As much as my partner and I enjoyed our stay at this apartment, we would like to flag the following to potential Airbnb short-term visitors considering a stay here. I want to give you as much advice to inform your decision on whether to stay here.
First of all, the apartment was sparkling clean. The size was optimal for the two of us, albeit the kitchen bench a tad too small for meal prepping but we managed with the limited space. We spent a week here and worked from the apartment and found it to be comfortable, just right for two people. The only downside was the small living area, we thought it would be ideal for one person and not two.
A little about the location and building: 889 Collin Street is a modern block of new apartments, with a secure entrance and lifts. The area where this building is located gives off this really eery feeling. The Docklands area is secluded, just high-rise apartments left, right, and centre.
Police cars are parked out on the street every night, either patrolling or waiting for something to go wrong. The streets are dead, empty and the area is almost lifeless with all the high-rise apartment buildings that give the area a cold, desolate feeling.
And onto the main incident which is why I'm giving this review. I do want to flag the following to potential occupants. First of all, we had a feeling the apartment was occupied by mostly short-term tenants/residents such as i.e Airbnb, etc...
The first thing that gave this away was the number of signage on the walls throughout the building from Victoria Police, and Building Management warning people not to host parties, which was the first red flag because the building must be renowned for people booking short term accommodation to host parties and therefore, likely to cause trouble.
We had an incident where the occupants in the apartment next door hosted a string of parties, on consecutive nights. We stayed here for a week and during our stay, we smelt weed coming from the air vents in our bathroom, and the smell protruded into the hallways at night time which made our time here quite very uncomfortable. We had to crank up the A/C and keep the balcony door open to let the smell out.
On one night, we were awoken by the residents next door (most likely short-term occupants) who were having a party that dragged into the wee hours of the next morning, which led to a violent argument at 5 am that morning. The fight sounded so violent in the hallway, we felt helpless not knowing whether to call the police. The worst thing about this incident is, we saw 5 police cars parked out on the streets and saw 4-5 policemen standing out on the street who knew there was a fight between the Africans, but didn't once step in to break up the fight. My feeling is the local police who patrol here every night are so used to this apartment and people hosting parties that they can't do much about it but to hope that nothing will turn violent to warrant them stepping in.
After raising this with the host (property manager, I think the owner of this property is overseas) so we dealt with the property management team to discuss this incident but this was the first they had heard of something like this.
Just wanted to share this incident to warn future tenants looking to stay in this apartment. We may have just had unlucky neighbors. But hey, there are thousands of empty apartments in Melbourne's CBD right now, so it could be the same everywhere else.
All I can say is book at your own risk. You may not be as unlucky as us. Out of all my Airbnb experiences, this has been the most unfortunate of them all.