Vacation Rental Home Horrors
Pack up the kids and gather your family for a little togetherness in paradise, but don’t forget to do your due diligence first.
By Nancy Spiller 05/01/2011
It was 2:30 of the morning after the first day of our dream vacation, and I was rolling around on the round bed in the honeymoon suite of a South Lake Tahoe motel with my dog. My husband was miles down the road, sleeping in a bring-your-own-toilet-paper health hazard masquerading as living quarters as he heroically awaited the 7 a.m. arrival of our 3-year-old twin granddaughters.
We’d been planning for this day for six months. After combing through zillions of promising online photos, multiple conversations with a rental agent sporting the badge of a major national real estate franchise and faxing contracts to and fro, we rented a cozy South Lake Tahoe cabin close to the girls’ home for the post–Christmas/New Year’s holiday week. We’d have our dog, the snow, home-cooked meals from old family recipes and Good Times.
Never, in all of our close attention to details, did we anticipate standing at 10:30 at night in the living room of a 1970s Tyrolean-themed dump. Possibly sensing that we would never have chosen the place in a million years, our friendly rental agent assured us he had recently put his parents up here.
I wondered if their relationship was a happy one.
Shortly after he left, I wondered if they were even still alive.
This was the third place he had put us in. The cabin we’d reserved back in July was within a few miles of the twins’ home. Tahoe traffic being as brutal as L.A.’s, proximity was of utmost importance. Then, just a few weeks before our arrival date, we were told that the place had suffered burst pipes and flooding and was no longer inhabitable. We picked a second home from among several online listings they offered us. It was much larger than we needed and farther away from the twins, but we got it at the same price. When we arrived late on the evening of our first day, having driven nine hours from L.A., we came upon an unwelcome discovery — instead of the instruction packet and keys we expected to find in a drop box, the house had been rented out from under us.
The day after Christmas, our agent claimed, someone in his office had accidentally hit the wrong computer button and, in a single keystroke, managed to bump our reservation from Dec. 27 to Jan. 27, popping our house back on the market where it was grabbed by the world’s luckiest group of Johnny-come-latelies. We pulled up just in time to see the last of the tribe of 10 smiling adults as they unpacked their cars and piled in.
We followed the agent over to what he assured us was the only option available by then, the start of the busiest week in Tahoe’s ski season. As the road led farther and farther away from the grandkids and ever closer to the Nevada line, I recalled a woeful tale a friend told at Christmas dinner about the misbegotten Big Bear house he’d rented a few weeks earlier for a ski vacation with his two teenagers. We’d done our homework well in advance, I had thought smugly, and we’d be fine. At least he’d gotten the house he’d picked, even if it did have a 5-inch-deep pond in front of the entrance his agent refused to do anything about. As we continued chasing after the rental agent’s car, I was starting to feel like a roulette ball in a Stateline casino.
Downstairs, the Tyrolean was rustic but appeared to be habitable. We let the agent go, which he did very quickly.
We unpacked the car. Then I went upstairs in search of our dog. She was in the master bedroom eating kibble from the burnt orange shag rug, where rat droppings were mixed in with the dog snacks. Under the bed, I found a felted layer of black filth, used tissues, a champagne cork and old magazines.
Rustic I can handle, but I don’t do disgusting.
That’s when I booked the honeymoon suite. My husband bravely volunteered to spend the night in the Tyrol, as the twins’ father was to deliver them there on his way to work.
I felt we’d been had. Yes, we got a full refund plus some, enough to cover an extra hotel room for our other son and his partner who joined us for New Year’s. It was small compensation for all the time spent shlepping our stuff and being stuck in traffic, when we should have been communing with the kids. Even now, months later, I still suffer from bouts of post-traumatic vacation-rental stress syndrome.
In the bitter calm aftermath of these episodes, I ask myself questions, such as how might I — and you — avoid such debacles in the future? First of all, the vacation home rental business is booming — the industry claims 150,000 properties nationwide — which obviously suggests there are enough happy customers to keep things humming. Indeed, this wasn’t the first time we’d rented one. My husband and I have rented homes in Tuscany, Venice, Martha’s Vineyard, Squaw Valley, Sun Valley, Baja, Idyllwild and elsewhere, with varying degrees of success. We’d never experienced any substitutions, though our frequently faxed contracts had a clause claiming agents’ absolute right to make them. To their credit, the contract had no clause claiming the right to make incredibly stupid computer mistakes that would ruin our entire stay.
Looking into the possibility of legal action, I found that vacation home renters have little recourse. Dashed hopes and crushed dreams with a side of outrageous inconvenience don’t equal pain and suffering when seeking monetary awards. Plus, any legal proceedings would be in the county of the crime scene, safely assumed to be far, far away from the victim’s residence.
