Our family of 4 stayed here for 7 weeks, so here's the comprehensive review you never knew you needed.
Let's start with the good.
- The location of this place is awesome. Pacific Beach is a charming and active neighborhood, and it was just a 10 minute walk to many restaurants and a 15 minute walk to Trader Joe's. Or a 15 minute walk to Mission Bay. And just a fun neighborhood to wander around. The location gets 5 stars for sure.
- The place itself was a formerly large home that was split in two for the special purpose of becoming an AirBnb so it's on the smallish side, but we found the amount of space adequate for our family of 4. San Diego is all about getting out and doing things, not spending a ton of time in your house.
- The TV in the house is pretty nice and included Roku. Our kids were able to watch whatever they wanted.
- Finally, our host, Brandon, made a genuine effort to be responsive and was over at our place several times. When in person, we found him polite and kind.
Alright, now onto the bad. Go ahead and get your popcorn ready.
- We found 4 cockroaches during our stay, including 3 in one week, and half of them in our bedroom. When we notified Brandon that we killed the most recent cockroach, his only reply was "Thank you." Maybe at least pretend you're outraged?
- The top hinge of the bathroom door literally came out of the wall from just everyday use, which meant that when we attempted to open the door it would fall over. This was a legit hazard, especially for our young kids, but Brandon couldn't come by to fix it for 3 days. This also meant that we couldn't close the bathroom door. So when guests came over, we had to develop a new protocol to make sure we didn't impose on their privacy, a problem normally solved by, well, closing the door. When we requested some form of compensation, he responded that most hosts would charge us for this damage!
- Around the same time, one of the bedroom door hinges came undone as well. Again, we did not doing anything excessive with the doors. We just opened and closed them. Brandon eventually fixed that, too.
- As if the two doors weren't enough, there are also a few storage cupboards and one of those hinges came loose, too. So we had to keep it locked. Again, we feared for our little ones. Worse, the other cupboard hinges were close to coming off as well.
- Back to the bathroom, the towel bar was loose to the point of coming out and falling over, another definite hazard for our little ones who might yank a towel. We asked Brandon to fix it, but he said it was too hard and expensive. We insisted, and he eventually found a fix.
- Some window screens were completely missing, including in the main bedroom. On the positive side, Pacific Beach is a pretty safe neighborhood, but there was still the occasional wandering homeless person, and having the bedroom window directly open didn't inspire confidence. We asked Brandon to fix it, but he again felt it was too difficult and expensive to do, so he never did. Apparently, a prior guest knocked out the screen and he'd have to replace the whole window, but the neighborhood was plenty safe anyway. Well, a week later, our neighbor complained of his bike being stolen. We also worried our 2-year old might climb out the window!
- We also requested use of the pull-up bed, but found it was broken the night we arrived. This was frustrating since we even arrived a day late and let Brandon know in advance we'd be using it. To his credit, he came that night to replace it.
- The living room couch was coming undone at the seams and needed to be replaced. The outside patio furniture was also loose and coming undone. Again, we worried about our kids pulling on the wrong spot and getting hurt.
- Then the front door lock literally came off the door. Brandon's response was that we should "be gentle with it." Once he realized it had "gotten bad," he eventually came over to fix it.

- Now onto the outside. There was a literal wall of bricks outside...but with no mortar. On the positive side, our young kids enjoyed playing with these bricks, but they often had a few scares of dropped bricks, or knocking the wall and seeing it start to tip over. Who takes the time to build a wall...but doesn't bother to mortar the bricks? So this was another hazard.
- There were a bunch of cigarette butts on the outside from previous guests (we don't smoke). We had to request they be cleaned up.
- The place advertises bikes and boogies boards to get around town and enjoy the beach, but in truth, the bikes were all rusted, covered with cobwebs and did not look safe to use. Almost all the boogie boards were broken.
- Finally, in a sort of symbolic final act, the house numbers on the front wall (the address numbers) were only partly glued in and they just started falling out. When we showed Brandon that "2104" had become "104" he just shrugged and said "It's ok."
We stayed in San Diego in this place for 7 weeks, and to be fair, we had a lovely time. But we were also horrified by all the hazards and the total state of disrepair of our place. For a $10,000 expense, we felt we received a shoddy product compared to what was advertised. We asked Brandon to make things right and he did nothing. We prodded him again saying that for a rental unit we own, we would go above and beyond to fix these problems and make the