This listing was such a colossal disappointment that my wife and I left as soon as we saw it.
Here’s why we walked away from a three-night, non refundable $540 reservation:
The rental is for a bedroom that is on the second floor of a three-story brownstone. It is situated between the two places where the owners linger most: the kitchen and the living room.
The side that faces the living room has a transom that is not covered by any curtain. As long as someone is in that room, the light shines into the bedroom.
The other side of the room borders the kitchen. Part of the kitchen is a bathroom. The bathroom is listed here as private. In fact, it’s anything but. The only way to pass from the bedroom to the bathroom is to walk into the kitchen, where the owners are often sitting. This unsettled us, since we’d be observed going in and out of the bathroom — and likely heard inside of it.
Even with the door to the bedroom closed, we still felt exposed. That’s because the only window in the bedroom faces a terrace where the owners sit. We felt that we had to whisper so as not to be heard.
We were also unsettled by the fact we did not get our own key. Bruce told us that no matter what time we came in, we should call him on his cell and he’d open the front door. The idea of relying on Bruce to wake up at 3 a.m., if that’s how late we wanted to come back, was just weird.
We politely told Bruce it just wasn’t going to work out, and promptly left for a hotel, which, by the way, was eighty dollars less than Bruce's nightly rental fee and in a better neighborhood.
We also emailed him the next day to suggest that, in the interests of fairness, perhaps he could refund us just one of the three nights we didn't use. In declining to do so, his six-word reply said all you need to know about this listing:
“This is only a business decision.”