For someone who travels and stays in property rentals often, this was definitely not the best experience.
Upon arrival, we noticed that there was not enough room to fit 6 cars on the driveway, as a giant RV camper was taking up 2/3 of the driveway. We contacted the host who had advertised that there would be enough room for 6 spots at her property. She told us that you could fit 4 cars on the driveway and 2 on the street in front of the house. However, there were city code signs in the neighborhood stating that cars without permits would be fined $100. We asked if she had permits for us, she replied no but that no one ever had a problem. We asked if we would be reimbursed if we got a violation ticket. Again, she replied no.
We proceeded to go into the house to find trash bagged outside by the pool not inside trashcans, pool floaties and toys just laying aimlessly around on the concrete, and one of the giant pool umbrellas sunken into the pool. She sent someone to help fix that situation in a timely manner, but things went downhill from there on out.
The lack of tidying outdoors and the parking situation were minor things. We could deal with that. As the first night went on, the house was not getting hot water. When we reached out to the host, she told us we couldnât run the hot tub and the showers at the same time, but we didnât even use the hot tub yet. Long story short, she instructed us to reset the water heater. We then saw, attached to the water heater, safety signs about the valves. The water heater had to get reset multiple times, just to get a little bit of hot water.
Lastly, one of the beds in the room was broken. Upon sleeping on it, it felt off and slanted so we removed the mattress off the frame to find that the wood slats were broken. The host apologized but didnât offer to do anything about this situation.
The host also did not check in to see how things were going. When we tried to contact her, she was not super responsive (it took 12 hours for her to respond to the bed issue!), and on top of that, every time we called her she would not pick up and we would be sent to voicemail but her inbox was full so we couldnât leave a message. Everything with the water heater also felt like a huge safety concern...we're dealing with gas here! The property was nice on the outside to the visible eye. But it was the underlying issues that were safety related and the general lack of communication that really made this experience awful.