Hi,
Our Airbnb posting has several places where we say we have cats and if you're allergic we might be able to remove them for a fee. However, my guests arriving in 2 days just informed us that we need to remove the cats. Unfortunately it's so last minute that we can only find a boarder for more than they want to pay. Actually they refuse to pay anything.
We had tried to communicate with the guest to get arrival times, etc for over 2 weeks via Airbnb email, text and voicemail, to no avail until yesterday when he finally answered and told us to remove the cats at no charge. We offered to keep them in the basement (there's no central air, so no vents to cause allergy problems), which is basically the same as your downstairs condo neighbor having cats, but he steadfastly refuses.
Now we are feeling uncomfortable even renting the house to this group. But cancelling would be awful for our rating and I wouldn't want to put them in that position anyway. He refuses to pay and we've offered a perfectly acceptable free option.
We also offered his allergic friend to check out the basement to see how it would work for him, under the condition that if he still refuses they would have to pay the boarding before handing over the keys.
It's really a frustrating situation that this guy never answered us until too late to do anything about it and now is claiming this is our responsibility. If he had communicated with us even 1 week earlier we could have probably found cheaper boarding available. Very annoying!! What do we do?