We had stayed about one week at this place and enjoyed ourselves overall.
Some great aspects:
- The location is quite good! Close to a yoga studio I frequent in my home city, easy to get to the F line, lots of decent food/bars/coffee shops near by. We would like to note, however, that if you are planning on going to the theatre district or the UES/UWS often, it can be a bit of a trek and might be better to find a location that has more transportation options.
- We visited in early October which was quite rainy! We were grateful that the building manager had turned on the heat during the appropriate times and we were quite cozy!
- As with any NYC apartment, it is snug, but the host had arranged the space pretty well. We loved the windows and the minimal-style of decor. His couch was especially a favorite hang out space as it was so comfy.
Some cons -
- We aren’t sure if this place makes use of the $150 cleaning fee. Our host left early in the morning the day we arrived, and conveyed to us that they didn’t have all the time they usually have to prepare for our stay, but we were surprised that a lot of the surfaces didn’t seem clean. For example, the cupboards felt grimy where you open them that a cleaning person would usually know to wipe down.
- Also, not sure if it’s just that the bugs come in when the weather is cold, but we woke up to some hearty spider bites.
- To note - there is no microwave. This is accurate to the listing!! But calling it out here because we had missed it in the listing.
- We only had one dish towel, which was inconvenient as all dish-washing is done by hand. The host also forgot to put out bath towels for us, which they apologized for and had their friend buy us new towels. However, the towels were quite low quality and hadn’t been washed since they were new and they shed all over us when we showered. Perhaps this was a one time issue that we faced since the host said they forgot to put out towels as they left so early.
- Again, the place is a typical snug NYC apartment so there’s not a lot of space to store luggage. We noticed previous reviews that said this, but the host had responded saying they’d open up space in closets to hang clothes. However, there was very little space still, so we ended up laying them out on the floor and having to constantly step over them since there wasn’t another place to store our clothing/luggage/etc.
There were some cons we ran into that aren’t specifically around the host/inside the apartment, but might be worth mentioning -
- This unit is located on a very busy street with lots of noise (cars, sirens, people, etc). We didn’t get the best sleep due to all the noise (which again, is out of the host’s control) but thought it’s worth noting if you are a light sleeper!
- We also had an issue where the neighbor’s smoke alarm chirped every 60 seconds (I’m assuming low battery). This was constant during the entire week-long stay. We had assumed the neighbor was out of town (who can stand that noise for several days?) but at 4am they had a four-hour-long screaming match that quickly alerted us of their presence.
Overall, this wasn’t terrible value if you’re just looking for a place to stay in Manhattan. However, don’t expect many amenities with this. We knew going into it that the apartment was minimal, but we were still surprised by some of the sparseness. If we’d only been here for a few nights we might not have noticed it, but for any stay longer than that we’d probably find somewhere else to stay in the future.