We stayed at this house for a month—group of 3 girls and 1 couple, all in advertising working away from home. So this review will be from a long-term stay perspective, and might bring up some points that a shorter term stay wouldn't mind so much. To that point—very budget friendly!
Okay, SO! First things first, check-in instructions were easy and the house is much bigger and nicer than it looks in the pictures. (very) Outdated decor but comfy furniture and AMAZING screened lanai. The bugs come out at dusk and dawn, so having it screened was super nice. The screens were old with a ton of holes but we tried to duct tape them as best we could. I basically lived in that Lanai for a month.
Nice spacious kitchen, good for cooking but not super well stocked. Missing things like baking trays and a kettle, and the coffee maker was pretty weak, but tons of space to make up for that. The rooms were spacious and comfy, REALLY nice soft mattresses, meh pillows, nice big mirrors to get dressed in front of. And the sound of the frogs at night is quite peaceful and pleasant. Lots of pretty birds, singing and twittering at you all day long. There was a comically tiny TV in the living room inside a closet. Really, it was quite funny. But it is hooked up with all the apps and even an apple TV so we could airplay movies and stuff. Washer and dryer worked great.
However, the internet is quite slow because of how remote the area is and their satellite connection maxes out at like 7mbps. For 4 people working from away in advertising, that was pretty terrible. Plus we had to share the bandwidth with the next door house which is probably also listed by the host, so that def made it worse. To Faith's credit, she did buy a WiFi Hotspot for us and get it started so we could have better internet, but it turns out that was not good enough (not her fault!) and we were very grateful she tried. For ref, the best provider on the big island is Verizon, so I used my phone hotspot quite a lot. I got decent network there but anyone on any other provider didn't really.
We also took advantage of the car that was offered with the property and this is not a reflection on the Airbnb/hosts but I'll give you some info anyway: it's v cheap for the month and we thought we were getting a great deal—but you get what you pay for! Our car was an olddd beater, smelled pretty bad and was filthy inside. No music system either (unless you brought your CD sleeve to Hawaii? lol) and was an unhappy drive. That said, we felt better about it a few weeks in because apparently all the tourists are targeted by burglars because they are pretty obvious with their fancy shiny cars, and people thought we were locals because of how crappy the car was. Huh!
Also, turns out Pahoa has one of the highest crime rates in the country. People break into cars and houses here all the time. We didn't know that before we booked but were very strict about keeping doors locked and trying to be safe.
As for the location, I'll be honest, it is pretty remote. We stayed there for a whole month so we had the time to travel all over and visit the beaches etc, but the closest nice beach is at least 25 mins away, Hilo is half an hour, Volcanoes is around an hour. For a short term stay I would probably find that a bit more inconvenient. Kehena beach nearby was the nicest black sand beach, and Pahoa town has some surprisingly good food and coffee options (be sure to drop by Sirius cafe for a cup of coffee, Tin Shack bakery for everything + their hot sauce, and Pele's kitchen for delicious Hawaiian fare and great service!). Pahoa also now has a big grocery store which wasn't yet open when we first arrived, so we had to go all the way to Hilo for proper supplies.
Couple of downsides were: the fire alarms randomly went off in different parts of the house at odd hours. Host mentioned it was triggered by humidity.. which sucks. We had to climb up and disable a bunch of them. Sometimes it was hard to get in touch with Faith/Nancy and I wasn't really sure who I was talking to on the Airbnb message thread. At one point we broke a tray by accident and the glass pieces clogged up the garbage disposal in the sink.. took a few days to fix because it was tough to get a hold of the host(s). But the guy who eventually came to fix it was a fun character! Hah. The house wasn't really stocked with paper towels or toilet paper or shower gel or any of the essentials I expect from an airbnb, esp a long-term stay. Coffee machine made very weak watery coffee. No kettle. The house and furnishings and doors/hinges could use some updates.
That's about it, really! Overall a very pleasant stay, would give it 4/5. I'd recco this place if you aren't fussy about location and don't need strong internet. It's definitely a relaxing, off the beaten track kinda place. Thanks for hosting us, Faith/Nancy!