We stayed for 10 days at Eward&Lanessas house in Hilo. Originally we had booked only a week for a work meeting and wanted to move for the remaining days to the other side of the island but decided to stay as we felt very well there. Also, like this we had another chance to see lava in closeup a second time as it's only 45min driving to Kalapana. :) The house was perfectly located for us having the meetings at the Gemini observatory, it's in the outskirts of Hilo and close to several supermarkets and the road to Volcano. The house itself (and some of the interiors) has quite an age but is extremely well kept and neatly clean, I was very impressed. The kitchen is equipped with anything you might need and we did quite some cooking there. There is also a washing maching + dryer in the basement (the dryer must have been older than me but worked like a charm!) and place to hang clothes. The aircon in the living room and one of the bedrooms is a big plus, but the cold air disappears again through the kitchen where several windows have no glass, but I guess that is Hawaii... The only thing we were missing was some sort of desk as we both had to work a lot on the computer, but that might not be an issue for others that purely come for holidays.
We only met Eward once but communication through messaging was very fast. We also got treated with a big plate of extra fruit from the garden during the week, which was really nice! Would definitely stay again!