Karen D.
1/5
I’d rather not award even one star, my preference would be the warning - Renter Beware!! My difficulties w/the $7000 vacation rental of 40 N17 St were apparently of no importance to realtor Rich Zambrano. In hindsight, I felt some foreboding in February when Mr Zambrano expressed dismay that I preferred to see the property before committing to renting it. Though it has only 3 bedrooms, it fulfilled my 2 main req’s, 2 bathrooms and enough parking. The house clearly had only a tiny kitchen, not a single fan, low ceilings, but standing in front of the house Mr Zambrano assured me the 4 car driveway would be for the house which the owner claims sleeps 9, (a big stretch), although the garage in the backyard also can be rented and supposedly sleeps a maximum of 6, (wh is impossible to believe) and the garage tenant parks on the street or the 1 spot in front. (Inadequate parking is a deal breaker as on the ocean block the street fills up in the early am w/beach-goers.) My second premonition was at 2 pm on the Saturday we moved in when the office could not seem to locate any keys for the house, it was quite apparent none had been turned in and though I was eventually given a single spare ofc copy, I half expected to find the house still occupied. It was not, but it also was not clean. The floors were unwashed and sandy, there was a dirty dish towel hanging on the stove, etc..and the upstairs bathroom didn’t work. (The old dry-rotted plunger sitting next to it was not reassuring.) I decided not to be a pest to Island Realty, but to close the bathroom door until Mon am and my two daughters and I moved in, and went to the beach. On Sunday eve as we were making dinner a fellow came to the door and asked if we would mind if he parked in the driveway as he was moving into the little rental in the backyard. We moved our car that was in the driveway over. An hour later Mr Zambrano called me and told me to get out of the driveway! He now informed me we had 1 spot only (and the front lawn! -but that could only fit a car horizontally and only if the 1 real spot was open as the curbing is quite high.) Shocked, I reminded him he had said the driveway goes w/the house, to which he replied “I’ll be over in the morning to look at the situation.” (He never came.) As he was already on the phone, I told him the upstairs toilet was unusable. He said he was not a property manager, that I need to understand that he only connects the owner to the tenant, but does not deal with problems with the home. (Wow! What?!) He said he’d call the owner regarding the toilet after I told him we couldn’t stay with no parking and a broken bathroom. He called back and said, “It’s a ‘slow toilet.” (It was a ‘broken toilet’.)
My college aged daughter has a car and my hs aged daughter had a few friends stopping by. Parking was a big hassle the entire two weeks. Each evening we attempted to eat dinner on the little side deck, the backyard neighbors pulled into the driveway and right parked alongside the deck, though there was lots of room in front and behind, but it never failed. The toilet was an ongoing nightmare, after calling the owner myself and a plumber who did not fix it just altered the water level so it would run endlessly, I gave up, and disgusted and disgusting as it sounds had my hands in the filthy tank constantly adjusting the rusted, ancient broken float arm and chain, so the flapper could seal. Nightmare. No one who saves up all yearlong and pays $7,000 to rent a little beach house wh says it sleeps 9, for 2 weeks, should have to constantly juggle parking spots and park blocks away to park a couple of cars, and should absolutely never have to fix their own toilet. Rich Zambrano, as a representative of Island Realty, has singlehandedly made sure I will never rent through them again. It is terribly sad that our island has property owners and greedy incompetent and unprofessional realtors gouging renters and exploiting single lots to create multiple rentals, not in the least interested in the tenant’s satisfaction, but rather their checkbook.
