The Good:
Note: We stayed for 3 months. This is a great location in Santiago. It’s in a safe location, at a major transit hub with many buses and the metro within a few minutes of walking . There’s a small mall “subcentro” with different shops, bakeries, restaurants right next door, and a decent Unimarc supermarket adjacent. The apartment has marvelous views of the city to the west that looks over most of the other buildings around (it’s the 27th floor). Sunsets are often magnificent and the glass all across the W side of the apartment allows a regular evening “light show”. There are several small markets nearby, and bike paths close as well, with multiple Bike Santiago bike stations really close by. There is an oven, microwave and gas stove top. Good array of wine glasses. See pictures of a good sunset. After a few weeks in the apartment, the host had the very dirty windows cleaned, which made it so much nicer.
The Not so Good:
The apartment has no decorations - the walls are bare. Some of the furniture is in fairly bad shape. One of the shelves seems about to fall off the wall (although it didn’t - it just sloped badly). During the last month we were there, the building turned on some fan/blower in the morning, that ran throughout the day, and caused a major noise coming from the vents in the bathrooms - so loud that it can wake you up and we needed to shut the bathroom doors throughout the day or we had difficulty hearing one another if we were not in the same room. The gas stove top has to be lit with a match and is really hot, and hard to bring down to a simmer even with the smallest burner. The kitchen is adequately stocked, with some casserole dishes, pans. Minimal silverware.
The Bad:
The place was filthy when we arrived. Floors, cabinets, furniture, all quite dirty. After complaining the host finally had a third cleaner come, spending 6 more hours cleaning the place. Then it was livable, but this took two weeks to get fixed. Some of what is advertised is not accurate. There were no extra blankets, and if you’re staying in an edge season, you can be a bit chilly. We were getting 40 degree nights and there was no heat on in the building. The windows are not really air tight, so it can get a bit drafty.
While the Airbnb web site shows a really nice couple of pools and hot tub on the roof, we were told after we reserved the place that they were closed due to covid, with hopes that it would be open some time in the 3 months while we were there. We were told by neighbors that the pool had been closed for quite some time, and then told by the manager that the pool had some major code violations that needed to be fixed before the pool could be opened, and that they had no clear estimate as to when it might be opened again. See pictures of the pools as they are now. The fact that advertisements for apartments in this building show a nice pool (which we really would have liked to enjoy) is patently false advertising. AirBnb should prohibit this. Matias should correct this.
The roof could provide a really nice place to go, but the building has not been taken care of well. All the windows on the roof are filthy - doesn’t appear as if they’ve been washed for years (see picture). That makes it difficult to enjoy the space up there, since you can’t really enjoy the view which could be fantastic if the windows were clean. There is an exercise room on the top floor, which is OK, but several bikes and the exercise machine don’t work. Perhaps they’ll fix the exercise machine. People have damaged the doors on the roof, and all of the lounge chairs have cracks in them, making some of them minimally usable. It would be good if the management would take better care of the place.
The host had his good and bad qualities. We were pleasantly surprised when he told us he had hired people to clean the windows. That made a big difference. We asked for a coffee maker before we even arrived - he brought us one after about a week, and the carafe broke the first time I tried it. He did replace it after a few days.
He really needs to attend to details. When we arrived, multiple lights didn’t work, a floor lamp in the living room had no shade, no bulb. There was a pile of dirt on the floor in the bedroom left - it appeared that the cleaners swept up some and just didn’t finish the job. It was just sitting there and taking up space. (He did replace it with a nice floor lamp, but why not take care of it before we have to complain?) Lights over the stove, one light on the ceiling - non functional. He should notice those things. The fact that the kitchen and other areas were so dirty - he should notice those things. There was a cake of dust on the bath vent fans (until the third cleaner came). Why would you have bare walls on every room in the apartment? The one area rug in the living room was dirty with stains and other crud. We asked him to clean it or at least give us a vacuum. He gave us a vacuum with suction but no attachments or beater bar for floors or rugs. We finally put the rug in the bathtub and used the spray, soap and a stiff broom to clean it after he said that he would remove it if we liked, but he would not have it cleaned. This is not how we would like to spend our time.
When we