A WARNING, and a review!
Before you book this property read this and know that the house is corporate owned and not a privately owned residence!
This place is in a really, really bad neighborhood. I feel like I’d probably get sued if I posted the address so future renters could look at the street view, so I won’t, but I’m tempted.
All of the Airbnb emails we received leading up to our stay included strong warnings regarding the “upper class” neighborhood and the noise threshold, the presence of code enforcement and the possibility of neighbor complaints for smoking outside on the property. What a joke! It was also stated that gusts should park in the garage and street parking is not allowed. I guess the rest of the neighborhood didn’t get that memo.
We came around the corner at half past dark on Friday night to be met by three finely dressed young men with their flashlight and a gas can siphoning gas out of a car parked across the street. After we pulled in it was apparent the driveway and garage floor of this place have probably never been pressure washed in its 30-year existence.
The house itself was not too bad but not fantastic either. The rock landscape is dirty and appears like they spray for weeds and don’t do much else. The keypad on the front door is a bit particular but I guess that’s to be expected from consumer grade digital locks. The mechanical lockbox on the front door was broken open and loose but the key was still present, so we took it off the door and left it on the counter in the interest of security.
Inside, the house was reasonably clean and even though it’s a true residence and not a hotel; it felt more like a sterile hotel suite than a house. Very sparse decorations, white-on-white-on-white paint scheme and of course, its own share of moderate battle scars on the floor and walls from years of nightly use. The carpet upstairs appears to only be a few years old and is not heavily worn down but very dirty. The subfloor right at the top of the stairs is broke all the way though where someone has obviously placed a ladder to access the crawlspace and a footing went through the plywood. I rolled my ankle in that hole and was quick to point it out to the rest of our group so nobody else did.
The bedroom light switches are not connected to anything so if you arrive after dark you’ll be fumbling around looking for the lights and many things have been changed or moved since all the pictures we taken and put up on Airbnb.
The beds seemed to be somewhat newer solid memory foam mattresses with only the finest economy bedding and pillows. Same for the towels and washcloths in the bathrooms. All of the shower heads are less than impressive and the whole house has less than adequate water pressure and the water heater was turned all the way down to low, so the showers were only just barely warm.
The kitchen was equipped with a small hotel sized coffee maker plus a mini Keurig. The Keurig was so dirty it wouldn’t make a cup of coffee until we cleaned in. The dishes and flatware were again the only the finest economy and most of the flatware did not come clean in its last run through the dishwasher. Soon as we opened the dishwasher it was obvious why, the dishwasher was full of scum, dried food, and hard water. Just disgusting.
We did our best to make the best of it, we really did. Going outside after we got there was impossible. The air was thick with the smell of weed. The neighbors behind were in their backyard partying and smoking until well after midnight.
We left for the day Saturday morning and I have no problem saying we did not feel comfortable leaving any valuable electronic devices there while we were gone. When we returned Saturday night we found the neighbor next door was passed out in a lawn chair in his front yard with a spilled beer at his feet.
Saturday night was not much different than Friday night. The neighbors behind were up partying and smoking until 10PM when the party turned into a screaming fight between 3 (and ultimately 4) people. We opted not to call the police as we felt like they’d probably know it was us and come over the back fence and though the slider. Then, the neighbors across the street started and all out fight as well. We didn’t call the police but someone did and by 1AM the police were on scene across the street and at the house behind.
We’d paid for 3 nights, Friday night thru Sunday night but after all that, we got up Sunday morning and departed by 8AM thinking we’d be gone before any of the neighbors were up. The last thing I’ll mention is that as we were leaving, someone visiting the party crowd across the street was partially blocking the driveway so, backing two big Suburban’s out was interesting… We were just glad to be gone!