A few changes and it could be an excellent rental
The location is great. It is a short walk to Gloucester Road or South Ken tubes. The house is large with 3 bedrooms – a queen on 3rd floor, a queen plus 2 bunk beds on 4th floor via a spiral staircase, and a queen in the basement. The Houst team was friendly in responding. But seldom resolved the problem. They had suggested Stasher for us to store our luggage before we were able to get into the house which worked out great. We were able to get a second set of keys a day after we requested them.
But we had a lot of problems.
First was getting the keys from a newsagent a 10-minute walk from the house. In the pouring rain. But they didn’t have the keys. So, after numerous calls (when they said they would call me back but they did not), and 1 ½ hours later, the Houst team “found” them. They were at the newsagents all along. One of the Houst suggestions (when they couldn’t figure out why the keys were not there) was for us to cancel our booking. Seriously? This was very stressful. We had fully prepaid for the week and were at their mercy. Where else would we find a 3-bedroom house on the day? At 5.30 pm? The newsagent said this happens all the time with this company. They did refund us $50 of $4,000+ for this delay.
We finally got into the house and immediately left for a late dinner reservation. Upon our return, a circuit breaker blew by our turning on a light. So, the entire house was in the dark except for the basement. The owner’s car (dust-covered with flat tires) takes up the entire (filthy) garage except for a narrow walk-way to the washer and dryer. The Houst team advised me to climb over the hood of the car to reset the blown circuit breaker. This after we had been told to take care with the owner’s car. At least that was the only time the circuit blew.
The wifi doesn’t work or when it does work, the signal is slower than an old dial-up line. Most webpages took 5 minutes to come up if they came up at all. Our international roaming charges were outrageous because we seldom had wifi. There was no outage in the area. It is just very bad wifi. Forget streaming.
Which you need streaming because the tv doesn’t work. After 3 days (and many hours by technically competent people) we played with the remotes long enough to get the kitchen tv to work. The main tv in the lounge never worked. Nor did they send anyone to fix it.
The house needs serious maintenance. Small as well as large. Burnt out light bulbs in most rooms, drains that don’t drain, fridge door doesn’t shut without a good push, stains on every carpet and settee/sofa/ pillow and bed cover and window covering, heavy dust on every light fixture, window treatments that don’t work or have broken parts or have been drawn on. Chipped paint on windows and/or water stains on ceilings. Chipped glasses, broken glass table, the dining room table was not stable (we flipped our things off the table several times by accident), drawers and cupboards don’t shut. No outdoor trash bin (after asking all week, on our last day they suggested I buy one and they would reimburse me.) It is a full-sized refrigerator, but the door doesn’t stay shut unless pushed hard. The top floor shower was unusable because some tiles had rotted away with soft sub-floor underneath. The top floor sink was fully clogged and unusable. Too much “stuff” everywhere: on the shelves, in the cupboards, it’s a hoarders paradise.
Truly a shame because the potential is there. All these things are easily fixable with a bit of care.