Barham Villas

I just wanted to give a shout out to the office manager Monir and Sarah. My son has been in this apartment for two months now and on the day he moved in the air conditioner was not working. We called and they replaced the wall unit in four days!
Everything was going fine until one night my son was getting ready to make dinner and when he opened the oven, while closing it, the entire oven door shattered! I called emergency maintenance and he refused to come take a look stating it was not an emergency. Well, five minutes later he called back and said he would go look at the apartment. Then same night my son was getting ready to brush his teeth for the night and stepped into a puddle on the bathroom floor! Yup… the cabinet under the sink was soaking wet! Since it was 1:30am I sent the office a maintenance request to call me first thing in the AM. Sarah called and had them come to the apt to check everything out. Maintenance fixed the bathroom problem and ordered a new oven. Monir nor Sarah gave me any problem in fixing everything asap! I was very pleased and feel confident in the office staff.
Thank you Monir and Sarah!!!

The office staff is very unprofessional & constantly give you the run around. The apartments are dingy & not worth the ridiculous rent that they charge. They have a roach problem which they are not controlling. Shower & kitchen sinks get clogged all the time & the parking sucks. When you try to negotiate between a 2 bedroom & 3 bedroom apt they insist its only $ 100 difference because that’s all they want to reimburse you for if you choose to downsize. They take advantage of college students since this is close to the school, the monthly rent payments get fluctuated so much, they are not organized & supposedly «lose» paperwork so they can claim you didn’t pay for something.

Beyond unprofessional. We were called, lectured, and threatened with eviction regarding noise complaints. The main lady (Monier, spelled something like that) told me to get to the office immediately so I rushed over to see what all the hoopla was about because we rarely had people over so we didn’t understand what was happening. Well after a 5 minute lecture about noisy students she realizes that she called the wrong unit. «OOPS!» she said but no apology for wasting my time.
Also, they have given us checks for other apartments and we have had to hand them back telling them they are mistaken. Our balance for the rent online was wrong basically every month and when asked they did not provide any clear explanation, «oh the system gets messed up sometimes».
Lastly, when we moved out they sent all of the papers regarding the deposit and damages to an address that we never gave to them. Another mix up. What type of office does not bother to double check where they are sending this important information?! Unbelievable.
Inside the apartments:
Roaches to the max. We completely stopped using our kitchen because regardless of how many times we got fumigated they would always seem to pop up. We cleaned and cleaned, still definite roach infestation in the building as we also asked our neighbors about it.
Finally, after we moved out we were not given our deposit back and were charged over $ 300 for damages. When asked about what the deposit covers, no response. It was merely switched back to how «filthy» we left the apartment when we had spent a significant amount of time ensuring that it was left neat.
I’m super disappointed. The maintenance people are amazing, I guess Barham has that going for them.

