This property was not what I expected. When I pulled up with my family my heart sunk. I thought we arrived at the wrong place. So I re-checked the address. It was right.
Now I see why the ad didn’t show any pictures of the front (and not many pictures of the backyard). Peeling and cracked paint, plenty of deferred maintenance and dilapidation — the presentation was very disappointing.
The inside was a relief, until I looked closer. The images in the ad must have been taken a long time ago. The furniture was worn — grimy even. There were scuffed couches, ripped throw pillows, chipped and scratched tables, chipped and scratched walls and floors, etc.
One of the reasons we choose this property was because it said “SANITIZED” in the ad. This was really important because we have children, and we were hosting my aging mother-in-law during the pandemic. So I was surprised and disgusted when I found hair on a folded face towel, and in several areas upstairs. My wife and I started wiping surfaces with disinfecting wipes. Suffice it to say, while clean enough in normal times, it was not as clean as we expected for a place advertising itself as sanitized. A patio side-table had clearly not been cleaned. The covering on the outdoor bed had permanent stains. There was no hand soap in the sole downstairs bathroom. Etc., etc. Thus we weren’t comfortable enough to truly relax in the home.
The AC didn’t blow cold air through the vents in three bedrooms (upstairs). To cool the rooms we had to sleep with bedroom doors open, so the rooms could be cooled from elsewhere in the house. I could write more about the condition of the property, but I won’t.
I reached out to the host (through the air bnb app) several times to address these and other issues. He replied fast and was helpful in some ways. But in others he seemed more interested in proving to me that there really wasn’t an issue. He also seemed to take great pride in his status as a “super host”. But unfortunately he confused a fast reply with a sincere effort to address the problem.
I felt disappointed, dismissed and upset. This was one of my worst experiences on air bnb. So, of course, I cannot recommend this property or this host.