We recently stayed in Matt’s Soho apartment as a family of four with two older kids, 10 and 17.
We were greeted by John, from a property management company, who gave us a quick tour of the place and helped check us in a couple of hours early (which we really appreciated as we were coming from the airport and had luggage).
One thing we wished we knew before booking Matt’s place is that the apartment is located inside of a City of Westminster owned estate (community housing building called Dufour’s Place) so our first impression was not good as we weren’t aware of this. The common areas of the building were rundown and dirty. The realities of staying in community housing for our vacation was really disappointing. It also made us feel uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe during our stay.
Pros:
- Once inside the apartment on the 14th floor, the views are really nice looking out to the city and the balcony is nice to sit out on
- The beds are really comfortable, we all slept well during the night (bed and sofa bed)
- The location in Soho is amazing and we were able to walk to most sights and it was easy to get around
- The apartment was roomy enough for two adults and two kids
- Inside the apartment was clean, linens were clean and comfortable, lots of towels
Things that could be better:
- There was very loud construction every morning starting around 8am right above us. It was loud jackhammering and drilling, which made it impossible to sleep past 8:30 am
- Knowing before we booked that the apartment was inside of a community housing building would have been appreciated
- Wifi was not reliable and it would go between working and not working within minutes, despite trouble-shooting. We relied on our phone data
- Low water pressure in the shower made it difficult to shower/took longer to wash out shampoo, etc. We overheard one neighbour say that they didn’t have water sometimes so it is likely a building issue
While there were some positives, sadly we wouldn’t stay again.