Beach House Real Estate — Hotel in Holmes Beach

The Banyan Tree house is beautiful and we enjoyed our stay very much! The house is architecturally stunning with every luxury we were hoping for. The indoor/outdoor nature of the home is amazing and we loved the balconies everywhere and the way the kitchen can be opened up completely. We loved the location and the proximity to the beach access. We are very glad we chose this house for our stay on AMI.

There were a few things I wanted to share, however, that came as a bit of a surprise to us:

Nobody from the Beach House Real Estate Team checked in on us at all at any point during our stay. This was a first for us on AMI. A proactive check-in to make sure everything was OK would have been a nice touch, and something we are accustomed to on AMI. Not a big deal, however, there were a couple of minor issues that would be nice if fixed for the next guests which I will share below. I even attempted to proactively reach out to the Beach House AMI team by email before posting this review but got no response yet.

There were some areas in the home that were not cleaned properly. Just to give some examples: in the primary suite there were several used/discarded contact lenses on the nightstand from the prior guests that were not cleaned up. The glass base of the lamp on the nightstand in the primary bedroom is smeared with a gross substance and not clean, and there was hair all over the floor in the primary bedroom especially under the desk. Most of the rest of the house was clean but this was definitely not a pleasant part of our welcome into the home.

Several of the lounge chairs in the backyard next to the pool were completely rusted through, broken, and just laying in the yard in a collapsed fashion. They were honestly unusable and unsafe. My husband moved these to the side of the house so that future guests do not get injured on them. All of the lounge chairs in the backyard need to be replaced.

The outdoor kitchen was out of commission. We are guessing this was damaged due to the recent hurricanes, which is understandable! We appreciated the "backup" grill on the side of the yard, but this was an amenity we were looking forward to using a lot and a head's up to guests would be appreciated.

The safety fence around the pool was not pictured in the listing photos for the home. We completely understand why this is necessary due to the indoor/outdoor nature of this home (and to avoid putting pool alarms on every single door and window that leads to the pool), however, it completely changes the look and feel of the backyard which was not the expectation from the photos. Your listing photos should be updated to reflect this, or it should be mentioned in the listing description. In addition, the landscape of the backyard has also been impacted by the recent hurricanes and while expected, the photos should be updated to show what it truly looks like now.

The beautiful rope swings pictured in the listing are not existent. Again, perhaps they were destroyed in the recent hurricanes but they should be replaced or removed from the listing photos. Same with the hammock that was pictured in the photos - it doesn’t exist anymore. My children were really looking forward to using these. There are 2 orange hammock swings that are still there which was nice but 1 is twisted/wrapped in the tree and just dangling there and not fully usable. These are things that should be replaced for future guests.

All of these items are fairly minor, but I did want to share the feedback as this kind of a stay at this price tag is definitely a splurge for us and for most families and future guests should not encounter poorly cleaned/uncleaned areas, broken furniture, etc.

Overall, we truly did love our stay here and are glad we chose the Banyan Tree House. Thank you for welcoming our family...

We recently booked via Beach House AMI. They were very helpful and professional with all their communication. They answered all my questions within a timely response. We loved the house (Good Vibrations). The location is excellent, walk to the beach, Manatee Café, easy access to the shops and also the bridge of the island. The house is in a quiet street with the dock and the view out to the bay (Skyway Bridge) by the pool making it very pleasant place to relax. The house was very well equipped and clean. The kitchen had everything we needed apart from a kettle but the realtor brought this to us when we asked. We really liked the extra additions bikes and beach chairs - went on lots of bike rides, I usually hire a bike so this was an added bonus. Also the chairs and umbrella were excellent - all Tommy Bahamas and so nice to be able to take these to the beach. (again we normally have to buy). We have visited AMI many times and stayed in lots of lovely homes, however this house was so nice that we all really relaxed and said we would stay again. We have never been back to the same house before.

Not that I want to put anything negative as we really did enjoy the house and our stay - however these are more general points for the owners. The only thing that let the house down was 2 other rooms could do with some proper draw units or shelves in the wardrobe for our clothes. All the furniture in the rest of the house was lovely appeared new and strong. The only thing we had to use in the bedrooms was plastic draws and this made it difficult and hard to unpack and see our clothes. It would be even better if the bathrooms had a little makeover or new shower curtains. The main bathroom has a small door opening and my mum slipped getting out and had an serious fall, bruising her back and arms. The top balcony had a great table for lunch and evening meals with a view however in the sun it was very hot and could benefit from a parasol or sun shade. The house has been renovated lovely and the pool and spa is fab. Other additions that we feel would make this house an A* would be an downstairs toilet near the shower area by the pool and maybe an area for a fridge/sink and bar under the balcony. Regardless of all these points, I would still say this is a great house and we would return. We had a fantastic...

RE: Havana Cay, AMI

Bad management, no supplies, broken and rusted beach gear and essentially nothing provided for a day out at the beach. Plan on renting your gear, buying hand soap and toilet paper as well as dish soap, dishwasher soap, laundry detergent, salt/pepper, etc - (only provided with one dishwasher tab and one roll of TP in each bathroom).

Brought a few meager chairs from the house to watch the sunset the first day and they kept collapsing on us. Found one of the 6 at the house that worked and rented another. No sun umbrella forked over $100 to rent necessities for the week. Don’t bother blowing up the floaties at the house - they’ve all got holes in them.

Wi-Fi weak or non-existent in back yard and half the plugs don’t work here.

Was told they would have the cleaners come to this home first so we could check-in an hour earlier with our little boy after a flight, but when time came was told, “no”, we had to wait until 4 for check-in (fine), so sat in the driveway in the beating sun with our luggage, groceries and son. No one came or went in that hour so we sat there for no reason, off to a great start. Refused to be flexible to allow us an extra hour to depart so we stated we’d take the golf cart rented for the week to store our luggage and grab a bite. They said no to us using the golf cart we paid for, as they need that back “first thing”, although said they wouldn’t mind if we sat in the driveway to wait for our car. Golf cart was NOT picked up by the time we left at noon (driver was late) and cleaners had just arrived when we were leaving, so we sat in front yard for hours next to an unused golf cart for absolutely no reason. It felt like such a bad ending to a nice trip as the management were so unkind and unhelpful and actually dishonest.

Overall Havana Cay is a cute home with great location, but the management is horrible, lack of supplies is super inconvenient and I would avoid this rental company...