My girlfriend and I stayed at Tarik's place for one month while looking for an apartment in New York.
The place is nice with an open plan layout. It was also great to be able to use one of the rooms as a designated office to work from home during the day. We also thought Tarik was super sweet and communicative. We did, however, encounter a few issues throughout our extended stay that are of note:
—neighbors: it might have just been because it was summer, but there were several nights where the neighbors kept us up till 3 or 4am blasting music in their backyards. This was obviously not Tarik’s fault, but something to have a head’s up about.
—ants: we had an issue with ants in the house (mainly in the kitchen), but Tarik got a cleaner after we pointed it out and that seemed to resolve the issue.
—the bed: I have a back/neck injury so the bed was a little rough for me. Tarik kindly purchased a mattress topper to help out, which did help slightly.
—the neighborhood: the subway to Manhattan is less than a 10 min walk, which is nice. We were looking for an apt in Brooklyn, however, which entailed a lot of circuitous routes and several buses, subways etc to get around. If you’re just planning on going to Manhattan and back tho, it’s not a problem. *Note, on our walks we came upon the Courtelyou neighborhood, which is about a 15-20 min walk from the house. It has a lot of cute restaurants, cafes, organic shops, bars, etc. The Airbnb’s actual neighborhood in Flatbush is a bit rough.
As mentioned, when we brought these issues up with Tarik, he was understanding and quick to attempt to resolve them, when possible. That made a big difference for us and made the experience positive overall.