I stayed at the "Cottage" for a week while helping out a friend who lives in South Minneapolis with his wedding. Because I was helping him out every day, I needed to be close by. So, this location was ideal and the place itself is the right size. Everything is what it claims to be in the listing, so there wasn't anything that seemed deliberately misleading, but the photos appear to be taken years ago. This seems to be prior to lots of use and from the appearance, very little maintenance. I was not looking for a high-end place, and was fine with the size and style of the rental from the photos, but I feel like the photos misled me on how nice this was going to be. It ended up feeling like a college campus rental full of used furniture that isn't in great shpae.
The other big surprise was that it is listed as having "Air Conditioning", and the photos show open windows, so I assumed this was central air. The AC is actually 3 window units that are very very loud. Two upstairs and one in the dining room. Given that it was very hot outside during the daytime while I was staying here, they were running most of the time. When it cooled off in the evenings, the units prevent you from opening the windows. So it is pretty dark and loud which is not the impression I got from the photos (sunny with open windows). And given that there is only one window per room upstairs, this is a pretty big change.
There are lots of things that are either broken, or have been fixed in a very low quality way. There are some small holes and cracks in the walls and there is clearly a spot of water damage on the ceiling in the front bedroom. The light fixture over the sink is broken as is the door bell and the screen doors don't close. The shower curtain rod above the clawfoot tub has clearly been ripped out and re-attached many times without patching the holes. Some of the furniture needs to be replaced (the bed in the front bedroom is very uncomfortable and rolls you to the middle and the chair in the living room is peeling off in spots.) There is an additional twin size steel loft bed in the back bedroom that you have to walk under to get to the bed in the nook. This is not in any of the photos, but it is in the middle of the room, so the sitting area doesn't really exist anymore. The back porch railing is falling off and the couch out there seems pretty filthy. In general, this place looks like it has been used a lot and maintained / upgraded very little.
If I had an accurate understanding of what this rental actually looked like, I would probably not have stayed there despite it being in the perfect location for me.