The host helped us find the apartment location. The apartment is in a good location of downtown Florence.
It was advertised as private parking however, it was a parking garage with a super small spot that was surrounded by about 5 cars. Upon arrival we mentioned that if people parked around us we would be blocked in. The host said the cars would leave soon. That was not true. More cars arrived and we were blocked in for a day. We finally got a chance to move the next day but it costed us 40 euro a day to park nearby.
The host advertised air conditioning but upon arrival it was not working. We were ignored the first night, then told the tech was working on it. I informed the host I live in Italy and do not want the “wait till tomorrow (never happens) treatment”. It changed from the tech was working on it to “it is illegal to have the air on in Italy right now”. I contacted the carabinieri (police) who laughed and said it was not true. The story then changed to “property rules”.
The host tried to cancel our reservation mid way through because we were complaining. The host did end up not cancelling us and refunded us $100 after lengthy talks with airBnB. This almost covered the extra parking fees we incurred.
Other things to note were there was no shower door, ants were bad, and the downstairs had mold on the walls.
The place itself was big. The kitchen was great, it had two bathrooms, and the dining/livingroom area was good to go. It is about a 10 minute or so walk to the center which is awesome.
If you do not care about parking, air conditioning/heat, or having an easy time resolving problems this is still a great place for the money for a family.
What really made me angry was a lack of transparency and customer service. They own 88 properties and the host has been doing this 12 years. Him saying the parking would be fine and trying to lie about the air conditioning as well was the big turn off.
Had he just admitted his mistakes in advertising wrong up front when we noticed it, this would have been a lot smoother.
Because of the air/heat issues I would not book here during April/may or September/October. Otherwise you probably will be fine as long as you are not driving in with anything other than a super small smart car.