This apartment is priced near the top end for serviced apartments and at about the same cost as two 4-star hotel rooms. In exchange for the money, you get a well laid out apartment, in a 4 storey house located on a quiet street, less than 10 mins walk from the U-Bahn.

Unfortunately however, the building suffers from neglect and has no one in Berlin managing it (the building owner lives in London, her mother about 3 hours’ drive away). With no one in Berlin responsible, we were inconvenienced on multiple occasions, dealing with issues we would normally expect the landlord to handle (especially given the prices charged). For example, during our 3 month stay:

•The heating failed on two occasions, and we had no heating and hot water for a total of 4 days with external temperatures falling to 4 degrees centigrade at night. One occasion was because the house ran out of heating oil. We then had to rearrange our schedule to stay at home and supervise both heating repairs and oil delivery.

•The water company visited us at 8am one morning to say that unless their bill was paid within 3 days, they would cut off the water supply

•The internet was unreliable throughout our stay, and stopped working for a full week, despite several requests to get it fixed

•The apartment has a large number of unresolved minor repair issues (for example, the water hoses leading to both shower heads leak; I had to unclog both shower drains; one of the radiators started leaking and had to be removed; half the fabric blinds in the living room don’t raise because the mechanism is broken; etc etc)

In addition, the apartment above us (belonging to the same landlord, although rented through a different website) held a party one weekend with loud music from 22:30 to 04:30. The vomit had still not been fully cleaned from the staircase and entrance hall carpet when we moved out 2 weeks later.

Bottom line: this apartment is suitable for people who enjoy home maintenance (and parties). However, if you want a trouble free and quiet stay, you might want to choose somewhere else.