Our rental at Serra Retreat was an unmitigated disaster. We chose to rent Serra Retreat as it is in a gated community and we wanted to stay safe from the COVID pandemic. My son is immune compromised and we did not want to take any risks. Many items broke during our stay and unfortunately workman entered and left nearly a dozen times over a single week, spending literally hours fixing items that should have been solved with normal maintenance before we arrived. This included a broken hot water heater, a stove that nearly had an electrical fire (it was replaced during our stay,) multiple broken circuit breakers in the kitchen and dead lighting.
I didn’t complain when we found a camera watching our every move around the pool and that literally the landlord would turn on the water for the pool slide after watching us approach the slide. It was super creepy. I did think that it was literally crazy that they wanted an additional $75 per day to heat the hot tub after we paid nearly $3000 per night for our week at the house. Initially I wasn’t too bothered when half the electricity in the kitchen didn’t work after a circuit breaker switched off. They sent an electrician the next morning, but then the hot water didn’t work in the Master Bedroom Shower and they sent a plumber two days later. I was surprised when after boiling water on the stove, it started to belch smoke from each of the five knobs. We scrambled to switch off the electricity in the kitchen. We averted an electrical house fire and ate dinner in the light of an iPad as the circuits controlling the stove also controlled the dining room lights. We were surprised when the electrical breakers marked “refrigerator” controlled the stove and the breaker marked “stove” controlled the refrigerator. When I told the electrician the next day, he simply shrugged. They did replace the stove a day and a half later, so we only missed being able to cook three meals in the kitchen. We were surprised that they didn’t thank us for stopping a fire from burning down the house. The two stove installers spent nearly 3 hours in our kitchen and it took another 20 minutes for us to disinfect for COVID after they had left.
The next day when we had a friend over, we found that the electricity in his room didn’t work. My son also said the TV didn’t work in his room. We could only get normal broadcast TV only in the living room, but not in any of the other TV’s in the house.
We did think for $20,000+ per week that we would get a house in good repair and not have to be visited by 4 different repair crews and have the kitchen in shambles most of the afternoon while they replaced the stove.
The house does have nice paint throughout and the tile is in good shape in the kitchen and bathrooms, even if the style is from the 1980’s. The dated oak cabinetry is well taken care of in the kitchen and bath and only badly worn in a few places. Again, we would have expected more for $20,000 per week, but the condition of the house wasn’t awful. There are extensive bookshelves in the house but only a five books including one by L. Ron Hubbard on some sort of mind control babble, a “Barnes” book about bullet ballistics, gunpowder grains and bullet velocities and an Adult romance novel. The Barnes book would be great for an aspiring Sniper to read. The well worn romance novel describing group anal sex was a little aggressive. I would have thought that the landlord would have pulled it knowing that we were bringing our three young sons to the house. It redefined family friendly. Who knows? Maybe they just enjoyed watching our reaction on the camera.
I asked for a reasonable partial refund given our challenges. The landlord refused. I would not recommend staying at this house.