Michael was very responsive during pre-booking, and during our stay.

However, his attitude changes with us once the pressures of the upcoming SXSW. We had booked with him an approx. 3 week stay, to leave just before another booking for SXSW. Apparently, he booked our check-out on the same day as they were checking-in, which caused stress towards the end of our stay (below). In preparations, and probably to deal with some differed maintenance on the house, he had painters, general contractors, electricians, etc, come close to a dozen times during our stay, often without notice.

The house itself was really great, but furniture and finishes are not as shown. Blinds were cheap Home Depot paper that didn't retract without the use of plastic hair-type clips. Kitchen was poorly stocked. Mostly it seemed to be showing the wear of lots of booking and little re-furbishing as things were used or abused. Maybe that has changed with all the work done during and perhaps after our stay. All this was easily looked over because it was a great modern house, until Michael became a dictator, and threatened to kick us out early if we didn't comply with his demands, no questions asked.

He had, prior to booking, also scheduled a cleaner to come once per week, which turned out to be more of a method of checking up on us rather than cleaning. We had pre-approved 5 guests - two couples, and one single. We were accused of having more. We had pre-approved a small well-behaved well-traveled blue healer to stay with us. Towards the end of our stay, when Michael was needing more time to prepare the house for the next guest, he informed us that the dog was making too big of mess (you can read our prior reviews, of which almost all them had this same dog stay), and that we needed to leave a day early and pay an extra $150 cleaning fee. This house has all hard wood or concrete floors, so a quick sweep and vacuum would clean up dog hair quickly. Dog was not on the furniture. I questioned the "mess" the dog was making, and he went into a tirade about how it was HIS HOUSE and we were going to do what he told us to, "thanked" me, and hung up on me.

I employ nearly 100 people, and work with 100s of clients and business partners annually, and his negotiation style is simply to demand. Perhaps Michael was under some stress, and he is normally a great guy, however, I wont stay with him again. Its not worth the risk to stay with a host that threatens to kick its guests out because they wont accept his demands unquestioned. We respected the house, we had the exact number and type of guests as booked, we received permission for the dog, we allowed him to continually invade our privacy with contractors and "cleaners", yet he made unreasonable demands and threats.