If you are a family with small children and plan to stay in this place for a long time, be very cautious.
On the positive side, there were many good things about the place and Dan the host responded to our requests quickly during our stay. Unfortunately, our mostly positive impression from the stay is completely ruined by the fight over the possible damages to the apartment. Dan claims we owe him more than $1400 for redoing his entire floor, replacing the TV stand, and cleaning. The case is in Airbnb arbitration.
1) We stayed in the apartment for almost a month: 3 adults and one 1.5-year-old child. As such we might not be Dan's typical customers who might only use the apartment to sleep and drink a cup of coffee in the morning.
2) Dan never told us there was any problem until we moved out, even though his own damage claim states that he was worried about the situation during our stay. He came to the apartment in the middle of our stay; it was in a state similar to when we moved out, but he said nothing.
3) Once we got Dan's angry message about the damage and the dirty state of the apartment, we offered several times to come ASAP and clean it ourselves. It was refused and we were not allowed into the apartment. This also denied us the chance to inspect what Dan claims as damage. This is despite the fact that we had 5 days left on our reservation, we moved out early. Dan also got the wrong impression that we "back off because you realized that you might be liable for the damage" because one of the guests remembered seeing some of the floor "damage" on Dan's pictures when we moved in. It almost seemed like Dan was happier to charge damage than try to prevent it or work with us fixing it.
4) There were a few small surprises for us. One is the steep staircase inside the apartment (not shown on pictures) which was a problem for our child's safety. With Dan's permission we put the TV stand to block it. It was difficult to step over the stand so there was some dirt accumulated on it. Dan claimed this was all scratches and charged us for a brand new TV stand. The other surprise is that there is a video camera on the first floor of the house (not in the apartment) which was not mentioned until we moved out.
5) Dan claimed extensive floor damage. This was supported by multiple pictures of the same area of the floor (so when Dan says he took more than 30 pictures, it counts each area multiple times ) which were taken from a point near the floor and at high lighting, making everything appear more serious than it actually is. We could not reenter the apartment so we do not know how serious, if any, damage there was. Dan claims this was caused by our child's play however our child played in a completely normal and responsible way for his age (e.g. rolling toy cars with plastic or rubber wheels on the floor rather than, say, dragging furniture around or dropping heavy objects) so we believe if there is damage, it should be called normal wear and tear. What is more Dan charged us for redoing his entire floor, including in the rooms where there is no damage on pictures and where our child did not play. Read the old reviews and you'll see that Dan likes to renovate his floor a lot, which is why it is called "brand new".
6) Dan also claimed we "trashed his place". All of these claims could have been dealt with if he just let us back into apartment to clean it (still during our reserved dates!). There was nothing unusual for a family of 4 which actually cooks and spends a lot of time in the place: stove wasn't wiped, countertops weren't wiped, fridge shelves weren't wiped. We did follow Dan's long list of rules. We did clean regularly but did not do it the last week because we thought it would be covered by Dan's cleaning team in any case. Dan might claim that it took many people many hours to clean (and sure it would if your reaction to a normal food stain in the fridge is that you need to sanitize all the dishes and clean the cabinets, and your reaction to seeing some streaks on the floor in one room is to redo the entire floor in all the rooms) but I believe it would take me and my wife less than one afternoon.
7) Dan was emotionally charged and unprofessional in some of his messages, teaching us morality and commenting on completely irrelevant things rather than trying to work with us to address the claims of damage and try to fix any actual damage.
Here are some quotes:
"it is almost child abuse for your kid to live in that condition" (our child is perfectly fine)
"What kind of moral standard you are teaching your students?" (my students are fine too and I don't teach them morals)
"you should be on a higher moral ground."
Read more of Dan’s responses to his guests' reviews if you want more examples :)