This home photographs BEAUTIFULLY!! Upon arrival the pictures match exactly what you’ll see. A large home with fantastic entertainment amenities.
Of course all of that veneer starts to crack upon closer inspection. Here is the Good, Bad, and UGLY.
GOOD - the location is pretty good. It’s within walking/driving distance to the Walgreens, Publix, and restaurants. It’s also super convenient to drive over to Miami or Fort Lauderdale. DoorDashIng late night snacks was easy (they had no problem finding the place) and the neighborhood is quiet. The game room with the extra board games was a hit w/our guests and 4-year old. The place is spacious and airy. The decor was aesthetically pleasing and all of the furniture was comfortable. That is a huge plus.
BAD - We had very little interaction w/our host which would not have been a problem if issues did not arise. I asked and wanted confirmation that the pool would be cleaned prior to our arrival. I was assured that the pool would be cleaned prior to check-in. However after arrival and within a few minutes of inspecting the pool I could tell that the word “clean” was really a subjective term. Less than 30 minutes of being at the house I discovered a dead gecko in the pool. The filter did not appear to be on and we struggled to turn on the jacuzzi. There were sharp broken pieces of concrete at the bottom of the shallow end of the pool that we kept stepping on. At one point I contemplated buying a robotic cleaner to clean the pool.
UGLY - The place has bugs. There are drain flies in the primary bathroom, small plaster bag worms (I had to look them up as they are native to Florida) in the primary bathroom as well, and super small black bugs that I swear look like roaches in the kitchen. The bugs come out when food happens to get on the floor. This is probably from so many people coming in and out. At one point we had to move our things (which were already in plastic bags) out of the drawers. I saw something crawling and it was a wrap.
In two of the rooms there were power surges and ALL of the lights came on at 5:00 am and 7:30 am respectively. That was fun.
STILL UGLY - We stayed in this place for 9 days. Guess what happened when we went to check out? We saw folks coming to spray for bugs, paint, and make repairs. Oh really?! After we leave?!! We would have loved to have stayed in a place that was freshly painted, exterminated, and recently maintained. Seeing a bunch of improvements made to the rental after the fact was simply in poor taste. Of course, we weren’t supposed to see it b/c we were supposed to have been gone. Unfortunately my morning sickness made that a bit difficult.
We were unproblematic guests even when issues arose. How did it all end? With a request from our host for $2000 for damages to items that weren’t even in the house. I cannot make this up. I was asked to pay for damage to a pool table, a bed frame and ping pong table. The pool table didn’t even exist. Luckily I took pictures of all of the rooms prior to us leaving and compared them to the damaged items. After disputing the allegations we got a call back apologizing for the mixup.
Clearly an implicit bias was behind the swift blaming of damaged items that did not even exist in the rental, i.e., the pool table.
All in all - renter BEWARE. The host has a bunch of other properties and really doesn’t have the time to give his guests consistent attention. Back to the 1 Hotel we go!