I stayed here with my best friend for a long term rental stay, for about a month and had a good time. The location was great, close to both Oakland and Berkeley but very quiet off the street. The rental itself is on the bottom floor of Keith's main house, and gets a nice amount of sunlight in the bedrooms and dining room. We kept saying it felt like a little getaway because of the garden, and how it is nestled within the trees.
Upon moving in though, my friend moved in first as I was away for the first few days of our stay, and had some difficulties with cleanliness upon arrival. The carpet in the living room was very dirty and there was hair on the bathroom floor. I noticed as well that there was some mold on the shower mats and on the shower curtain as well. We let the hosts know about that, and they did come back in to deep clean a little more but had insisted that they had already done so beforehand until my friend sent along photos.
Because this house is in the midst of a massive garden, and on the older side I'm assuming thats what lead to the amount of spiders in there so it may not be avoidable on the hossts end, but there were a lot. Almost every day my friend or I had to kill multiple spiders in all areas of the house, with the bedrooms having the most bugs of all. We even found a few roaches in there wandering around as well, so if you're impartial to bugs keep that in mind.
We did lock ourselves out twice (this is the first time this has happened to me at an AirBnb so kinda embarrassing), once when both my roommate and I left our keys in the house on accident and the other time when we were moving out one night and loading our cars up and accidentally shut the door.
The first time Keith was at home and he let us in very kindly with their extra key and we went about our day.
On the night we were locked out though though, my friend had left early for a trip, and I was the only one there, and (with profuse apologies), I let Keith know (texted him personally and also messaged them on Airbnb for visibility) that I was outside and had locked myself out. I was prepared to stay at a friends and come back in the morning, but figured I would let them know and see if they were awake. My friend also let Thaisa know the situation via text as well. During our stay there we would always hear them walking around at all hours of the night and very early into the morning so I figured they may be up. I made sure though not to call them in the event that they were not awake as to not disturb them. I waited in my car for a response in my parking space, and didn't hear anything back from either of them.
My friend then texted me and let me know that Thaisa had responded saying she had walked out the door onto the doorstep and called my name and hadn't heard anything so she went back inside. I never heard any of this as I was waiting in my car because it was cold, neither of them had texted me. My friend then told her that I had been in the car and couldn't hear, again with many apologies.
At this point I chose to wait outside my car in the event she came out again, and waited for about 5 more mins, when Thaisa comes out screaming my name and yelling telling me that she had to get up in the morning and 6am for a client, that she didn't have an extra key (though her husband let me in the prior day) and that I needed to come in her house, (there was a connecting door between her top floor and the laundry room in our place below), and go through that door. She screamed this whole thing at me and then I went through the house, downstairs, and she slammed the door on me, saying nothing else. Now I completely understand that it was late (about 11pm), and I did not at all want to be a burden, which is why I was prepared to stay at my friends house and had texted instead of calling. I do know though that as a host, especially one that lives right above the home, that this is something that is not out of the ordinary to ask for. I never try to rely on the hosts unless I really need to, and never have had to before so I tried to be as kind as possible in the process, but the way she treated me was very very disconcerting. The whole interaction was very unpleasant, and I felt really anxious during the whole thing and honestly really wanted to leave after that.
While the location was great and the house was cute, the situation w the host at the end really gave me a bad taste in my mouth. The bugs I got over, as well as the cleanliness because they ended up coming back in to clean, but that final incident wasn't great. I left feeling very indifferent, as a very frequent Airbnb'er I have dealt with a lot of different things, but this was super weird. This could definitely have been a one off because of the time of day and whatnot but just wanted to put that out there.