Amazing area. Ok hosts.
Overall, my family and I had a great time over our 10 nights at this property. Beautiful views, great landscaping, very close to the beach, updated house/furnishings.
Please keep in mind we have rented many houses through other companies and have never encountered the issues we encountered this trip. Please also keep in mind that in the instructions for the house the host states they value their guest's privacy.
When we arrived in Hawaii, we asked the property manager if would be able to check in prior to the 3 pm check-in time. The property manager said there would be a good chance we would be able to. We stopped by the house around 1:30 pm and were met by the cleaning person. We asked her if the house would be ready before 3 pm and she told us (somewhat rudely) there would be 'no way' we could check-in before 3 pm. We shrugged this off and grabbed lunch.
When we came back closer to 3 pm, we explored the cute, newly updated, and clean property. The pictures mostly represent the property accurately. The backyard is beautiful. The bedrooms are a good size. The kitchen and upstairs bathroom were clean and welcoming. The downstairs bathroom is interesting though- kind of an uncomfortable space. The house was sparsely stocked with kitchen utensils and pans, so we purchased a new pan set for the house and left the clean set for future guests.
The next day we received a text from the property manager stating that we had requested more towels from the cleaning person because we had more than the 6 allotted guests and they needed towels. She stated we are not to have more than 6 people staying in the house because of the condition of the plumbing. We thought this was very strange because we did not make this request, nor had we spoken to the cleaning lady about anything besides checking in early. We explained to the property manager that we did not need more towels and did not have more than 6 people staying the night, but we did in fact have our other family members that had rented other properties in the area over for breakfast and dinner. The property manager did not seem to have an issue with this.
About a week into our stay, the person living in the house behind the property had visitors, one of which being the cleaning person. They asked if we were enjoying our stay and directed their child to grab beach toys from under the porch of the house we were staying in. We quickly determined that the owner and/or property manager and/or cleaning person are the same person.
During our stay, we kept up on the cleaning, went to bed around 9 pm every night, and took our trash to the local dump due to the trash bins at the house being full. We felt we were extremely respectful during our stay. There were no instructions regarding cleaning provided by the property manager, but nevertheless, we completed a good cleaning and another dump run before vacating the house. We even took a video of the clean property on the day of check out.
The day after checking out, I received a message from the property manager stating that they would be charging us an additional $700: $500 for additional guests and $200 for cleaning because the house was left 'dirty'. We explained to the property manager that no additional guests stayed the night and that we have video of the property on the day of checkout which showed the property was left very clean. The property manager stated that the owner has cameras and saw that there were 'at least 8 people' staying in the house. Beyond this being untrue, we wondered if they had been watching us on camera during our entire stay. A little disturbing to say the least.
When the property manager sent us the request for the additional charges, nothing was itemized. The property manager expected us to pay an additional $700 on top of the thousands we had already paid to stay there without an explanation of what all the charges were for. I said this earlier, but never have we encountered anything like this at any property we have rented in the past, and hope to never again experience it in the future.
TL;DR Nice place but be ok with being watched on camera and being asked to pay more than expected without a full explanation.