A Canadian snowbird is sharing additional details of a nightmare villa rental in The Villages.
Jerry Burrows wrote a Letter to the Editor earlier this week describing his horrible experience with the rental on Ascot Loop in the Hialeah Villas for November and December.
The Canadian is following up on the Letter to the Editor, providing more details about the rental which turned his fun-in-the-sun vacation into “a complete fiasco.”
He and his wife arrived on Nov. 9. And the first hiccup was an entry combination that did not work.
The house was filthy. Linens and towels were in poor condition.
During his stay at the villa, noises were heard in the attic. There was “a great deal of feces” in the attic where two live rats were captured.
The odor was so bad in the garage, they chose not to park in it.
The bathtub was not usable as it was infested with ants, Burrows said.
They finally left on Christmas Eve, after nearly two months in the unbearable villa.
While many rent happily in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown, there have been plenty of renters who have horror tales:
• Jacalyn Hamilton-O’Neil was arrested after defrauding renters from Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Canada. During an investigation initiated by complaints to Seniors vs. Crime, detectives from Sumter County Sheriff’s Office’s Financial Crimes Unit discovered Hamilton-O’Neil fraudulently rented the same residence to nearly 50 victims for the same or overlapping periods during winter and spring.
• A Villager was arrested after triple-billing a snowbird for a rental in the Village of Del Mar. When the landlord found out the renter had guests, the homeowner ordered the snowbird to provide him with the names and dates of birth of his guests.
• Creekside Landing residents complained last year to the Community Development District 8 Board of Supervisors after a short-term renter was involved in an armed standoff with the SWAT team. Residents were under lockdown or prevented from returning to their homes for hours.