My husband and I lived here for a little over a year.
Pros:
Spacious inside. Nice appliances (but weren’t always working). The complex manager is very sweet, and the maintenance staff is very nice, too. The property was always very nicely manicured, lawn always mowed, and the sidewalks always swept. Our immediate neighbors were nice, considerate, friendly. (the others, however, were a different story)
Cons:
We were told that the apartment we were getting had a washer and dryer. We didn’t think to see if it had it because they told us it did. We got everything signed, and low and behold, no washer and dryer. We were also told our garage would be right behind us. Well it was two buildings over. Not that we would have minded, but being told one thing and another thing being true started to get a little annoying.
The carpets had old earrings and bobby pins stuck in it, and the walls had hair that had been painted over it. The shelves in the kitchen were warped, and the drain in one of the bathrooms were rusted beyond use, and the shower head was so clogged with calcium buildup that water couldn’t even get though it, so I replaced the shower head myself. The windows were painted shut so we had to force them open. There was also a mold problem that I kept bringing up, and the property manager dismissed me, and told me that mold doesn’t grow between glass. Well, being a molecular biologist, I knew she was wrong, but that fact didn’t seem to sway her. Mold started to grow everywhere. I bleached the hell out of the window sills, the toilets, the shower doors, the walls, the ceiling, everywhere. I was blamed for not leaving the fan on long enough in the bathroom, even though we’d leave it on for about an hour after we showered. I had to clean twice a week in order to keep it under control. I made multiple reports and it was taken care of in certain places, but not in all the spots of concern. They did replace the shower doors, but this was after the third time of bugging them about it. We started getting allergy attacks every night. The mold species that was growing in there was not a harmful one, but it was still causing us to lose sleep from how bad our allergies were.
The lighting was also really, really annoying. It was super dark during the day, and a very bright light shown RIGHT INTO our bedroom at night. We tried to install our own blinds to block out the light but they got infested (by that, I mean there was a blue blanket on the back where the bamboo blind used to be) with mold and we had to throw them out. It was like sleeping in a damned prison. It was very difficult to sleep.
This is a college area. If you don’t like a bunch of annoying, drunk, inconsiderate, self absorbed jackasses living next to you, littering their cigarettes and broken glass everywhere (which we would always find on our joke of a patio) you should probably not live here. We even found a beer can that had been deliberately placed on our patio railing (wtf?). They always broke glass in the pool and hot tub. So they had to drain it over and over again to clean it up. And the bros walk around with no shirts on all the time. Who does that?
Once, the water heater busted, and flooded our entire kitchen. We got our renter’s insurance to pay us for having been forced to leave so they could fix everything, but they charged us the electricity they used to dry it all out. Which was a lot of money. Awesome, guys.
The last straw was drawn when we found cockroaches in our bathroom.
The patios are ridiculously small. I think they just have a small one there so they can charge more for having one, though it served no functionality.
Not exactly the property’s fault, but we ended up getting poison oak from the laundry mat one time. That really annoyed us, going back to being told we’d have our own washer and dryer.
Additionally, our move out charges were bs. We were charged for your usual things, like carpet cleaning, paint, etc, which we expected. But they charged us for insufficient time of notice, which is crap, because we gave them over a month’s notice. We were charged for a broken microwave door, which was broken when we moved in, we told them this, and they must have not remembered or noted this because we were charged for it. The warped shelves were never replaced. We got some money back, which is fine. We were so annoyed with them that we just let it be.
Although I probably would have let this all go and not written this review had it not been for the bs charges in our move-​out statement. We were damned good tenants. Our rent was always on time, and we were clean and responsible. They even tried to say we didn’t pay rent once when we did. GOOD thing we kept proof. Jeez.

Lived here for a year and I will not be renewing the lease.
PROS:
Mayda is SO nice and extremely helpful. The maintenance staff is also awesome. They work their butts off to keep this place in great shape. It is located very close to CSUSM and food! They have a really cool recycling program and they also have a community garage sale! They have small events that go on in the complex to make it feel like more of a community.
CONS:
When I first moved in it was completely obvious that they hadn’t cleaned the carpets. There were fake eyelashes, earrings, and stickers stuck to the ground.
My apartment was spider infested. You may think this is an exaggeration, but I’m not lying. We would find AT LEAST four spiders a day. I became so used to it. We sprayed the apartment so many times, it didn’t help at all.
The windows have cracks in them, so when it’s hot and you want to get some air in the apartment, you also allow bugs and spiders to come in.
Our sinks and showers clogged twice a month. I used to think it was my hair, but the kitchen sink would do the same thing. Also the smell coming from the drains was horrible. The metal handle inside our shower was rusty and they tried to paint over it to cover it up. After months of water exposure, the paint began coming off and you could see how nasty it was.
PARKING SUCKS. You have one assigned space and a garage that could potentially fit two small cars if they are bumper to bumper. There isn’t any street parking, they changed that to 2 hour parking 24 – 7. Not to mention the towing company comes by a lot to make sure you aren’t «double parking» over the red line. I can understand that, but if you have more than two cars, you’re taking a chance. They also changed my assigned spot without notifying me, so one day someone else started parking in my spot (the spot I was given on the lease). My new spot was no where near my apartment, so coming home from work at 11pm and leaving at 4am was a bit creepy.
In my experience (and this obviously doesn’t apply to everyone), the people in this complex are a little sketchy. My neighbors were very loud and would fight all the time. There was a high school aged kid that lived above us who would smoke weed and would hang out with his friends on the balcony, shouting to people walking by. People don’t clean up their animals feces, so it was a nice surprise finding the remains on the bottom of your foot. There was a family that had a small dog that they would leave out on the balcony for long periods of time. It would bark and bark and bark. I would hear tenants walking by my window complaining about the dog, but nothing changed. Also there was this couple two buildings away that would have «alone time» with their windows open and everyone got to hear the echoes.
I salute them for their recycling program, however their recycling cans located next to the dumpsters are too small. They are filled to the top every day.
Three months before the lease was up we got a letter saying we didn’t pay rent and that we were going to be evicted. I went up to the office with proof that all the payments went through and was told there «might» have been a mistake on their end. They kept saying they would call us back and fill us in, but it still said we owed $ 159 in rent until the end. Never got any information on that.
I HATE complaining or writing negative reviews. I’m hoping that maybe they will improve and find some solutions! The location is great, but the place needs some work !!
This was my first apartment, so my expectations weren’t too high, but after moving into a new place in the city, I’ve realized the difference between a good apartment and a bad one.

