Overall - 2.5 stars
Good:
- Location - near BART, buses, shops, and restaurants. Very walkable
- Bed
- Water pressure
- A ton of fans to cool down the place
Bad:
- Not the cleanest. The place is dusty and the bathroom shower has black grime
- Apt 205 has no view (window looks directly onto a wall). I'm unsure about other units
- There is no air circulation so it gets quite hot and stuffy starting in the afternoon
Ugly:
Construction started on the second day we got there with no advance notice from the host. Extremely loud construction - you could literally feel the table move from the vibrations. It was scheduled from 9am-4pm, so no relaxing lazy mornings for us. We had booked a month out and this wasn't emergency/unplanned construction so we could have easily been warned ahead of time. Instead, we were told about the construction an hour after it had already started.
The second day of construction started at 8am so we messaged the host letting them know and to ask how long it would last. She said a week, that it was necessary construction (installing air conditioning), and that if we wanted we could leave and get a partial refund. Unfortunately, we were not in the financial situation to just find another hotel or AirBnB at the last minute.
She only changed her tune after I mentioned that I am late in my 2nd trimester of pregnancy and that this was extremely disruptive to the (already poor) sleep I was getting. Plus, the noise was so loud throughout the day that mid-day breaks or rests were made impossible. They then offered us the use of another room across from our apartment, but as this was huge planned construction, you could hear it everywhere in the building. We contacted Airbnb about this issue and they're trying to work with the host but the host won't answer Airbnb's calls.
Overall, even without the construction fiasco, I wouldn't book again. This place isn't worth the money. I'm used to living in an old building - this is it AND more. It's like a bad motel with its thin walls (you can easily hear sex or snoring in adjacent units) and dirty carpeted hallways. Even if location is all you care about, I recommend that you find somewhere else. I used to live in this neighborhood for 3 years. Being right outside of a BART/bus line with restaurants and grocery stores all around you is great, but walking 5-10 mins in perfect weather to get there and not over paying is even better.
Pro tip - don't bring a car. This place is near the BART so the neighborhood is hyper diligent about cars parked up during the day and you will get ticketed if you're parked for 2+ hours during the work week. A month before you arrive try to get a GIG card. It's a car service all over Oakland/Berkeley and has a ton of cars around. You just tap to get in and can park wherever. I still had my GIG card from when I lived here so we took that to Tilden Park and the BART/bus everywhere else.