Pros:
1. Clever interior design. Nice décor.
2. Great location! Half a block from the beach with ocean views.
Cons:
1. Entry was ridiculously stressful! Didn’t have to be. Owner gave us a street and building number. We arrived at the street at night (after a long flight) only to find that none of the buildings on the block have street numbers! Which was our building? Who knows? Owner said look for grey master lock box outside building…key will be inside. We see a gate (all buildings on street are gated) with literally 30 grey master lock boxes hung outside on the gate! Which one is ours? Who knows? We start entering the code we were given on all 30 lock boxes. None of them work! We are exhausted. We call the company. Message goes straight to voice mail. We are about to give up and look for a hotel when a neighbor walking his dog happens by. We talk. He says why don’t you try two buildings down…there is another group of lock boxes (which we did not see because there were only four or five clustered there and it was dark). We try the code and on the third one, Eureka! But really…. was this stress necessary? We have lived in other places (Tokyo, Cairo) where buildings often lack street numbers. The norm there is to DESCRIBE the building….third from the corner, or building with 10 stories and a yellow gate, etc .etc. No problem. After we entered we saw that the building had a name on it (as do the other buildings on the street…Bel Air, Garden by the Sea, that sort of thing). We had not noticed our building’s name in the dark. Had the owner said, look for building third from the end of the block, six stories high , opposite the tall x storied one named “y”,…we would have found it, no problem. Or how about just putting a number over the entry gate? Problem solved! Would also help to put an apt. number or at least an identifying decal on the master lock box so one could find it without having to try three or four (or thirty). These solutions are so easy I can’t understand why a professional rental service would not employ them.
2. Interior needs some renewal Shower handle was broken and water pressure was barely a dribble. Couch in living room was badly stained., Drawers in kitchen stuck. Etc. Nothing that was a total deal breaker. But owners should invest a little TLC to bring the apartment back to better condition (as shown in the VRBO pictures).
3. Parking slot is so narrow that it can only accommodate a sub-compact
