My partner and I stayed at Desmar's place for 4 nights for a tourist trip to NYC. Overall our stay was okay, but if we return we will probably be looking for somewhere else to stay.
The flat is located very close to the metro line which was useful for easily getting to the main attractions of NYC which was our main goal. Desmar and his partner were easy to contact and get hold of when we wanted to speak to them during our stay, and very helpful people.
However, we understood from the listing that we would have a separate studio flat with a private bathroom. This was not the case, and the bathroom was used by other people during our stay. This greatly impacted on the privacy we felt we had, especially if we forgot to close the connecting door to our room.
Additionally, the kitchen in the room wasn't very well equipped and we couldn't get the oven to work (although this is possibly operator error!). As we planned to save money by not eating out this was pretty inconvenient for us. Overall the flat didn't feel very clean, and was a bit shabby around the edges. Small things like when we arrived, the bins hadn't been emptied and the flowers in the vases were all long dead.
The place overall worked as a good place to sleep. It feels a bit in the middle of being done up, a couple of tiles were missing and a window boarded up. For a short stay it does just fine but for more privacy and luxury I would look elsewhere.