The host is communicative and friendly. The beds were clean and comfortable. The bohemian style and in-home washer and dryer access was great. The outside pool was such a fun experience for a couple’s weekend. Finally, you can’t beat the location being so close to everything downtown and still having off-street parking!
However, we were disappointed with quite a few overlooked maintenance issues. In the second bathroom, the toilet seat was broken, in the master bathroom, the shower door handle needs to be tightened, when I came across a broken armchair, I seriously wondered if I was being set-up to take the fall through some Airbnb financial hit/fee.
The host would do well to create a rulebook with some basic guidelines since we picked up a previous guest’s glass beer bottle and dirty underwear by the pool. It could be a nightmare and a liability if shattered glass became an issue.
Additional maintenance concerns: bathroom fan/light fixture needs to be cleaned out, the poor fiddle-leaf fig is so unhappy, please rescue it, plug in the lamps and make sure they are connected to the light switches or just wall sockets when possible, fix the left lamp in the master (picture #8) so that it turns on and works, fan remote battery needs to be replaced, caulk needs to be reapplied in master bathroom shower at least once every 2 years.
Finally, future guests should know, during our short 3-night stay we always ate out and avoided bringing ANY food into the home. I understand that it may be a constant battle in Austin with cockroaches, but the quantity that made it into this home made me wonder why the host hadn’t closed the gaps around their backdoor with flashing/insulation and taken more pro-active measures.
There is an opportunity here for the host to turn it around because the friendliness of the host, as well as the bones and location of this Airbnb are great. The host has updated their listing description since we initially booked to reflect that this location is like a “best friend’s house” experience. First, a best friend’s experience doesn’t usually mean over $400/night price tag. Understand that we did not have that honest description before or during our stay so we felt fairly misled by this host’s Superhost status and original description. We usually overlook quite a few minor issues in Airbnb personal homes, but this was quite a bit more neglected and expensive. Regardless, it is my hope that these issues are resolved, and the next guests have a better experience than we did.