Arrived a few minutes after 4:00 (check-in time) but had no way of entering the unit. Called and sent messages to property owner, but got no reply. Called VRBO help line, who also attempted to contact owner, but had no luck. VRBO rep gave us an old code to try, but it didn't work. Finally got emailed the code at around 4:30. Upon entering the hallway to the unit, the smell of dogs was pretty overwhelming. Once inside the unit, it smelled of cigarette smoke. We could hear everything (dogs, people, construction vehicles beeping, etc.) making sounds outside the unit and the people in the unit directly above us. We assumed that with us being able to hear everything happening around us outside, the smoke smell was coming in from outside. When we laid down for bed at 8:00, we saw a rag laying over the smoke alarm. We took a picture and sent it to the owner immediately. A rep for the owner reached out to us about 20 minutes later offering to put us into a new unit, but we had already turned our phones on silent for the night. The owner texted us at 10:00 to say "Wow Omg We tried to call you to see if you wanted to go to another room". I saw it the next morning and texted him back saying that we had already gone to bed and didn't see his message until waking up. Never heard back from the owner or the rep. The issue with check-in was unacceptable enough to make us not want to use this unit again. The smoke, loudness, obvious uncleanliness (the rag was still on top of the smoke alarm) of the unit, compounded with the lack of communication makes us give this poor review. The unit is a great little studio with a great location, but we won't be using it again. Very sad to have had this encounter. This was our first negative VRBO experience.