The house at 32 Los Robles, Carmel Valley, CA looks wonderful at first glance. It has wonderful space and lots of grounds. But in living in for a week with our family, it was very apparent that there were two major things wrong. The first was that we found the property to be in very poor repair, lots of things not working, including doors that wouldn't close or lock, broken refrigerator, tennis court in poor condition, hot tub not filled with water, but with mud, toilets that backed up etc. The towel and robe laundry from the previous tenant was left for us to complete when we arrived, something we have never found in our times of renting vacation homes.
The second thing very wrong for us was that the caretaker was there often each day, even telling us she came in once while we were all asleep. It felt that we were being stalked and harassed. We found it "creepy”, unnecessary and invasive. From our experience in renting other homes, we have found the caretaker to be initially welcoming and then available for problems, but not on the property every day for some reason.
We were told the house wouldn't lock. At night and when we left we had no choice but to leave it open. This felt unsafe.
These aspects caused us to have a less good family reunion as we had to deal with these unexpected negative aspects of renting this home. The price of $8000 a week should have been for a house that worked and a caretaker who was helpful and welcoming rather than feeling harassed. We summed it up as being a very strange experience and it took away from our enjoyment of the week together.
This was sad because the house does have wonderful potential. But I cannot recommend it.