We actively avoid places with owners who live next door. If you are an owner who lives next door, make it abundantly clear in your communications and when you initially greet them that “We’re here if you need us, but we know you want your privacy on holiday, so we'll leave you in peace!” We once stayed in a fantastic place in Derbyshire, but wouldn’t go back because the owner was checking up ‘to make sure everything is OK’ all the time, knocking a few times every day, ordering us to close the windows the instant it started to lightly drizzle, wondering why we hadn't opened the curtains yet when it was already 8am etc. That and the £1-coin meter for the electricity. This was 16 years ago, so I hope it’s changed now, but just don’t do this. Add the average electricity cost on to the rental cost or even, if you really must, take readings before and after and ask them to transfer the money to you when they have chance (this will look very tight and still put a lot of people off). It’s not just the added cost – it’s having to gather and keep a stock of £1 coins and then feel you have to keep checking if either the electricity or your pile of coins is about to run out.
A freezer. We once stayed somewhere in the north york national park that SAID there was a fridge and reezer. We did a big shop with Tesco (or somewhere). No freezer at all.
Or 'oh, well, we put a router in but I dunno if it reaches all the rooms'.
These definitely. It’s better not to promise something than to assure guests that it will be there and then it isn’t or it’s broken/lacklustre. If you show such a lack of care and disdain for your guests, they’ll wonder what else might not be there that was promised or what might not work. It will detract from the good stuff, too – instead of “Ooh, that’s a lovely big HD TV” when you've invested in a really nice expensive one, people will see the exact same model and sigh “Oh, well, at least the telly seems to work so far”.
We stayed at a place in Norfolk once and it was clear that the owner couldn’t care less. We only had her name as ‘Mrs XXXX’ and kept trying to call her on the number we'd been given about several issues and unanswered queries we had, but she never answered. There was no shower curtain, a horrible lumpy horse-hair sofa and a rubbish TV/DVD combo that refused to play any of the pile of DVDs we’d brought with us. The only one it would (eventually) play was the free-with-the-Daily-Mail Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer disc that had been left in it – and we stayed in July! It also claimed to have satellite TV, but this was an outright lie, and the telly reception was atrocious and kept dipping even more every time a lorry went past on the main road outside. It turned out she had an agreement with the church across the road that guests could use their car park (on-road was limited and had restrictions), but this was never mentioned until we finally managed to get in touch with the cleaner – the only number we had - who told us about it several days into our stay. She seemed surprised that we’d thought the owner (whose number had been given) would actually have time to speak to us about it, as ‘she was a celebrity and very busy’. We’d never heard of her, but we asked her full name, looked her up and she seems to pop up in OK! quite often.
As has been said already, don’t treat it like you’re doing a mate a favour by letting them stay over – they’ve saved up often for a long time and paid you a grand or so, and have looked forward to it for months, so make them feel valued and definitely do not furnish it with torn, battered old reject stuff you've got rid of from your own home, as we’ve found on more than one occasion.