TLDR: With the lack of basic amenities in the apartment, lack of instruction, the shabbiness / noise of the building and the cost to quality ratio, I do not recommend staying here.
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I will start with the good: the location of the apartment was fantastic, really well situated with a lot of shops, bars and restaurants at your doorstep. Albeit, a bit far from the Tube (~10 minutes) it’s a great neighborhood to walk around in and explore.
However, there were a lot of issues with this place. I will start with the lack of supplies. The apartment did not have very basic things that you would expect an airbnb to have. For example, there was no soap in the bathroom to wash your hands with, so we had to buy some from the Waitrose across the street. There was hardly anything available in the kitchen, no kettle, or coffee machine, or even a French press, which are pretty basic things to have in an apartment. There were a handful of pots and pans, which we thought we could use to boil some water for tea, but even these turned out to be pretty useless as the stove was impossible to use (we even looked up the instructions online, but this was of no use). The listing states that up to six people can sleep in the apartment;
there were five of us. We were well aware that with two bedrooms, someone would have to sleep on the extendable couch, however, there were no extra bedsheets or blankets for use. We found an extra comforter cover and used this to lay out on the couch.
In addition to the lack of supplies, there were several other issues:
1. while the the apartment itself was fairly well kept and clean, the building itself is pretty much in shatters. It was really dirty, there were always random bottles of soda or beer on the staircase.
2. The elevator was in use all night. Because it was a fairly old and rickety elevator, you’d hear the door being slammed, the pulley system operating and the heavy landing. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper but this woke me and the rest of our group up several times in the middle of the night during our stay (this wasn’t just once, it happened every night we were there).
3. There were workmen who were in and out of the building all the time and frequently leaving the elevator door open, which meant we’d have to go up or down the stairs to the 5th floor (which was fine for myself and my husband, but not ideal for our parents).
4. There was also some guy who would be sitting at the building entrance (not a doorman) every time we left or came back which was frankly a bit strange. He’d constantly tell us to close the elevator door when we were done using it (which we always did), which just became annoying
5. The door to the front entrance was often left unlocked
Lastly, there were no instructions or information in the apartment when we arrived, no details on what to do with garbage/recycling, no instructions on what to do for the checkout, no details on how to use the stove, no information on the wifi (the host did promptly reply with this information, but I had to request it), and there were only a handful of basic channels on cable tv (if there were any streaming services available, this information was not handy). The host in general was fairly responsive when I asked him a question, and kind enough to allow us to drop our bags off early. However, no information was readily available.
There were two reasons we chose to stay in an Airbnb over a hotel: so we could all stay in the same place instead of in separate rooms in a hotel, and so we could have some of the basic comforts of a home. While we achieved the first, for the amount of money we paid (significantly more than to stay in a decent hotel) and what we got, I was extremely disappointed and do not recommend staying here.