We enjoyed our 35-night stay which began in early June, and we’d recommend this house and neighborhood to others like us.
There are two layers of hosts for this property. The host through whom we booked our reservation was Nesty, a company that promotes and manages rentals for property owners. I’ll refer to Nesty as the “agency-host”. With this property, the owner actually lives in the basement apartment of the bungalow when she rents out the main level. I’ll call her the “owner-host”.
The owner-host was fantastic – super responsive and helpful! Just a wonderful, considerate person in all our interactions. The agency-host was proactive and professional.
Some context: My wife and I were not tourists. Our home is in the US now, but we are originally from Toronto, and we like to return to the Toronto area every summer. When in Toronto, we still need to work from home (WFH) during the week, and then venture out on the weekends to see family and friends. Also, our first house 30 years ago was in a nearby neighborhood, and that house was of similar vintage (built in the 1920’s), so we knew what to expect. For people who haven’t been to this part of Toronto, a real bonus of this location is being close to the Beaches, The Danforth, and very walkable residential communities.
This house is a modest but comfortable bungalow, big enough for a WFH couple like us. It has new windows throughout. Has a partially updated, relatively large bathroom. The A/C worked well, and the new windows probably helped keep the warmer air from getting inside.
One small bedroom was set up with a desk to be an office, and one end of the large dining room table was perfect as our other desk. The bed was comfortable. The kitchen is old but well-supplied with dishes and cookware, and it has a new large, stainless steel fridge. It has a dishwasher, but no microwave. Assuming the electrical circuits in the old kitchen could handle it, a small microwave oven should be provided considering the price of this rental (we knew at time of booking there was no microwave – this is simply a recommendation for future rentals). We appreciated having the exclusive use of a new washer and dryer.
Inside the house, our only complaint was that the internet service was not as reliable as we needed it to be. During our 35-night stay, there were 3 internet outages due to a problem with the service provider (Rogers), with outages on weekdays last from 2 to 6 hours. When Internet goes out, so does the TV since the latter’s signal is delivered via modem. In addition, there was a total power outage one evening. The owner-host was on the case as fast as anyone could be. She works from home too, so the outages impacted her as well. She was at the mercy of the internet service provider (or electrical utility) that was having neighborhood-wide issues.
It was a pleasant surprise how comfortable (with patio chairs + small table) and private (thanks to shrubs and a big tree in the front yard) the front porch was. We used it daily.
Under the heading, ‘outside the owner’s control’: The property immediately south of this one has only the footprint of a small house that burned to the ground. The foundation is covered with an orange tarp, with random debris on it -- the view out the living room window. The next two contiguous properties have houses still standing that were also partially damaged by the fire, but work to restore them is ongoing, with dumpsters and porta-potties in front of each one. Fortunately for us, there was little extra traffic or noise due to these restoration projects since there appeared to be hardly any work going on. Because we have experienced neighborhood construction or other neighborhood problems with Airbnb rentals before, I always ask, before we book, “any next door neighbours' homes under construction?" The agent-host told us about the house next door, but not the others. This points to a potential problem when an agency-host is not as familiar with the neighborhood or the house as the owner is.
Speaking of neighborhood issues, future renters should be aware that this property is across the street from a large parking lot for patrons of a no-frills grocery store, a restaurant/bar, and other retailers. The only issue for us: the loud noises in the wee hours of the morning coming from: large trucks making their deliveries, the emptying of dumpsters, and the operation of a trash compactor. Thankfully, closing the new windows (at the front of the house) insulated us from most of these sounds, but it meant that leaving windows open for sleeping wasn’t an option.
No location or house is perfect. The few negatives we experienced were far outweighed by the positives, not the least of which is a wonderful host-owner.