Realtors Who Stay at an Airbnb: Tough(er) Customers?

Fussy, Fussy? Maybe Not

Do Realtors who stay at an Airbnb have higher standards than the general public?

I don’t know about other agents, but this one does — even if, as a (very) short-term renter vs. long-term Buyer, I usually keep the quibbles to myself.

List of Shortcuts

At a recent Airbnb in Wisconsin’s Door County — shared by my quarantining family and my sister’s — I immediately noticed the following:

–Cheaper Pergo rather than hardwood flooring throughout the home.

–No central A/C or heat. Rather, the home relied on what are called mini-ductless splits for A/C, and electric baseboards for heat. Needless to say, only the former was needed.

No biggie, except that locating and then operating the remote control for each room’s mini-split involved a bit of a learning curve (a Nest thermostat controlled the heat).

–Too-narrow stair risers. “Stair risers” are otherwise known as stair steps; when they’re too narrow (shallow), you feel like your foot is going to fall off the stair.

–Spiral staircases (plural): after too many mirrors, multiple spiral staircases are a surefire “tell” that a given room is not as big as it appears — or at least, not big enough to accommodate a formal staircase.

All that was in addition to the Airbnb host cramming two of the five bedrooms full of bunk beds, “upping” their property’s maximum capacity to a misleading 18 people for a mediumish-sized, 5 Bedroom home (admittedly, not an issue for our 8-person group).

“Medium-ish” Home Size

Ironically, the one home feature that escaped my attention turned out to loom large during our four day stay.

That would be the home’s well-and-septic plumbing system.

When the home’s (on-the-grid) power was knocked out by an early morning storm on Day #3, we belatedly discovered that, not only was there no electricity for lights or A/C, but that the home’s well water didn’t work.

Translation: no flushing toilets, no working faucets, no showers — all because the electric pump bringing up water from the well was out of commission.

Achilles Heel: Plumbing

Veteran Realtors know that sump pumps without a battery backup are a red flag.

That’s because the same event (a powerful storm) capable of flooding a home can easily knock out the electricity powering the sump pump (with much graver consequences, that’s essentially what happened to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan in 2011 following an earthquake).

Fortunately, power was restored by mid-day.

Given the relatively brief power interruption, plus the home’s as-good-as-billed location just across from Lake Michigan, great views, and the convivial time everyone was having, I let the lack of a backup battery power system go . . .

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