As soon as we booked this flat, I was notified that I would receive 3 emails requesting necessary information from us. The emails were some kind of official forms, strangely formatted probably because they were scanned, with so many admonishments in CAPITAL letters, it felt like I was being shouted at or chastised before I had done anything wrong. I wondered if I had made a mistake with booking it but we had waited till the last minute to decide to go to Venice so there were very few choices. We tried very hard to do everything by the rules since there would be fines and consequences if we didn't pay attention to all the rules.
When we arrived we were greeted within 15 minutes by a very nice young woman who showed us to the flat and explained the workings of the place very well. We were quite relieved.
The issue is that this is not someone's home or personal space, it is a rental business. It is up 4 flights of stairs so if you don't travel light, you will wish you had. It is clean, well located and has all the amenities most people would want.
We stayed in one other flat on our trip that was hosted by a company not an individual and we didn't have as impersonal a start with them at all. Maybe this company has had previous guests that were inconsiderate so they are taking no chances but it did give us an uneasy feeling until after we were left on our own at the flat nad felt like we had passed the test.