Our shabby chalet had a sign posted on the exterior for a vacation rental complaint hotline manned by the City of South Lake Tahoe. In the midst of our calamity, we left multiple messages at the beep but never talked with an actual human. Arlene, with the City of South Lake Tahoe’s revenue department, finally did return my call recently. She told me, “The city doesn’t have a lot to do with renters’ concerns” when it comes to vacation homes.
The hotline was established in 2003, along with a vacation rental home permit program. Prior to that, the City of South Lake Tahoe’s fire and police services were being “drained” by neighbors’ complaints about wild parties, too many parked cars and trash pileups at problem properties. Now the permit program enables the city to collect Transient Occupancy Tax, or TOT, like that collected on hotel rooms, to cover these enforcement costs.
Vacation home renters stay less than 30 days, are considered “guests” and aren’t granted established tenant rights. Suddenly, a hotel’s 24-hour front desk and housekeeping department look pretty good.
The State of California apparently doesn’t concern itself with the plights and rights of guests/renters either. At least, no one I talked to in the Department of Consumer Affairs or the State Attorney General’s office was aware of anything California did to address such issues. In contrast, Massachusetts, a big state for summer rentals, does address them and offers online information for prospective renters. Under the let-that-be-a-warning-to-you heading “Avoiding Vacation Rental Horrors,” its Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulations suggests such helpful tips as: Get recommendations, look at the property in advance, keep good records, ask lots of questions and check for health code violations as soon as you arrive. All of which might be worth the effort if you were renting for an entire season but is a bit much if you’re only seeking a week’s stay.
So, why bother? Because it’s not vacationing, it’s “togethering,” according to the vacation rental home industry. Togethering is for families and friends who want to travel vast distances to hang out, eat and sleep under the same roof. I hope the marketing person who coined that phrase was rewarded with a week’s vacation in an “ocean view, ski run at yr door, starry desert nights, entertainers delight, kid-friendly, pets allowed, wi-fi connected and rat feces–free” prize property.
Togethering can be fun, I’m sure, and doing it in a house can save money and provide far more space and privacy than a hotel. But for a peek at togethering’s dark side, check out one of the countless reality television shows where large groups of adults rent houses in far-flung locations to blow off the kind of steam they wouldn’t dare to back home. No wonder the neighbors are on edge. Then there are the stories of the lonely landlords who live next door and want to join you for coffee, ask how you are doing or recommend some restaurants every time they see you, the guest, on their vacation home rental deck.
You still want to together in paradise? Then your best bet is to go with the industry acronyms. VRBO is Vacation Rental By Owner at vrbo.com. Its website has a ton of rental tips and information with listings offered by registered owners. The only guarantees offered, however, are insurance policies they sell for cancellation protection and a policy (and red flag) titled “Carefree Rental Guarantee.”
Then there’s VRMA, the Vacation Rental Managers Association at vrma.com. This website offers listings handled by its registered professional members, who are said to abide by a code of ethics that covers standards of cleanliness, comfort and utility. For extra assurance, the VRMA recommends renting from agents who also participate in the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and are rated by the Auto Club (AAA). The real estate agency we worked with in South Lake Tahoe was not a member of VRMA and doesn’t show a BBB button on its website, but it does come up in a search of AAA affiliates in the area.
And since the collapse of the real estate market, renters need to proceed with even greater caution.
My forensic rental research took me to zillow.com, where I discovered our first property listed for sale. December’s burst pipes weren’t its only problem. The agent from the office handling the sale (not our rental agent) said our first property’s mortgage had been underwater since October and the place had been tied up in a short sale, “one step away from foreclosure,” for a month. The home had been bought in May 2006, at the height of the market, for $200,000 more than its current selling price. Such properties are good candidates to suffer neglect.
Suddenly the sea of vacation home properties looks like a sad testament to the collapse of the American dream. Renting one might be a patriotic effort to revive the economy. Alternatively, you might want to think thrice before renting from an owner who possibly bears a grudge against guests who didn’t buy a second home and don’t spend all their vacation time and money maintaining it. No wonder the pillow is flat and the mattress is lumpy!
Some of our best experiences were renting through personal recommendations. Short of that, we’d explore the offerings of the above-listed acronyms, although our current thoughts on traffic-choked Tahoe are leaning toward a Winnebago, a vacation home on wheels. It’s another relic from the ‘70s — but then so are we. We’ll park it next to the grandkids’ home and enjoy some good old-fashioned Togethering.
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