Booking a place with no reviews

Jade91
Level 2
Seattle, WA

Booking a place with no reviews

Hello everyone,

 

I am headed to Sydney, Australia in about a month and just booked a private room in a really nice place - basically a mansion, for $25 per night. Here's the link: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/26041653

 

What sketched me out was the fact that there were no reviews and desciption of the place, and that the host's bio was very vague, with a very distant profile picture. They only have 1 review from a host, that said they were a good guest (in one sentence), but nothing about them being a host. They also never replied to the first message I sent to get approved to book their place, and only confirmed it.

 

I also noticed that all the pictures were real estate photos (hosts do that sometimes from my experience).  I looked it up on Google Maps (satellite) and saw the same porch (so the house IS real). On Google Street View, I wasn't sure which one was the house, but I couldn't really see it over fences and trees. However, there was one house nearby the location that was being constructed, and the images looked the same. This was based on Google Street View October 2017.

 

Continuing down the rabbit hole... I looked at some real estate links (not sure how reliable those are) and it said it was sold for about $4 million dollars in 2017 - so if it was sold in 2017 it makes sense... but $4 million?? Kinda seems like it's too good to be true.

 

I tried messaging the host to see if they would reply (just an hour ago). So far, no response. But we'll see how this goes. I think my anxiety is taking over but I also wanted to get a few-second opinions. Should I be sketched out? Should I cancel? I can't really risk getting scammed at the last minute, just to arrive from the other side of the world to a house that isn't actually renting out their place. Booking an airbnb in Sydney for a reasonable price is really hard, can't imagine how it'd go if I were to do it last-minute.

 

Thanks for reading this lengthy post. Please help!

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