Location:
• Central park is very close its like 3 minutes walk, metro is just few steps away, however most of nyc attractions are located in downtown manhaten while the appartment is located in uptown manhaten. You will always have to take the metro to vist any of the attractions for an average to long rides
• Super market and laundry very close to the appartment
• We did not feel safe in the area as the appartment is surrounded by nyc public housing from everywhere. Moreover it is located in an area called harlem which has significantly higher crime rates that the normal crime rates in NYC (you can check online it). We even sometimes had the intercom ringing after midnight we don't know who was ringing it but it was very scary for us
The appartment:
• The appartment can accommodate up to 4 persons with convenient kitchen and bathroom
• The furniture is extremely fragile and of very low quality to the extent that we had several broken drawers that we could not use.
• The stair case is very narrow so I don't recommend staying in a high floor if you have children or elders or heavy luggage. (The host has several appartments in the building between the ground floor and fourth floor)
The host:
• The host showed great flexibility when we requested to change from a forth floor appartment to a first floor appartment because of the narrow staircase
• We had to pay 75$ in cash for checking
in around 6 p.m, it was mentioned that we have to check in between 4 and 5 but it was never mentioned that we will have to pay extra if we checked in after 5 p.m
• We were informed by the host that a private exterminator will visit the appartment around one week before we leave. We were told that we will come between 10 am and 1 pm and that not only ruined our plans for the day as we couldn't go anywhere except after the visit, but also the major problem was that he put chemicals in the kitchen's sink and since then we had many cockroachs in the appartment which was very disgusting and scary for us.
• Honestly I don't know if this is normal or not but it was stated that we have to pay extra 830$ to add extra person in the appartment. I paid the full extra fee although we were only 3 persons at a time during only half the stay. I did not mind paying extra for additional guest but I think the full 830$ is not fair as we were not 3 persons for the full duration
• We were informed around the middle of our stay that the check out will be at 10 a.m which is a very early check out btw
• We were already paying 400$ included in our reservation as a cleaning fee. The host wanted to charge us extra 400$ again after the check out claiming that we left the appartment in a horrible condition although we removed all the garbage from the appartment, we even swiped the floor only one day before our check out. That horrible condition from his point of view was that we left some empty supermarket bags, a bag full of sealed food that we wanted to give away but we did not have time, hand sanitizer and betadine, and shampoos, toothbrush and paste in the toilette. So he wanted 400$ for removing the stated items. We even checked out 3 days before the due date but he still wanted to charge us.
Overall I can say that I had an extremely unpleasant experience with the appartment and the host. I can give it a 3 out of 10 rating.