For two people who, in their own words, claim to manage 'some of Cape Town's finest properties´ through Hometown Spaces, Mandy and Dean massively let us, and themselves down.
My partner and I have stayed in 30 Airbnbs, of varying standards, around the world, and have never been so disappointed by two hosts.
You can find their listings here https://www.airbnb.co.za/users/show/20600730
The house in FANTASTIC- well positioned, clean, reasonably well equipped etc, however, the management of the property is terrible.
Firstly, when cancelling a night we only received 25% of the ´full refund´ we were meant to receive.
Secondly, there is incredibly loud and obtrusive building going on next door; power tools are being used from 08:00 until after 17:00, and it only gets put on hold on Sundays. Understandably, this is out of the hosts' control, however, it IS up to them to manage guests' expectations and how they're dealt with.
We had flown to Cape Town from Mexico to plan our wedding (all mentioned in our message to the hosts beforehand), and absolutely nothing was mentioned to us about the noise.
It was impossible to get over our jet-lag, and we were forced to 'go out' in order to have some peace and quiet; this is absolutely not the point of renting a cottage.
Over the course of our stay we updated the hosts with messages and videos/photos, however they only replied after Airbnb was notified.
Secondly, the washing machine only has scorching hot water supplied to it, so even if you put it on a cold cycle, all clothes prone to shrinking in such heat, will be shrunk. There was no mention of it, verbally, nor in the form of a notice on the machine. Our beautiful clothes that we have bought over the years have been ruined. Upon speaking to one of their employees, this problem had been reported before and not addressed.
We were offered a 25% refund off our stay, which is not even enough to cover our damaged clothes, and furthermore, have in fact, only been refunded 25% off our first night, which equates to US$30.
BE VERY AWARE, and lower your expectations.