FULL AND HONEST REVIEW
It is my intention to be fully transparent and fair in this review so that other people may make the best choice for them.
TL;DR- The homes are nice, but the hot tub never worked, and the surrounding neighborhood is low income. My family had a good time, but overall we never got what we paid for (hot tub). Sam did not seem to care or attempt to resolve the issue, and relies to heavily on automated messaging which made it very hard to communicate with him.
Background:
My family of 12 adults and a few children came to this location for a thanksgiving reunion. We chose the listing because of the two houses, lots of space, and location very close to downtown Austin.
What was good:
The space was nice and fairly spacious. Both kitchens were well equipped with pots and pans for dinner. Some rooms had their own mini AC units which was very convenient, and the house is very close to both the Austin Airport and downtown Austin. Overall the space was very private and had nice outdoor spaces (unfortunately we did not get to use them much due to the rain.)
What was unpleasant:
1. Inaccuracies with the listing-
First and most importantly, the hot tub at this listing never worked. After trying multiple times to turn it on, there was no indication that it worked. This was very disappointing to my family as having the hot tub was one of our main reasons for choosing this location. Sam’s response was offering to contact the manager, but we never heard back on this issue and had to go the whole trip and never being able to use this important feature.
Secondly, the listing says there are 3 king beds, but this is not the case: there’s are only 2. And we had to rearrange our sleeping arrangements to accommodate this inaccuracy. Its not hard to list the correct number of beds, and this was very frustrating for my family.
Another issue with the listing is that even though there is a lot of bed space overall, there is no feasible way to house 33 people and their luggage. As a group of almost half that, we felt that it was about the capacity.
2. Subpar maintenance-
The dishwasher leaked in house A and the shower drain on the first floor of house B was clogged, meaning no one would use that shower. There were also not enough towels for 33 people, so again I’m not sure why the listing includes that high of a capacity. We had to buy our own face towels from the local store to supplement those offered.
3. The local neighborhood-
These homes are quite nice and accurate according to the photos, but what the listing conveniently leaves out is the surrounding neighborhood. These homes are in the center of a low income community and the infrastructure of the neighborhood is outdated and underfunded. Me and my family did not feel unsafe here and we had no issues, but if you expect this listing to be in a fancy neighborhood, that is not the case. Also, it is very clear that these homes and the other homes like it in the neighborhood are part of move to gentrify this community, so if you are not okay with supporting gentrification, this listing probably isn’t for you.
4. Poor customer service- Finally, I had a few issues communicating with the owner, Sam. It is clear that he uses automated messages, which is fine. But it very frustrating when you have specific and important questions and have to reiterate them to get full answers not answered by the generic messages.
As previously mentioned, me and my family did not get everything we paid for with the hot tub, and so we asked that in exchange, Sam would give us a late checkout, which he denied.
(An aside, while here I found a baggie of important medications left by a previous guest. When I informed Sam about it, he responded faster and more comprehensively than when I had issues with the listing like with the hot tub. This was very frustrating and demonstrated to me that the messages I received about wanting my stay to be great at this location were more for show, than an actual promise to meet my needs as a guest. Very disappointing.)
Obviously, we experience a lot of issues here. Many of which were purposefully obscured or should have been resolved by the owner but were not. Despite them, my family had a good time, cooked thanksgiving dinner, played games, danced, and spent good quality time with each other. For the myriad of issues that we would rather avoid, we probably would not return to this location. But it is up to you to decide if this aforementioned issues are a deal breaker.