Reposting for 2nd time as I noticed my post disappeared.
Hello,
I’m a traditional home-sharing host. Been doing this for 2 years and have enjoyed opening up my home and welcoming everyone from different countries and ethnicities. Pre-COVID, my overseas guests usual stay as long as 2.5 weeks and have been fantastic. Due to the pandemic, that’s halted and I get more locals or out of staters. My current guests are here for a month from out of state, looking to purchase a home here in FL. They are an older Vietnamese couple who speaks a little English and the room was booked by their daughter. The first week was great as I was busy with work (I’m a night shift nurse) so we hardly saw each other as they were out house hunting. The second and third week as my work schedule changed, it seems my presence in my own home is an issue.
My first concern is they brought their realtor to my home and sat at my dining room table and started working as if this was their house and I was the guest. After they were done, I privately spoke to the realtor who said the coffee shop was having power issues and thought it was ok to work at my home with his clients. I told him his clients rented a room in my home and not my entire house, and he would need permission from me. Am I being too unreasonable? Because after he interpreted that to his clients (my guests), the wife didn’t want to look or talk to me again for several days!
Secondly, before booking the room, their daughter requested a discount and since I’ve never had guests stay a month, I figured why not so I heavily discounted the room. My rookie hosting self, hadn’t anticipated her parents would cook three times per day making it at times difficult for me to even cook and prep my own meals for work. Some of my pots I can’t even use as they use it every single day, multiple times per day. Is that too excessive? Or I should’ve known for a month stay that was expected? And since they don’t drive, they stay in my home all day after house hunting for about 4 hours. I have a doorbell video camera so I see the times they leave and come back.
Lastly, (I have a lot more, but I can’t write an entire book), when I come home from work the next morning and don’t have to go back to work that evening, I like to sit down on my couch and catch-up on some movies or shows I’ve DVR’d. As soon as I’m in my living room, the wife lets out a big sigh, angrily speaks to her husband in Vietnamese, and goes to her room and starts talking on her speaker phone as if I should know better than to come downstairs. The television volume is never loud and besides, their first week I wanted to show her how to operate the living room TV, but she insisted she preferred watching it on her own tablet she brought with her. One day, she stormed out of my home and her poor husband just followed, when she saw I had sat down on my living room couch to watch TV. Everyday her husband sees me (as he’s there in my kitchen cooking), he asks “Am I going into work today?” I always want to make my guests feel welcome but I can’t help but sense from the wife particularly, I should respect them by not coming home period!