A few weeks ago, my family and I traveled to Florida for our one summer vacation that didn’t get cancelled due to Covid-19. After spending 5 long months in Dallas, we were itching to get out of town. We chose Florida for it’s warm weather, clear water beaches and relatively close location to Dallas {aka – we could drive. Or atleast the husbands could with all the gear ;P}
The first house we rented back in early May was near Seaside and spectacular. It was a brand new build, had a pool, was right on the beach and was plenty spacious for our big group. We were so excited. That is until we got an email from the rental company in late June telling us that the home had unexpectedly sold and that there was nothing they could do. We received this email from our agent: “60 Mako Drive has just sold and will be under contract starting this week, making the home unavailable for your upcoming August stay. First, I want to take the time to apologize for this terrible situation and let you know that we are here to help in any way that we can. We know that this puts you in a bad position and I am so sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause. Article #17 in our contract states that if the home becomes unavailable in a situation such as this, that we will refund you in full or do everything that we can to put you in a comparable home, at no additional cost to you. Unfortunately our Inventory for the remainder of summer is very low due to the extremely high demand that we are experiencing this year, so we have no comparable properties to move you to.“
As you can imagine, we were extremely dissapointed. Just our luck! The house hadn’t even been on the market but apparently the owner received an offer he couldn’t refuse. Anyway, it was late June, and we were up a creek with no paddle. As the agent mentioned, it was going to be near impossible to find another house that fit our criteria: big, on the beach, and with a pool.
With that being said, within a week or two there was a house that fit our needs that became available due to a cancellation and we jumped on it. This is the house you all saw in my instagram posts and stories and the house we stayed in and enjoyed for a week. It was a little farther down the beach than we were wanting, but we were so excited nonetheless.
The house itself was huge, right on the beach and had a very kid friendly pool. We loved it. Henning would literally wake up squealing with excitement because he knew his cousins would be downstairs waiting for him and that was so much fun to see. I loved everyone waking up in the same house together, making breakfast and heading down to the beach or pool. Our days were so relaxed and easy and the kids had a blast. As far as how the house was set up, it worked perfectly for us.
With that being said, I wanted to share some of the downsides of the rental that I would have wanted to know before booking. The house shares a wall with the public entrance to the beach {which is not advertised at all}. This would be fine if the wall or landscaping shielded passerby from peering in all day, but it didn’t. There were huge gaps in both and we often times felt like we were in a fish bowl with people staring at us all day, everyday. We also had a group of people jump the fence on the first night, swim in the pool and steal our very expensive Yeti cooler. I’m not kidding! We assume it was a bunch of harmless kids because they left bottles of alcohol everywhere but still – it was invasive and irritating nonetheless.
On top of that, there were also A/C issues {we had to have the repairman come out 4 days in a row}, the ice machine in the freezer didn’t work, several of the showers and tubs didn’t drain and the kitchen sink had a massive leak. Also, we were there from August 1st-August 8th and our trash wasn’t picked up a single time {even after calling and requesting it!} Imagine 8 days worth of trash from 20 people. It wasn’t pretty. I just wish, for the price we paid, that we could have avoided some of these unpleasantries.
Anyway, although the house was really well set up, and had everything we needed, it wasn’t perfect either. So I just wanted to share all of that in full transparency! We really did have the best time because we were together and honestly that was all we cared about.
Lastly, I know a bunch of you sent me questions about the restaurants in the area but to be honest, we always ate at home. We were pretty concerned with the spiking numbers in Florida at the time so the only time we left was to go to the grocery store. In non-Covid times we hope to return and stay in Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach or Seaside to spend time riding bikes and trying out some of the amazing restaurants those areas have to offer.
Hope you all are having a wonderful and safe end to your summer! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below! x