I have lived here for about five months since late January 2015 and love my unit! When I moved it they had just renovated my unit with all new everything, kitchen, floors, carpet, paint, even new doors. So far all the neighbors in my building have been great, maintenance was great, landlord is easy to work with! My only negotiate would be that paying rent online cost $ 40 so obviously don’t do that!

I have lived here for almost a year now and have always received great service from the front office to the maintenance guys. The maintenance guys are very helpful, they even help put up my bike hooks in the garage for me as well as borrow paint to paint the rooms. There are many changes but it is for the better. They are trying to upkeep the place to look nice. I will keep living here until horrible circumstances occur but I doubt that. Maintenance guys you can really count on them to do their jobs right and well. The property is looking better and better every time a month passes by. Maintenance guys rock!!!

Hello all, I haved lived here for about 7 months now and I am very pleased. Honestly, I expected this complex to be mediocre and custer service challenged from the earlier reviews. Despite the reviews, my boyfriend and I choose to live here because it was so much closer to wrk and have been saving lots of money and time since moving here.
Since moving in, our experience here has been wonderful, compared to the last two places we stayed at. All the people working here have been great, from the Manager down to the janitors. This place is far from mediocre, they opened a new gym a couple months after we moved in, and soon a new community living room. The pool deck and bbqs are nicely kept and maintened and they provide doggy waste bags. I just wish people would use more of them! We got lucky with our floorplan as it came with a dark tone floor, that makes our furniture look alot nicer!
All in all, my boyfriend and I are happy and comfortable with our most recent apartment decision, and plan to stay here as long as work remains local.
Hope this helps!

My wife and I had a very favorable experience here at the Ham. Our stay here was short lived (8 months) due to us breaking the lease when I got a job up in Seattle, but my wife still talks about how much she misses the coziness of our apartment. This was not only the only apartment building we found with 2 beds and a garage, but it was also cheaper than the other units at different complexes we saw that were 1 bed 1 bath no garage. We saved about 100 a month just on storage. Management was very friendly and accomodating of all our needs. As soon as there was an issue, it was corrected within the day. Like any apartment complex, there can be an eclectic crowd, but for the most part it was just college kids. The only issue we ever had was when our neighboors had back to back ragers with their college buddies playing lets see who can yell the loudest. Literally, they were just yelling to yell, not in response to anything. I called the cops, discretely and within an hour I heard some pounding on our wall, then the noise stopped. Hate to break up the party, but we were 26 when we were there! We weren’t young bucks anymore and some of us have actual jobs.

I lived here for 4 years while earning my Bachelors Degree at CSU San Marcos so I am very familiar with these units.
There is no central air, only an air conditioner in the living room and heaters in the bedrooms. The heaters in the bedrooms are so outdated that if they are left on too long they look and smell like they are going to catch fire. It’s definitely a disappointment not to have AC in the bedrooms. And the solution is not the windows. The windows in these units are so poorly installed and insulated that there are gaps where bugs and water come in, and mold grows on the window sills.
The balconies sound like a nice amenity but they are so tiny you can’t even fit a chair out there.
The walls are very poorly insulated, you can hear your neighbor sneeze and that is no exaggeration. If the person living above you jumps up and down the whole unit will shake. Because this community is right down the street from CSUSM it is full of college kids, and unfortunately they throw obnoxiously loud parties with their doors and windows open every weekend.
Because the train runs right by the apartments, you can guarantee you’ll hear the horns blaring at 2−3am.
The community has communal laundry, which I personally am not a fan of for sanitary reasons. The little closet they call the gym could use some serious updating.
A major problem with this apartment community is that it isn’t gated or protected in any way. College kids park in the resident parking and take up all the spots. They’ll also break bottles in the parking lot and mess up car tires when they’re drunk. While living there the management sent out a notice that homeless people/​random people off the street were walking through our complex and trying people’s front doors to see if they were unlocked so we should do our best to keep our doors locked at all times. Very unsafe.
The only good thing about living in that apartment community was the management. When I had a roommate move out mid-​lease due to an argument, the manager did not hesitate to offer to change my locks for free.

After starting this new year I have seen many improvements in the facilities and the staff. The maintainance crew has kept up their hard work and the management staff has become more involved with the community.
The community here is always friendly and welcoming. The parking still remains an issue but the management is actively working to address it. I have lived here for almost 4 years now and call this place my home. It is conveniently located next to the 78 and 15 freeways and is walking to CSU San Marcos.
I believe this is a great place to live if you want something safe and quiet.

