Initially, we had booked a house with 5 bedrooms in a Thornton Heath. Upon arrival in England, we received an email, the day of, that the host had changed our location of stay, and instead sends another address outside of the desired location for which we will stay and this new house has 4 rooms instead. We try to contact the host by phone and she is unreachable. We end up going to the new sent location and the house is all dirty and hadn’t been cleaned up from the previous residents. All the beds still and the old dirty bedsheets and the bathrooms were dirty as well. Again we attempt to reach the host and still no answer. After multiple tries, the host finally communicates with us. The host says that the house that we had originally booked now has different people staying in it and they can’t leave. We ask the host to send a cleaner to clean. The cleaner then comes some hours later to organize the house. However, we still try to reach the host for more communication and all we get that the host is “in a meeting and will call later”, per the cleaner Sean. The host takes several days to get in contact with us, yet so many things were missing form the house. The host didn’t seem to comprehend the gravity of her error and the new location in Datford was a hindrance to the desired activities that we had planned in London. It now involved that we had to drive and endure more traffic to get to the desired area. The host was very inaccessible and communication was via, Sean.

We were relocated to a smaller property that didn't fit our family, taking valuable time from our vacation, was 15 mins further from London and communication with the owner during this was difficult and frustrating. After arriving in London from the U.S., we attempted to open the keybox to this property and it wouldn't work. When we contacted the owner, she told us we were at the wrong property, even though the address matched the listing she emailed us. She instructed us to go to a different property which was not the same as the one we reserved and paid for. It was much smaller. We had a group of 8 and had only one bathroom. There were not enough beds for everyone and people were sleeping on the floor and couch. There was not enough space in the living room for everyone to be together. Kitchen was barely stocked. We contacted the owner that afternoon explaining that we were in the wrong property and she said there was someone staying in the property we had rented and asked us to stay two more nights and then she would move us. We explained that this was not acceptable and she said there was nothing she could do. VRBO also was zero help. We ended up moving for our third and last night, which took valuable time from our vacation. The new property was large enough, with enough beds and bathrooms, however, that night one of the showers leaked into the bedroom below it, and we realized the shower in the bathroom downstairs was broken, leaving us with one shower for 8 people once again. We also could not use one bedroom which now had water dripping from the ceiling all night. The bathroom next to the kitchen smelled like sewer really bad. Kitchen was barely stocked. Needless to say, this rental experience was a nightmare. We lost much valuable time visiting London because of the additional travel time to the other property further from London and from all of the phone calls and moving 8 people from one property to another. The owner would only return our texts and calls when we would get VRBO involved. She seemed rude and uncaring. We paid more for a larger property that was closer to London. We also had to pay more for transportation to and from London because we were further away. We requested a refund and the owner only offered us an additional night for free. We had reservations in another part of England after that so we could not accept that offer, nor would we want to stay another night even if it was free.

Clean, well equipped and family friendly. Close to shops and bus stop

Very nice place close to the bus stop. The kids liked being in a three story house. There is a neighborhood cat that came around often for pets. Very friendly. We had a great time.