There are nice things to say – it was clean, there was breakfast cereal, milk, oranges from the tree outside, coffee maker, microwave, plus the kitchen is well equipped – hard to say whose frozen food was in the freezer – previous tenants? The bed was comfortable and there were enough blankets. It is a quiet location and probably quite nice in in warmer weather. And it is very near my daughter’s home. We booked a week’s stay over New Year’s.
Now the nitty-gritty:
Text messages were the only way to communicate with Dorothy Yu. We never met her or anyone else from the real estate company that owns this property. The adjacent house has two rental apartments in it. Our apartment is a converted garage at the rear of the property.
There is a 5” threshold between the bedroom and the room leading to the bathroom. I complained about the threshold and Dorothy disavowed any knowledge of it: “This is the first time I heard about this issue.” This plus other problems prompted an offer of one night’s credit to make up for this. It took almost 2 weeks for the check to be processed.
The apartment is not centrally heated and it was cold outside. A space heater with an exposed element was the only source of heat and it made such ominous buzzing and fizzling noises when plugged in that I unplugged it. After informing Dorothy about this, a new space heater was delivered the next day.
Also, the first day there was no hot water. The bathroom sink plug does not work – it’s bent out of shape. The hot water faucet in the tub works backwards!
On January 2 – the day of the Rose Bowl Parade - Dorothy Yu offered to let us move to one of the units in the main house for the next 2 nights, but since our stay was almost over, we decided to stay put.
Although we did not have a car, parking could be a problem. Street parking seemed the norm for the neighborhood. Sharing a driveway with the other Airbnb folks could be problematic.