Vacation rental: On a week’s notice, Plan B for Thanksgiving

Are you away from home for Thanksgiving? I was going to be.

Months ago, my family put down a hefty deposit to secure a rental house in the gorgeous Santa Barbara community of Montecito. Six people, three generations, four days, a generous grassy yard, and the family dog was even going to be allowed.

It was going to be great, which is good, because it wasn’t cheap. The refundable deposit and everything-up-front cost of the rental amounted to more than $5,000.

But now it’s not happening. And so, for your holiday consideration, I offer a reminder that rental houses have many virtues, but also drawbacks. They’re nothing like hotels. When you make a deal to rent somebody’s house, you’re cutting a one-of-a-kind pact with the owner or management company, and you need to ask a lot of questions and build up enough trust to make both sides comfortable.

So what went wrong?

Fire and consequences.

As the Tea fire broke out and began destroying homes in Montecito and Santa Barbara earlier this month, my wife and I raced to check fire maps and our rental contract.

The news was pretty good: Our chosen house was not only intact, it was outside the mandatory and voluntary evacuation areas. Our contract said the deal would be off only if the house was part of a mandatory evacuation area declared by the National Weather Service. (The writer of the contract, I suspect, was thinking more about storms than fires.)

So if we wanted to stick with our plans, we were fine. If we were spooked and wanted to bail out, we seemed to have a problem.

We didn’t want to bail out. But we did want a chat with the homeowners. Our first few phone calls and e-mails to the homeowners went unanswered.

Then, Thursday night — seven days before Thanksgiving — came an e-mail, followed by a phone message the next day: The house was fine, but they’d decided to rent it out instead to a family whose home was lost in the fire. The rental rate was far lower than what we were paying, the owners said, but they felt this was important to the community, so they were canceling our reservation and two others.

“We feel compelled to help these people,” said one of the owners.

He didn’t mention the language of the contract, and we didn’t raise a fuss– we’re all for pitching in when a disaster happens, and we knew it would be relatively easy for us to redirect the gathering to our own house in Los Angeles. The rental owners pledged a return of our money, and promptly an envelope arrived bearing the advance payments checks we’d sent.

But it didn’t include the hefty deposit– $2,500 — which sparked a new round of anxiety and e-mails. Then on Monday — the Monday before Thanksgiving — a second envelope landed with the remainder of our money.

As we prepare to start the cooking here at home, I’m marveling at how little trouble this caused, and how well it has turned out for all: A family of fire victims apparently has temporary housing.

We have all our money back (and will now have a more affordable holiday, although it won’t be beach-adjacent). The Montecito homeowners now have longer-term tenants, which typically means less work than an intermittent succession of short-term renters. We’ll never know the net-income result for the homeowners.

Here’s what I’m thankful for:

By the time the uncertainty erupted over the house, we had already made repeated contact with the homeowners, via phone and e-mail. We knew how to find them. We’d even driven past the rental house, which is a luxury most renters don’t have– so we knew the lay of the land. Based on that contact, I do trust that they made this move to accommodate fire victims.

But here’s what I find myself dwelling upon:

If we’d been spooked by the nearby fire, and the landlord didn’t want to let us out of the contract, we’d have been stuck.

If we or our relatives had been visiting from farther away and didn’t have a fall-back household within 100 miles, we would have had an unholy holiday mess on our hands. (After all, if you haven’t got a house to gather in, it doesn’t much matter, in the short term, whether the language of the contract is on your side.)

A hotel has to think about return business and its wider reputation when it handles customers. A rental homeowner, not so much. Basically, as a renter, you’re never really in the driver’s seat. Be sure you trust that homeowner who is driving

– Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Bike path in Santa Barbara; Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 10:45 am by Christopher Reynolds and is filed under California, Family & Kids, Last Minute, Santa Barbara, Travel with Pets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.