What you will expect during your stay. These are my highlights:
- You will be living with 4 other people, Faith (the house owner, an elderly Asian lady) and her boyfriend (always living there), and two other guests on the same floor.
- The place is usually very loud and noisy than other places i have seen on Airbnb, even before the new guests arrived, with the couple having loud conversations in the kitchen and living room area. I ended up leaving the house in the morning and coming back to just sleep at night because of noise.
- Faith fights several times a week, sometimes a few times a day, with her boyfriend and the fight is sometimes super loud and annoying and it happened past midnight several times during my stay that woke me up.
- At 7 am, the couple are up and they have loud conversations in the dining area and they play podcasts and it gets very loud so I kept waking up every mooring at 7 due to noise, I finally started using earplugs that helped some but not all.
- With the fridge, freezer always being full, having a small shelf in cabinet, and Faith cooking all meals for her family, you will find it hard to use the kitchen and end up not using the kitchen at all and not prepping meals.
- The house rules are not limited to the ones on the Airbnb page and they are very restrictive. Faith is a very controlling lady about the way that you live here and you will find yourself feeling like you are living with your controlling mom (not stereotyping, but my observations) rather than as an Airbnb guest. One can't rent their place to people with different life styles to make money and still expect them to do exactly as she says. She told me not to turn on the kitchen light during the day in a dark kitchen saying "you young people don't appreciate energy", and turned it off on me! I noticed some guests are quick to realize this and they will stay in their room and try to avoid her and the common areas as much as possible.
- Faith wants you not to eat any food/snacks/pastry (not only) in your room but also not in living room and at the coffee table. You are ONLY allowed to eat food/pastry/snack/anything at the dining table, and they are usually sitting there. I found this very restricting to have to sit at the same table with them any time I want to eat even a cookie ( as Faith stopped me from walking towards the coffee table in living room holding a plate with a cookie on it).
- The room with private bath (my room) only has a bed, meaning no desk or a chair. So you can only sleep in your room. So uncomfortable for extended stay that guests might not feel comfortable using common areas for the above reasons I mentioned.
- If you are looking for a place to only sleep at nights and be out all during the whole day, and you absolutely don’t afford paying extra $200 elsewhere to have more peace, and you don’t mind hearing regular fights/arguments, this is a place you could consider.
- Before Faith’s house, I had another monthly stay at another place. With a $300 less monthly rate, I was living with only one other person and the place was quiet and delightful, and I actually didn’t have to leave the house during the day in order to have peace and quiet, and I could use the common areas freely, and i could eat snacks in my room. I ended up using Faith’s place ONLY for sleeping at nights.
- Faith offered I extend my stay with them for the next month. I relied on that and booked a trip and several paid plans over and around my extension time. