thing themselves. There is absolutely no communication with the tenants about when they can expect maintenance to show up after submitting a request. They would enter after one or two faint knocks with no prior notice, sometimes entering while tenants are in the shower or sleeping. Something HAS to change with how this company communicates with its tenants. Further, when maintenance actually got done, the work was extremely poor and represented more of a “patch job”. The biggest issue we had while renting through UAH was our pipes bursting in the basement, which we can only attribute to their negligence. Both our building’s water heater and furnace broke on an extremely cold day. After not having heat for over 15 hours, when maintenance arrived and “fixed” them, they ran hot water through near-frozen pipes, causing them to burst. Several inches of scalding water flooded our basement, of which we needed to walk through in order to save the items in our storage unit. The best part about this whole situation was that it happened on a Saturday, which means we had to contact UAH’s emergency line, of which they have multiple different extensions. Luckily for us, for all extensions, no one ever answers the phone, AND the voicemail boxes are always full, so you cannot even leave a voicemail. They must think that emergencies just don’t happen outside of business hours! Because we could not get a hold of anybody at the office, we had to call the fire department to come and shut off the building’s water. The fire department then got in contact with a city worker who came to check out the situation. Even the city worker was not initially able to get a hold of anyone from UAH. About an hour or two after the pipes initially burst, the UAH owner finally came to the apartment building with no urgency whatsoever. Once this situation was over, UAH did not do much to clean up the mess that this situation caused, which led to mold growth along the floor, baseboards, and our belongings that were never taken care of. We had another issue similar to this where our upstairs neighbor had been showering, and for whatever reason, water started coming through the bathroom ceiling. Again, there was absolutely no urgency from UAH to solve this issue, so I just had to wait and watch as water poured into my bathroom. I called the office, and I was quite frantic given the situation. The receptionist who answered my call was apparently not happy with how frantic I sounded and ended up hanging up on me after I asked them to please hurry and get someone over to my unit. When a maintenance person finally arrived, rather than immediately solving the problem, they blamed the upstairs tenants for “the way they were showering”. After this incident, there was a huge crack along the bathroom ceiling that, while previously there, was made much worse by this incident, to which they never addressed. Overall, UAH does not care about the well-being of its tenants. They lack communication skills and always seem bothered whenever you try to contact them about anything. I am truly disappointed with my experience with UAH. An extra thing worth noting is that UAH bribes new tenants for 5-star reviews at the beginning of each lease cycle by claiming they could get a free month of rent. For that reason, take all of the positive ratings with a grain of salt.

Not a great experience overall. When we moved in, there was already a lot of damage throughout the house. We listed those issues on our move-in inspection, but they were never fixed and some of them were still taken out of our security deposit. Before moving out, we deep cleaned the entire house to avoid any cleaning fees. Even after doing that, they marked every room and appliance as dirty and charged us extra. The only reason this company has good reviews on its page is because they convince you at signing (before you can even see how it is renting from them) to give them a 5 star review for discounted rent. Throughout our time there, management was not very helpful and work orders took a long time to get done. Based on our experience, I would not recommend renting from them.

Andrea has a serious snarky attitude. I've dealt with her for 3+ years now and every time you call she treats you like a child who is misbehaving by calling. Not very professional considering I've given University Area Housing thousands of dollars in rent. It's really quite a shame considering the rest of the team is awesome to work with. She needs a major attitude adjustment or a new job, one or the other.

Very quick and simple process!! Nice staff, I liked the guy who showed us around at houses. All my questions were answered, and I feel like I really know everything despite this being my first time leasing! Lilly is very very helpful and funny! She understands the student life and that we’re new to this

Rented through UAH my senior year. Decent experience overall but definitely could be better. Pros: - Friendly people and relatively helpful as a whole. (signing is slightly rushed as they don’t want you to ~thoroughly~ read the contract) - Anytime there was a maintenance issue, it was fixed or had somebody out to work on it the same day (at no charge to us) - Fairly reasonable pricing on rentals for the demand Cons: - Got charged for a “broken refrigerator handle” after moving out. We had cleaned the entire place top to bottom before leaving and EVERYTHING was in tact and in perfect order, better than when we moved in (complete scam charge, but not worth it to fight as a lawyer would charge more and they know that). - Absolutely FILTHY when we moved in. Shower floor was nearly black in a white tub, cobwebs/dust/dirt/stains everywhere. They own a large majority of the ideal housing area so you’ll likely rent through them, just have to be ok with some of the bad.