We stayed in Matt’s house for 5 weeks. Overall the the amount of “house” you get for the money, especially in this area of Toronto, is great. The house is indeed spacious, and the location is as good as it gets. Everything you need is just around the corner or a short ride with the public transport system. We lived in this area for a longer time some years back and we wouldn’t want to stay anywhere else in Toronto.
The house appears as if somebody was still living there. It is very personally decorated, and many items necessary / useful for living are there. The kitchen is equipped with really everything you could ever want, towels are there in abundance, laundry/dryer are very modern, even a printer is available. On the downside, there are also things we would have probably disposed of or replaced if this was our house — in particular if we were to rent it out.
Communication with Matt was very professional, but also a bit impersonal — most of it is probably handled by the company that is listed as a co-host. All communication was exclusively through the Airbnb website. Matt is reacting blazingly fast, at all times of the day. On the other hand, when we had some problems with the heating and other minor things to be clarified at the beginning of a six weeks’ stay we would have preferred to talk to somebody in person, ideally that somebody coming over to their place and showing us around. Unfortunately, we were never able to reach somebody through the provided phone number. This also meant only the person renting through Airbnb can communicate, which caused some unnecessary indirections.
One item in need for improvement is the basic cleanliness. We found the house in a condition that is below our experience with other Airbnb rentals: dust everywhere, sticky surfaces, kitchenware was dirty. We tried to work on that, shopping for cleaning utensils at our expense, borrowing a functioning vacuum, putting the curtains into the laundry, and investing quite some time in general. This situation needs to be remedied to make this a good rental.