The Good: Ok value for a little 2br/2ba on a corner lot near downtown Pasadena. Nice yard and the private parking space was great.
The Bad: The house was very dirty, the furniture is cheap and uncomfortable, there’s no internet and the host tried charging us a week after we left for damages that were present upon arrival.
The Story: We adhered to the 1 house rule of hers that we not wear shoes in the house and within an hour of arrival, the soles of our feet were pitch black. The floors had not been cleaned in some time. We reached out to Mary and said we needed to buy cleaning supplies and maybe that the cleaning fee could be adjusted. Mary obliged and refunded part of that fee and also for the mop, bucket, cleaning liquids, etc we needed and we went to work. It took 4+ hours to mop all the floors until the mop water wouldn’t turn immediately black. During cleaning we realized the whole house was pretty dirty: spotty rug, spots on the couch, counters hadn’t been cleaned, dishes dirty, etc. but the beds and bathrooms were clean. There were also 2-3 air fresheners, infusers and candles in every room which a day after we turned them off realized what they were for, the previous owner or someone must have smoked in the house and had cats, which you could smell if the day was really hot.
The AC in the house is 3 window units that in August ran full blast all day just to keep the house below 80, though the kitchen was regularly above 80 degrees during the day. There’s a bathroom just off the kitchen that would smell like sewage if it was a hot day too. The kitchen was pretty bare bones, not many cups other than coffee mugs, cooking utensils were few and far between though Mary brought us some more items after we requested.
Though we had cleaned and complained about the state of the floors and kitchen, we didn’t want to complain about all of the other things listed here as it was just easier to deal with those issues ourselves. A week after we left (and after she had other guests in the house) she reached out and asked if we had a dog and that there were pee stains on the couch and carpet. We replied yes, we travel with our fully potty trained adult dog and when we booked forgot list a pet but didn’t think it mattered since she has the property listed as pet friendly and doesn’t state any pet fee or restrictions. She sent pics of the couch and rug stains and I told her that our dog doesn’t potty inside and also those stains had been there since we arrived and that we kept a heavy blanket on the couch because of those stains. There’s literally a picture in the listing that shows the rug stain she thinks our dog made. She replied “ok👍” and that was that until she requested a payment of $600 for damages and lost pet fee (per airbnb policy, pet fees must be enclosed on the listing prior to booking, which she had not done). This was very confusing as we left the apartment cleaner than when we arrived. She then canceled the request 2 minutes after she made it, assumingely because she didn’t realize it was a request and thought it would just charge us. She doesn’t list any pet fee or have anything in her listing regarding pets other than “pet friendly”. Our dog did not pee on her horribly uncomfortable and held together with drywall screws $300 couch or her dirty Home Depot $150 rug. One of us was always there with the dog as one of us works from home and our dog, again, doesn’t pee inside. We scrubbed that place constantly, there’s no way that even if our dog peed inside we would have left it like that. The couch and rug were like the rest of the house when we arrived: dirty.