Students Speak Out Against Intempus Property Management

Piles of trash were left covering the sidewalks in front of Santa Clara University's off-campus student housing. Photo by Amy Suh

A room with mold. Several broken windows. Holes in the walls. Rats have invaded your home. These were the experiences of several Santa Clara University students living in properties managed by Intempus Property Management. 

“They just treat you like you don’t really matter,” one third-year Santa Clara University student said, who chose to remain anonymous to protect his privacy. “And they can, because they are the ones in power, because they own all these houses.”

Intempus Property Management manages different rental properties and acts as the intermediary between the property owner and the tenants. They manage several properties in the Santa Clara area, making it common for students to live in housing managed by them. 

Their job is to ensure properties are maintained and tenants are satisfied, and they manage “day-to-day management that the owners don’t have time for,” according to Intempus property manager Michael Camarena. 

However, some current and past tenants believe that Intempus has shirked on their responsibilities, including during the move-in and move-out processes. 

Camarena claimed, “If the whole house moves out, then yes, we take care of cleaning.” Camarena also explained that there may be delays in cleaning if the homeowners don’t respond in time to approve any repairs or replacements.

However, multiple groups of tenants found the house to be a complete mess upon moving in, and have found that it often takes days to receive responses.

“We’ve run into so much stuff, like they don’t respond to emails,” the third-year student said. “They took time to fix all this stuff, meanwhile it should have been done before we moved in, right?”

Roommates Billy Wagner ’25, Henry Stevens ’25 and Eph Esson ’26 shared their experience with the property management group. 

When first arriving at their unit, they identified a foul-smelling mold, along with many items left over from the previous tenants that they ended up deconstructing themselves—such as a full size bed set up. According to Wagner and Stevens, there was a space behind the house between the fence that was filled with trash to the point you couldn't see the ground.

“That was definitely frustrating looking back on it, considering how often they would get on us for little amounts of trash, like on the curb in front of our place that were blown out of the dumpster or something like that,” Stevens said. 

Throughout their time living in the Intempus property, the roommates alleged they would constantly get charged over trash that wasn’t theirs. According to Stevens and Wagner, one time they were fined $150 for a single red solo cup under the stairs to the upper unit. 

“The other frustrating thing is anytime there’s anything like that, they fined us and the other unit on our property, and there was no like, ‘let’s try to figure out whose trash this is,’ or reaching out like: ‘Is this your guys’ trash?” Stevens said. 

The next year when Esson was attempting to find a house with a new group, he ran into more issues with Intempus. The lease was sent to two different groups at once, so whichever group signed first would secure the house.

While Esson’s group was the first to sign the lease, they were not yet in the clear. Intempus informed the group after signing that they had been sent the wrong lease. Despite their quick action, the group ended up losing the house to the other party of tenants due to the mix-up. 

“To me this seems like high pressure sales,” Esson stated in an email describing his experience with the property management group. “We did not feel we had time to even tour the home as they put us in a race with another group,” which he attributes to this “high pressure” nature.

This experience was not unique to these three students.

“I know so many other people who’ve run into similar issues,” the anonymous third-year said. “People kind of have no choice but to deal with them, especially with some of the more sought-after houses.”

Upon moving into the house, he and his roommates ran into challenges right away. Despite being optimistic about the potential of living there, they were faced with a disappointing welcome. “A bunch of stuff from the previous tenants; they didn’t even care to clean anything out,” he said. “Missing blinds, chipped paint, trash everywhere.”

In an email sent to Camarena, they listed everything that was broken, damaged or missing. Other things they included were leaking toilets, stains on the walls, and trash on the roof and rooms. 

“They’re just lazy, they don’t care,” he said. “They kind of put themselves in a position where they’re allowed to get away with that.”

There have been more than a few poor experiences with Intempus. Another fourth-year Santa Clara University student, who chose to remain anonymous to protect his identity, shared his story of living in a house managed by the company. 

“The entire house was destroyed,” he said. “Almost every window was shattered, almost all of the carpeting in the house was rancid, like it smelled like weed, it smelled like human feces.”

To request that something be fixed or replaced, tenants have to submit a form on the Intempus website, according to Camarena. However, all students that The Santa Clara interviewed shared similar experiences of slow response times, and most tenants resolve the issues themselves.

“You put ‘extremely urgent’ every single time because if it’s anything less than extremely urgent, they don’t answer,” the fourth-year student said. “Sometimes when it’s extremely urgent, like when we had exposed wires on the outside of our house, it took someone three weeks to come.”

Even after this struggle, upon further inspection of the house, he and his roommates found mold, trash inside and outside the house, holes in the walls and ceilings and neither the washer nor dryer worked. 

Students shared similar stories about being fined around $150 for trash found outside their house, which they claimed didn’t belong to them.

The fourth-year student shared it felt unreasonable to be charged for trash he had no control over. “Intempus sends people around at like five in the morning to scan yards for trash before students are awake and before they have a chance to pick it up,” he said. “Living in a college neighborhood, there’s lots of drunk people that come out all the time; they throw their trash in front of your house.”

“It’s kind of more like a disciplinary charge to try to keep their eyes open for trash in the front yard,” Justin Boyer, another Intempus property manager, said in regards to the trash fines. “That sounds a little unfair, but it’s unfair to the homeowners also that they’re getting charged for trash in the front yard.”

The city fines property owners if there is trash outside of the house, so Intempus turns that fine onto the tenants, since they are the ones living there.

As a result of these common negative experiences with Intempus, many students would rather seek out an alternative option for housing, as they warn other students about the property management company. 

“I’m not too sad about it anymore,” the third-year anonymous student said. “I just hope it’s not the norm for people in the future that are renting with them.”