Health hazard - Mold and rat. I’m sad to say that me and my fiancé had a very horrible experience. We had planned to stay for a whole month, and ended up staying one night. As soon as we opened the door to the basement unit we smelled mold. We were not sure what to do, so we got settled and hoped the smell would go away. The smell did not get better and the unit was a little dirty. We even found an old muffin under the bed. On top of this, later on in the evening I saw a huge rat under the chair in the living room. Its’ body was about 7 inches & tail about 5 inches. Yes this was our experience within the first 6 hours of being in this apartment. I notified our host and we called Airbnb, to see if we could get a refund, the smell of mold was nauseating and where there is one rat there are more. Luckily we were able to book another apartment somewhere else, but the cost was very high due to the last minute booking and not much was available. It was very stressful. At the new apartment we noticed that our personal items smelled like mold. We had to wash everything with vinegar & detergent & even our luggage/backpacks smelled.
It felt like a huge health hazard and I felt shaky after the whole experience. We later heard from Karen that there was the musty & mold smell because of a flood. If this was the case, then why was Airbnb not notified and why was this place still an active listing? We are leaving this review for peace of mind as we feel that no host and no Airbnb customer should breathe in the air down there for a prolonged period of time and the situation in this basement needs some serious professional attention.