HomeStead Real Estate& Vacation Rentals

The owner, Dagmer Chew, was incredibly unprofessional. After not seeing our extended family for over a year due to COVID, we booked a beach house for over $7K for the week through Homestead. Some family members are immunocompromised and this was a vacation we splurged on to ensure everyone's safety. Upon arrival, there were a few minor issues that we reported right away, to not be held liable. The owner, Dagmer Chew, calls us back demanding we accommodate all of these contractors to come by the house and make repairs. There was no apology, no "sorry for the inconvenience". We explained our circumstance that we were uneasy with spending $7k to have a stressful mask debate with workmen coming into the house. We then got an unsolicited lecture about how COVID is a lie and not to believe in the media. It was unbelievable! Instead of listening to the customer, she pushed her anti-science political views on us and THEN HUNG UP ON US! She's an insane TRUMP supporter who gives you a TED TALK you didn't sign up for. If you want your money supporting this lunatic, go ahead! We've never been treated so unprofessionally in our lives. We contacted the homeowners and informed them their rental company was run by a bunch of COVID-deniers. Look her up on Facebook and see her disgusting political posts yourself (DAGMER CHEW)! 🤢

This summer our family decided to again visit the lovely town of Cape May Point for our vacation. We had rented a home in CMP in the past but this summer we wanted to bring our dog along so we were searching for a pet friendly rental, as the home we rented in the past was not pet friendly. We looked online and found Homestead Real Estate and Vacation Rental and found several pet friendly properties that they managed. We chose a property "Pias Point" at 802 Cape Avenue, owned by Mrs. Carol Long for our week long vacation. Upon arriving at Homestead VR to pick up the key to the property we were given a "Check Out Procedure" list which included among other things wiping down the bathrooms, vacuuming and spot mopping all flooring, taking out the trash including waste baskets in each room, wiping down kitchen counters, fridge, sink and all appliances. We were also informed on this check list that if we neglected to do all of those things "all or part of your damage & cleaning deposit may be withheld." We signed the lease agreement with Homestead in January of 2013 and never received any document asking us to do this type of cleaning at that time. Though we were not happy with this surprise in June, at the end of our week long vacation we did comply with the check list requirements upon our departure in order to insure that we would receive our full $200 deposit back. You can imagine our surprise and sense of injustice when we were informed by the Homestead rental agent, Jack Powers, that the owner of the property Mrs. Long was requesting that $50 of our $200 deposit be held for excessive cleaning. We requested an explanation from Mrs. Long regarding the $50 charge, her response was the following: "long black hair stuck to the bathroom walls, counter tops not wiped, layers of white fur on the living room carpet." Mrs. Long also made offensive accusations that we were sloppy people who had spit toothpaste "8' up 2 walls in the bathroom" No one in our rental party (my husband, myself, our son and daughter in law and their two children ages 1 and 3) would ever deliberately or unknowingly spit toothpaste 8 feet up a wall! The fur she mentioned likely came from our dog. However, we did pay Homestead $150 for a "pet fee" which would likely cover things like pet fur. When we asked Mr. Powers when Mrs. Long had inspected the property before or after the cleaning people had come onto the property he stated that no cleaning person had come in after our stay and that Mrs. Long had done the cleaning herself. Upon continuing our conversation about the property with Mrs. Long she asked us about a broken fluorescent driveway marker. We admitted that we had accidentally run it over when backing down the narrow, bending driveway and offered to replace or pay for the item, she did not accept our offer to pay for and personally deliver the driveway marker which would have cost less than $5 and insisted on keeping our $50 for what she deemed as excessive cleaning needs. We continued this conversation with the owner of Homestead VR, Dagmer Chew, she informed us that she represented the owner of the property in this matter and not us. She also said that Mrs. Long had pictures of the excessively dirty property and that we should be grateful that Mrs. Long only kept $50 since we had broken her driveway marker. We asked Ms. Chew for a look at the pictures she said she had of the property but we received no response to our request. In conclusion, we feel we were unjustly charged $50 for cleaning that would have been usual and customary after occupancy by six people over the course of a week on vacation. We are mature, responsible renters and have never had our security deposit held before over the past 30+ years of rental experience. We will not be renting Mrs. Long's property again and would never use the services of Homestead Real Estate and Vacation Rental in the future and have reservations about renting from any real estate agency as we have found we had little recourse within the framework of their type of rental agreements related to the security deposit. We will instead choose to rent from the many private rental owners in the Cape May Point area as we have experienced agreeable outcomes in the past with them.