At the time of my booking (late 2019), there was an omission from Victor's listing description which will be relevant to most travelers: he also rents out the common living room to a guest - the sofa shown in the photos turns into a bed. This means when you go to use the restroom, you will be crossing through another guest's sleeping area. It also means that potentially 3 or more people are sharing one bathroom, instead of 2 as one might think from the incomplete description. So, I was surprised to find out another guest was staying in the living room when I arrived. On the night of my check-in, I searched on Airbnb and found Victor's separate listing for the living room. Most people will not think to do this search - THIS listing should give a complete description.
Victor also handled some communication inappropriately. The day after I arrived, he had another guest checking in. Out of the blue, before talking with me about it, he sent me and another person (let's call her "Jenny") a WhatsApp message saying "Hi [Jenny], I am adding you to this chat for possible backup assistance accessing the apartment from Chad...in case my two self check-in options fail." Later on, I got a message in a separate thread from Jenny saying "Hi Chad this is [Jenny] I'm supposed to get a key from you? I ordered a Lyft and should be there..." The appropriate way to handle this would be for Victor to talk to me first and ask me if he can refer me to his other guest as a backup. Suddenly, I'm getting messages from a person I never met before and I feel responsible for checking her in.
This was in addition to an earlier message I got from Victor where he asked me to move some bedsheets, linens, and comforter from my room to another location. In isolation, I wouldn't consider this a big ask. But this combined with Victor referring his other guest to me made me feel like I was responsible for checking in his guest for him. I understand Victor was out of the country, but that doesn't negate his responsibility towards his guests. If he's not able to appropriately handle check-in while he's away, he shouldn't rent out his room on those dates. As a guest, he shouldn't be expecting me to help him manage his Airbnb listing, even as a "backup."
Finally, it ended up that although Victor intended to have only one guest stay in his living room, it ended up there were three people staying in living room my first night there. They were also drinking and making noise until at least 3am. I alerted Victor to this and he apologized and offered me earplugs (which don't work for me). This other guest was mostly at fault here, but the host also shares some responsibility for this for two reasons:
1) As of late 2019, Victor has only one house rule for both listings - no smoking. That's it. He has NO rules about noise past a certain time, outside guests, or parties. If he had more house rules as most other Airbnb hosts do, he would be less likely to have more guests than he intends, and he'd be more likely to have respectful guests.
2) Airbnb hosts have some degree of responsibility for vetting their guests. As a host, you don't have to accept all requests that come in. It could be that Victor did vet this other guest, but given the situation, it calls into question whether this vetting was actually done.
On a positive note, I ended up cancelling after the first night, and Victor gave me a full refund for all three nights (minus Airbnb service fee). However, this did not make up for the stress and inconvenience of the situation. Victor might say it my choice to cancel - yes it was, because I felt uncomfortable after everything that happened the very first night there. I think many other people would too.
I could be misunderstanding - given that Victor has practically no house rules, it's possible that he intends this listing for partiers. I would say given the low cost of the listing, lack of house rules, and the fact that's it's fairly clean, I would recommend it to people who intend to party, stay up late, and don't care about sleep. I would not recommend this place to somebody who wants to sleep at normal hours because you're effectively rolling the die - maybe the person in the living room will be nice and quiet, maybe they won't. I also recommend verifying that Victor will be in NYC before booking.