I've been using airbnb for 7+ years with multiple stays a year, and this was a complete miss for me. I just moved to LA for work and needed a month-long rental while I was apartment hunting, so I wanted to get a nicer place that was a little higher in price since I'm not very familiar with the city. However, I was uncomfortable for the majority of the time and really did not enjoy my stay for the reasons I've listed below.
I'll start with the good:
1) The location is great. It's on a quiet street that's walking distance to a lot of great bars and restaurants on Rose St and 15 minute walk to Abbott Kinney. Some decent spots on Lincoln too. That was the highlight of my stay.
2) The apartment itself in terms of physical space was fine, enough room for one person to live in for a month.
3) The hosts were friendly enough although will note issues with communication below. They also did give me a small refund for the animal pee smell wafting from the joint-door of the neighbors, which was very kind, and did address a majority of the issues I had. But there shouldn't have been that many issues in the first place, which is a reason for the bad review.
4) It's pet-friendly.
Now the bad:
1) The listing didn't mention that the airbnb was part of a converted house with very thin walls and very loud and unhygienic neighbors. When I first arrived, the entire place smelled like animal pee. It STUNK. When I mentioned this to the hosts, they said they would take care of it and left some febreeze on the porch, which did nothing aside from activate a coughing fit and make the place smell even worse. When I asked them again to please investigate it, they sent their dad over and he went into the neighbors and said that the place reeked of animal pee and made them clean it. The explanation I got was that the dad is too much of a softie and let some friends who were evicted from their last unit live in the space temporarily, and they had overstayed their welcome but he didn't have the heart to kick them out. I try to be an empathetic person, but when I'm paying $5k+ to stay somewhere, I shouldn't have to live in a place that reeks of animal pee. That eventually was taken care of. But then the screaming started. From what I could tell it was a teenage boy playing video games over a headset with his friends, but he was screaming the F-word constantly, making weird noises, and just yelling into his headset in general, which meant that I had ZERO comfort or peace in the main area, and even my coworkers could hear him over my computer since we're still working from home. I complained once, and the hosts said they would address it, but it never stopped. After how many issues I was having already in those first two weeks, I decided to just shut up and put up with it because I was emotionally drained from all of the issues and just tried to be out of the house as much as possible. I'm so glad I didn't need the second "downstairs" bedroom because there's no way I would have been able to sleep with the boy screaming and dog barking: the only thing separating the unit, and specifically that bedroom, from the neighbors is two thin wooden doors that did not have any visible form of locks on them (to their credit, I asked them if they could give me peace of mind by putting visible locks on them, and they did change the locks). The bedroom upstairs was quiet though because it wasn't adjacent to that wall with the neighbors, so I was able to get sleep at least or else I would have needed to find somewhere else to stay.
2) The hosts are not very responsible or communicative. I try to figure things out on my own and not bother hosts too much, but given how many issues there were, I needed to reach out to them quite a bit, which was draining for me and probably for them too. In the messaging chat, there are three hosts listed and it says "response time 1 hour." There were several times where my questions went hours without a response. A couple hours, that's fine, but it was along the lines of over 6 hours and 24 hours, and got to the point that I needed to text them to please check the chat and respond to me. I verbalized my frustration, and while there was certainly a friendly albeit forced tone, you can tell that they simply do not care about the wellbeing of their guests. It seemed like Alex and Kathy were just passing everything off for their dad to handle. This was especially frustrating because I had an issue with my debit card and needed to get a new one delivered in order to get a deposit for an apartment application. When the bank told me they had to mail it to the airbnb, I already knew it was going to be an issue but I didn't have any other option. I had given the hosts plenty of notice ahead of time and asked them to please have someone keep an eye out for it. After not hearing anything and the bank saying it had been delivered, their dad finally showed up with it and said he almost threw it away. I was baffled because they clearly had not let him know even though he appears to be the only one doing anything, and it had my name on it and he knew my name, so I am very confused why he thought it would be okay to throw it away.
3) The unit was not set up with