This is a comprehensive review including some of the details about our stay at Phillip’s place. We stayed at the flat for a month and we were in the flat most of our time there doing remote work and online meetings so we got to know all of the ins and outs of the place quite well. Some of the things listed below may or may not impact you if you are there for a shorter period of time or if you are not in the flat 24x7.
We are veteran Airbnb users and have stayed at 30+ different Airbnb’s all around the world over the past 7 years. With that said, I would start off by saying that in comparison to other Airbnb’s that we have stayed at, Phillip’s place met our most basic needs but at the same time it was just that…...quite basic. I’ve listed some of the relevant things to know about the place below:
POSITIVES
- The flat is very close to a number of nice restaurants along with 2 grocery stores. If dining out is your thing, you will have a number of choices (we prefer dining in so we didn’t take advantage of this positive but the close grocery stores were nice)
- The flat is only an 8 minute walk to the Tube station. It takes about 1 hour to go from the flat to most places in downtown London. In addition, a bus stop for many bus lines is right across the street so getting around is fairly easy
- The 2 beds in the upstairs rooms are Super King size. It was nice to have the bigger beds for couples
- The flat appears to have new carpet and floor coverings throughout
- After an initial disagreement about the number of occupants the booking was for, the owner and manager were responsive in our communications with them, even offering items from the restaurant downstairs
THINGS TO CONSIDER
- One of our biggest disappointments in the flat was that the entrance is through a VERY dirty alleyway behind the restaurants up a very steep 2 flights of outside wooden stairs. The alleyway has a half dozen dumpsters that are used for the restaurants and is quite unkempt with the dumpsters, discarded old, dirty mattresses, shopping carts, trash, etc along the side. It is obvious that nobody cares much about how the alleyway looks because it is quite unkempt. For this point alone, if photos of the entrance and the alleyway had been disclosed in the listing, we would have most likely not have booked the place.
- The flat is above some of the aforementioned restaurants. As a result, you will have cooking food smells, late night noise (past midnight on weekends), cigarette / vaping smells from both patrons and employees, banging around kitchen noises, etc.
- The flat is on a very busy, and noisy, street. In addition to the normal street noises, there must be a hospital close by because there are ambulances, with sirens on, going past ALL the time (multiple per hour). The sirens seem to taper off somewhat in the evening but they are quite frequent and quite noisy during the day.
- The internet in the flat was unfortunately fairly unstable. The Internet would unexpectedly drop multiple times/day. This was very disruptive since I was on online meetings for hours each day with the router dropping my connection 4x in one online call. For some reason it was easier for our laptops to connect and stay connected than our iPhones. I did report the issue to the manager and she responded by making another wifi connection available to connect to but it had similar (although not as frequent) dropping issues.
- The furnishings in the flat are very, very basic. Minimal plates and cooking utensils, a hodge-podge of glasses, no TV, minimal furnishings, no decorating of the flat, a single sofa, minimal chairs, etc. Not much effort has gone into making the flat appealing to Airbnb guests beyond the bare bones basics.
- The flat would be better listed as a 2 ½ bedroom / 1 ½ bath place rather than a 3 bedroom / 2 bath place. The bedroom downstairs is very tiny with a single bed and the downstairs bathroom is EXTREMELY small (literally less than 1 meter wide). And in another strange quirk of the place there are no drawers in the kitchen cabinets so the silverware tray has to be stored in the cabinet below the counter.
- The front door to the flat looks like it is a flimsy closet door rather than a solid front door to a house/apartment. It has 2 battered locks, neither of which are easy to operate. I would be more worried about the safety of the flat due to the door except for the fact that it was down the dirty alleyway at the top of the steep wooden stairs and I don’t know that anyone would bother entering they alleyway and climb the steep stairs to try to enter the loft.
- There were no instructions on how to access the flat and minimal communications with the host prior to our stay. There were also no reviews of the flat yet on Airbnb when we booked the place so we knew we were taking a chance. The host mentioned that it was his first time renting on Airbnb and the inexperience showed. Hopefully he can make some improvements on the items that can be improved (many things like the stairs and the busy road can’t be fixed, although the alleyway could be cleaned up) to better appeal to Airbnb guests in the future.
- On that point, the upstairs bathroom fan was making a lot of noise so I offered to replace it. The host provided a new fan which I installed. Hopefully the fan still works well if you decide to stay at the flat. 😊
With all of that said, our