My friends and I did not have a great experience at Malik's apartment. I sent Malik a message when we booked his place, no reply, and then sent another the day before we flew to New York from London. By the time we arrived, I'd still not received a response and had no information at all about how to access the apartment. We spent about an hour outside the apartment, ringing the doorbell and trying to call/text/email Malik before we finally heard back from him. He then sent the check-in information, with a brief apology tacked onto the end - he 'forgot' to press send on the email he had pre-written... Before Malik replied to our messages, we had hoped for some support from Airbnb, but their responses were quite poor. We were advised by Airbnb that we could cancel the booking and try to book another apartment (it was nearly 6pm). They would offer a voucher for compensation but were unable to confirm just how much that would be. So we were faced with either paying $2000 for the 4 of us to stay in a last-minute hotel for the duration of our trip or trying to find an alternative apartment, available on Airbnb, within our price range (which was limited - this was a trip of a lifetime) and close to the same location. Things did not look good.
Anyway, we were relieved to make it into the apartment. However, we were disappointed to see that it was pretty dirty. Dust everywhere - on the skirting boards, over all the surfaces, collecting in the corners of each room. When we put linen on the beds we saw that one of the sheets, although freshly laundered, was stained. It's also pretty cosy. There were 4 of us, and things were pretty tight. The double bed in the main bedroom was very comfortable and there was plenty of space for 2 people. The sofa bed in the living room was OK as sofa beds go, but storage was limited and with 2 people in the bedroom and 2 people in the living room, things got quite cramped quite quickly. The other futon bed does not sleep 2. I slept on it alone for one night and there was barely enough room for me, as you can't really sleep across the centre fold of the bed. The kitchen is not big enough for cooking as it says in the advert (not that we did any cooking). The fridge is right in the middle of the kitchen space and there are no surfaces on which to prepare food.
The light in the ceiling stopped working while we were there, which might not feel like that big of a deal, but there wasn't much natural light, and with 2 people sleeping in the living room, once the sun went down, it was pretty dark. I told Malik about the light, he said he would try to get his contractor out that evening or see to it himself the following morning. As far as I'm aware, neither happened.
The location is excellent. It's a few minutes from Dekalb Avenue subway which has regular trains into Brooklyn or Manhattan and there are loads of buzzing bars and restaurants less than 10 minutes' walk away. Baba Cool's for breakfast, Miss Ada's for dinner, Dick and Jane's bar or Brooklyn's Public House for drinks were all great and we'd stay in Fort Greene again in an instant.
Malik did let us leave our bags in the apartment for a couple of hours after check-out, which was useful, but to be honest, at that stage, it was the least he could do. Overall, the apartment was disappointing, as was the general Airbnb experience, but New York is such an incredible place to visit, we weren't going to let that get in our way. I wonder, however, how much Airbnb hosts in places like that rely on that kind of attitude, capitalising on and profiting from the location, rather than putting any effort into hosting your guests.
If you need somewhere very basic in a lively and well-connected location, then this place will do the job. I can't recommend it for much else.