This home was a splurge (rules don't allow rates here, but let's say we could have bought 7,000 Arizona teas) to accommodate our family of 12 during 4th of July week. We ordinarily would not stay at a property with no reviews (we have stayed at 30+ rental properties), but given our last-minute planning, decided to take a chance on this brand new listing.
Our first night in the property the electric stove top went down in the middle of cooking dinner, and it never worked again during our stay. We were planning to do all of our cooking at home to save on meals and had bought our groceries in advance, planning for many meals that involved a stovetop for prep. The stove going down was a huge cost to us (probably an additional 1,500 dollars in breakfasts out for 12 people and new grill-able food items for dinners), but the biggest disappointment was the owners’ “efforts” to troubleshoot the issue.
Our initial review on this issue was too long to post, so suffice to say that we had much back and forth with the owners, no one ever came to troubleshoot, we were reminded several times that the stovetop was not a big deal because of grills available for use (two of which did not work for us, so only the 4th floor one could be used), and were asked to take measurements to help the owners prep for a replacement (that best case would have been installed in the middle of our final day of vacation).
Other top issues included: 1) a child injured when a hammock swing dislodged from the ceiling and dropped them to the ground (after telling owners, they informed us hammocks are “decorative” only); 2) inability to bike to the beach (we bike regularly, but to get to the beach, you need to ride on a 50-mph highway with no bike lane/sidewalk, over a very large, steep bridge); 3) difficulty accessing Avalon’s beaches via car (no truly allowable street parking—permitted for residents only).
At the end of the day, the biggest issue seems to be that these owners are still learning how to be good rental hosts (when we tried to resolve this offline to spare them a potentially harmful negative review, they told us we should be glad they weren’t charging us for things broken during our stay—things we weren’t even aware existed). If you choose this property, you will be part of the owners’ new rental property experiment, which might be fine if this were a bargain stay, but at a nightly price that exceeds many 5-star hotel prices, I’d recommend taking your money elsewhere.