Lived there for almost 2 years.
I have to say I appreciated the front desk staff (Lisa) and the maintenance staff were always very helpful. I loved the way the apartments were laid out as I could go and walk my dog within the community. I loved the breakfast days when they would hand out bagels, juice to the neighbors.
Speaking of dogs, I had a neighbor that would let their dogs out from the second floor apartment and «supervise» his dog from his balcony. Ever since they moved in, guess what happened? More poop suddenly was left in the grass area. So much that I got a notice that it would be put in my file that we failed to clean up after our dog. When I went to check why we got that notice I was told that since they did not know who did it, they sent the same note to all the neighbors within the problem area. Which was weird because just a week before I actually had mentioned something to them because that same dog nearly knocked me over. The owner told me I should «chill» when I told him he should leash his dog and then apologized when I revealed my 6 month pregnant belly hiding under my sweater.
Because of our growing family, we moved to a bigger place. I was very pregnant but made sure to clean the apartment up and down because I wanted my whole security deposit back. I requested an initial walk through before our move date, that never got done. After I cleaned throughly and filled up every single nail hole, I requested the final walk through. The maintenance person said that the apartment barely needed any work as it was almost ready to move in but that they should have warned me before hand that they charge everyone a $ 105 cleaning fee. But because the apartment was already clean, the company would just do a basic cleaning and we would get charged only $ 75. My surprise came when we were sent our deposit check back. With charges for painting the apartment for $ 150, cleaning $ 75, carpet cleaning $ 125. It is unlawful to charge for normal wear and tear. But I was very pregnant and did not want to get into an argument so after calling the corporate office I got back the $ 150 painting fee. Not because it was unlawful but because they were being generous. And was told that I should be grateful that there was nothing deducted from my pet deposit because they did not know if my dog had fleas.
So if you want to rent at Barham Villas, feel free to leave the apartment looking nasty because you will be charged regardless of how clean you are (because, according to them, they have had nasty tenants in the past).

I recently moved out of Barham Villas Apartment Homes (to be closer to work) and must say that my family and I had a good experience! The staff is very friendly and courteous and did a great job and maintaining the property! They genuinely care about their resident’s and will do what they can to make sure that you are helped in a professional and kind manner. The breakfast on the go resident event was by far my favorite!
In regards to the apartment, we were living in the 3 bedroom 2 bathroom and it was pretty cozy, not a ton of space in the kitchen but definitely decent sized bedrooms and bathrooms. The best part about the apartment was that we had a washer and dryer on the balcony! This is a great amenity that I know not all apartments had but they also have 2 large laundry facilities to offer to the residents.
I’d also like to mention that this place is pet friendly — with a ton of pet stations that were super convenient!
My only con would be that the gym and play center could use come updating. However, other than that it was a great place to live!

I have been living here for the last several months and my experience has not been well. I am paying 1880 dollars a month for rent in a 2 bed 1 bath apartment. Then rent here is ridiculous and don’t waste your time living here for that amount of money. It is close to the college, but not worth it. Since I have been here, a resident was evicted for trying to kill his downstairs neighbors, another resident moved out because his roommate threatened to harm him, my friend got his radio stolen out of his car in the apartment’s parking lot, as well as a rapist being arrested in the apartments. The staff treated all of this like it was nothing and that everything would pan out on its own. Another one of my friends that is a resident here had cackroaches as well as his neighbor. At least 50 of them behind their refrigerator when they moved it. They care more about being a little loud after 10:00pm than any of those other things I mentioned earlier. Have fun trying to have a party because they have a security guard that goes around all over the apartments. The staff’s number one priority here is keeping quiet after 10:00pm. Safety is not a priority to the staff obviously because all they care about is your money. The newest lady of the staff in the front office jacked up my friend’s rent 100 dollars more per month right when she came in. With all of this, the only positive that I have is. Lisa at the front office is very nice and always has a smile on her face like she wants to help, and the head maintenance guy (bald with a mustache) is really cool and he will get to you right away when you need something fixed; which is very often because everything seems to fall apart.

Great, clean place with really friendly staff. When I went in to tour the place it was raining and the two places I went before Barham Villas were either closed or wouldn’t let me tour because of the rain. Not only did they let me tour, they had burgers and hot dogs in the office just in case some of the tenants wanted to come in and say hi (yes, it was still a rainy day, that didn’t change a thing). Saying that the employees were nice would be an understatement, I felt like I should buy each of them a beer. Beyond that, the apartment is really well kept, as is the property and you get access to a heated pool and garage that they don’t nickel and dime you for. Awesome place.