This was not a good stay for us. My husband and I checked in at 4 pm and immediately had to contact the Host because the water in the master toilet was not flushing. It turns out the water was turned off because the toilet was running constantly. No big deal, these things happen and there was another bathroom. However, the more we looked around, the more we saw how dirty and unmaintained the place was. There was trash in the dirty trashcan (which we could have dealt with), hair on the supposedly clean towels. Hair in the bathroom drawers, a lot of dust on the window sills. Doorknobs and cabinet handles dirty, hair in both shower drains. The floors, the table and the lamps on the lanai were dirty. There was grime and grit on ALL the floors. In fact, after about ten minutes we noticed our feet were black! The bed was made with a blanket in between the sheets - that was strange and unsanitary. The bedspread did not seem recently laundered and the washing machine was too small to launder it, so we just slept with sheets only for the entire 12 night stay. Luckily it was warm enough to do that. (other than the floor, the kitchen was fairly clean).
I am not a germaphobe and I have never had to complain to an AirBNB host about the condition of a place before! I was sending Julie, the host, photos and descriptions for a couple hours as we kept unearthing more things that were yuck. Julie did respond quickly and always said how sorry she was and that everything would be taken care of. We had a few hours of communications when I finally had to press for when this would be taken care of. At about 7 pm we were told 8 am the following morning. We went to bed that evening with towels on the floors leading to the toilet that did work so as to keep the grit off our feet and out of the bed.
We were not happy campers!
The cleaner in the morning was competent and did a very decent job cleaning the floors, showers and dusting for us. She even wiped off the worst of "stuff" on the kitchen cabinets. So 17 hours after check in, we finally had a place that we could live with. I can be understanding about a housekeeper not doing their job. It happens. But it was obvious this place had not been maintained for a long while. The dirty floors did not just have last renters dirt on them. Also, my husband had to act as a handyman because of annoying, unmaintained issues. For instance, two lamps and one overhead fan/light in the living room all had problems. The cord was cut on one lamp and my husband had to fix the other lamp so it would stop blinking. The fan light was like a strobe light so we could not use that. He did change the bulb and tried to screw in the socket but new parts were needed. The fan also wobbled excessively at high speed. We made the housekeeper aware of these issues and asked that they be repaired after our stay.
Who to communicate with was also confusing. There was a booklet in the condo that had Christina listed as the "property manager". Per Christina, she was the prior onsite property manager and this book should be updated. Christina was nice enough and called the plumber to fix the toilet (day 5 of our stay) and sent her son to check in with us on another issue that turned out to be an non-issue.
I did hesitate to book this listing because of the lack of reviews. However, I felt confident because Julie, the host, (I though she was the owner- she is not) was a "superhost". What does that even mean? She has 43 listings - most don't have reviews. She lives 4 time zones away, in Georgia, and I wonder if she has even seen the condo - she did not know if the place had beach chairs and an umbrella (it does). I don't want to criticize her personally, she was nice enough but what was great about renting from sites like AirBNB was the personal touch and pride of ownership.
I also want to be fair and say that this could be a nice place to rent if maintained properly. The condo is spacious, the complex is older but the buildings and grounds are well maintained and we loved the large lanai for eating dinner. The condo does face the pool which is quite well used and loud. They religiously close the pool down at ten pm but if someone wanted to sleep in the living room earlier than that you would have to shut the windows and turn the AC on.