The Joys of Owning a Vacation Rental

My husband and I have owned a Vacation rental in Florida for 6 years. We bought it when the market was at its lowest and it was a repossessed condo on the Gulf of Mexico. The condo was in good shape and after a long weekend in September, during Tropical Storm Lee, we painted, furnished and decorated the condo to get it ready to rent.

Now, if I had my choice we would have just bought the condo and kept it for vacations and family, but along with that choice would have been having extra income to pay for it, so we rent it out and come down 2 weeks a year per the tax laws. Each time we come down it blows me away on how brutal people are on rental property. This is not a hotel owned by a multi million dollar company, it is a small condo owned by a middle aged, middle income couple that wanted to have a great place to go on vacation. I take great pride in the condos appearance and work hard on my vacations when I am there to update and deep clean it so it stays looking nice.

I have learned that many people could care less. They break things, stain things steal things, they never tell anyone, and just walk away.  Unfortunately for us our management company misses a lot of these things and it waits until we show up for our vacation to find them and deal with them. Here are a few examples.

Last year we showed up for our vacation and found a huge fake plant crammed behind the TV stand and TV.  I have no idea where it came from and how housekeeping did not catch it. I am sure it came from someones condo and that they didn't even know it was gone. It went in the dumpster. That same trip I walked into the master bedroom and saw a bright red (comforter was pail blue and tan) juice or Kool Aid stain on the comforter. It was like a big red stop sign and no mention of it at all from housekeeping. We had to buy a new comforter and I took the old one home and put a lot of time, effort and chemicals to get the stain out. These examples were not big deals and were not by far the worst things we have found.

Fast forward to this last vacation trip.  We had the condo renovated last November/December (big nightmare due to the designer) and this was the first time we had seen the competed project. So, we were nervous to see how it had been treated by the renters over the last year.  As it turned out the reno looked great and we sighed a sigh of relief, for that anyway.

When I went into the master bedroom there were small blood stains on my comforter, Gross, gross, gross!!! Then I pulled the comforters off the bunk beads and one of those comforters had drops of blood on it. Yuck! Who was staying here, vampires? Out came the chemicals and bleach and I was able to get the stains out, thank goodness.

My husband and I traveled by car this trip to bring all the stuff we needed to do a deep clean. Normally after we arrive we go to the grocery and get food for the week. This time we brought breakfast stuff and coffee pods for the Keurig we had in the condo. After we arrived we were settling in and I noticed that the old coffee maker was sitting out, and the Keurig was gone.  Someone walked out with our Keurig.  How low do you have to be to rent someones private condo, spend the week using all their stuff, enjoying the resort at a very reasonable rate and steal from the owner.  And to make matters worse housekeeping did not catch it. And to make matters even worse they also stole our new hand mixer. Who does that??????

So, we are livid and saddened that the items are gone, and off we went to get a new Keurig (that will stay locked up for us only) and while at Target we picked up a few grocery items, one being bottled water. When we got back to the condo I started putting the water in the door of the one year old refrigerator, I noticed a small crack in the door shelf.  Then, I saw a huge crack and hole in the side of the shelf below it, and a crumbled corner in the shelf above it. Really? All three door shelves are damaged. One more thing that housekeeping did not find and now needed to be replaced.

Needless to say that housekeeping is going to be getting an ear full, not to mention they will be responsible for paying for the items that were stolen and damaged.  If housekeeping would have noticed we would have been able to identify the people that robbed us and damaged our property, but now I have to just wonder who the creeps were and if they will end up coming back for more.

I do give discounts to people that rent our condo, but no where in that agreement does it say that with each stay you get a free Keurig and mixer. Yikes!