Ugh, my family and I rented a condo when we were visiting Vancouver a couple of years ago. It was a pretty nice place, except that we couldn't use the balcony or the pool due to extremely noisy construction happening next door. In fairness, the condo's owner couldn't do anything about it, but a bit of a heads-up would've been nice.
Actually, I have a bunch of stories about that condo's owner. We found that:
- The part of the condo we were staying in was the upper floor, and other tenants were in the lower floor. The owner told us sternly that under no circumstances were we to make any noise after 10:00 p.m. Fair enough, except that the other tenants had several screaming matches in the wee hours that woke my daughters up - guess they didn't get any such admonition from the owner!
- The owner told us that we had to be VERY VERY careful about her brand-new kitchen counters. If she found any scratches on them, she'd keep our damage deposit.
- We had to throw away ALL of our trash. If she found any, she'd ... well, you know. (Meanwhile, I'd had every intention of throwing away all our garbage. Being treated like a naughty messy child irked me a lot.)
- The bedrooms had urns containing dead pets' ashes. No disrespect intended to grieving pet owners, but this seemed ... odd, especially when you're renting your place out.