Bottom line: this house was NOT ready to be hosting guests. It was clear Robert was scrambling to try to get things ready for our arrival even after we checked in. As an Airbnb host myself, there’s no way I would’ve had this listing live until some serious work and cleaning had taken place.
The pool and outdoor seating area was a great place to hang out, but were truly the only positives during our stay.
The house did not seem like it ever had a professional cleaning. There were dead flies on nearly all the window sills and spiders/webs throughout. The floor did not feel clean. There were still dishes in the dish washer when we arrived. In general, the house did not live up to the listing information. There was only one TV when the listing said “4 updated entertainment systems”, the dryer for the laundry was not functional, some of the beds only had sheets and no blankets. The bath towels we were told to retrieve our selves from the cottage house laundry room. I can’t recall a single door knob working in the entire house - one bathroom knob just kept falling off. I can appreciate a historic home, but functional should be a given especially considering the cost we paid to stay here. The drain cover in one of the bathroom showers wouldn’t stay on and I had to cover it with a hand towel in order to bath the kids so they’re little feet wouldn’t go down the 3-4” hole. The bathtub would’ve been nice but there wasn’t a way to plug that drain hole. There were several electrical outlets and lights that didn’t work throughout the house. The list could go one, but I think I’ve gotten the point across.
It would’ve been nice to know that someone was going to be renting the cottage on the property, I could understand if it was some distance away from the main house but it is literally steps away from the pool - i also assumed it wasn’t rented since I had inquired about the cost to rent it for our weeklong stay and received a text at 10:30pm the night we checked in with rates if I wanted to add it to our rental - come to find out he told another person in my group that it was already rented Tues-Friday but he would cancel them if we wanted (this was Monday night!).
Overall, everyone in our group felt the communication was lacking. The last minute notice (that I didn’t see until the guy was in the house) that a plumber would be coming into the house to fix a toilet we didn’t even know had issues, asking us if we did anything with a toilet box needed for a return, and not making it clear that we would have construction in the barn right next to the pool throughout the day was unfortunate.
We never truly felt that we had a vacation house to ourselves between the contractors in and out of the house and the cottage guests (2 separate check-ins during our stay).
We were hoping for a relaxing weekend in SD and less than 72 hours before checking in our original airbnb (booked 7 months in advance) was cancelled by the host - the “historic” Starkey house was our only option left on Airbnb for our group of 16 and we were thoroughly disappointed - all but 1 in our group actually checked out a day early so we could just be comfortable in our own homes.