We booked this house to celebrate a 40th anniversary and were looking forward to our stay. We were a group of 6 adults and 3 kids. The setup of the house is slightly quirky with all the stairs, but it has a beautiful view while being spacious.
I noticed a musty smell upon arrival but chalked it up to it being extremely humid while we were there. I started noticing charcoal bags hidden around the house behind the decor, which looked suspicious to me. The house has different levels, and the smell worsens as you move down to the level where the one bedroom and the basement are. As the night progressed, we noticed the smell getting worse. My husband and I stayed in the room on the lowest level and woke up to the scent being unbearable. Our eyes were burning, sore throats and headaches, and we felt dizzy. I got up and quickly realized that guests in the rest of the house had similar symptoms. These symptoms are typical when you are exposed to mold. We left the house for a few hours that morning, and all started feeling better. The headaches and burning eyes returned when we came back into the house.
We started looking around the house and found that they put white tape over the base of the walls in the closet of the room we stayed in. We saw water damage after pulling back the tape. They also have mini dehumidifiers hidden around the house and an abundance of diffusers to mask the smell. The host said these things are all in place because of the musty smell since they are close to the beach. I understand that it can smell musty as you get close to the beach, but this smell was much worse than that.
I expressed my mold concerns to the host, who said they don't have mold. I asked if the house had been tested, but they could not provide me with any results. They did offer to move us to another house, but unfortunately, it didn't work out for us. I was concerned about our health, so I took swabs of the house for mold testing so we knew what we were dealing with. Once I mentioned we would be testing the house to the host, she said it was best if we left the house. We had already decided to go, but it seemed suspicious why she would kick us out if there weren't mold in the place.
This is a great place for large groups if you aren't concerned about staying in a house with water damage and mold. We, unfortunately, didn't feel comfortable exposing ourselves to that, so we ended up booking rooms in a hotel, which cost us a great deal of money and much more stress than we would have liked for this trip.