This house rental has great potential. It's a beautiful property. The house is very spacious and airy and it's in a great location. There are goats in the backyard. Pohoa (the nearest town) has everything you'll need including some great places to eat. It's quiet (except for the frogs chirping at night) and out of the way. We loved that about the house.
That all being said, we wouldn't choose to stay here again. We wish we would have known the following before staying:
1. You cannot lock the house when you leave. All of the exterior doors are sliding glass doors and they do not have keys. You can lock the doors when you are in the house, except one is broken. The only way to secure the property when you leave is by locking a gate with a chain and padlock. However, a few members of our party had to jump the gate a couple of times and did so with no problem. Also, we came home one day and the lock was gone and the gate was open. Thankfully, we didn't have problems with the lack of security, but it was a worry for us every time we left the house.
2. When we booked the house, the listing advertised eight beds. When we arrived, there were only six beds in the house. We did not have enough beds for our group. When I message the owner, she did bring a mattress to put on the floor (more on that later), but also commented that she just assumed that our party of 9 only needed six beds (which, unfortunately, wasn't true). A quick check with us before removing the beds would have solved a problem before it was a problem. The listing was updated to six beds during our stay.
3. We put our groceries on the kitchen counter when we arrived late on the first night. The next morning , all of our food was overrun by ants. We mentioned this to Felicia when she brought the bed and asked for recommendations on how to manage them. Her response was that they are "green" and that the ants are just "happy right now." We asked for even a "green" solution. She didn't have anything to offer. Eventually, we found some ant poison in the storage shed and tried to manage them ourselves. Unfortunately, they were in the bedrooms (in the beds and in our luggage) and bathrooms (we had to keep our toothbrushes in a plastic bag). This made the floor mattress unusable.
4. All of the doors have vertical blinds. Unfortunately, none of them had a full set of vertical blinds: All of the blinds were missing slats, which means we couldn't close them for privacy (even the door in the bathroom). This is problematic because the bedrooms face each other across from the pool. We asked for a solution and this request was ignored by the owner.
5. On the fifth night we were at the house, I opened the app to respond to a message from the owner. As I mentioned, the listing had been updated during out stay. I noticed on the listing that there is now a warning that the water is catchment and not to drink it. We had been drinking the water all week. I'm very grateful no one in our party got sick from this. The owners/property manager's response to our mention of this was that there used to be a note about this in the house but things disappear.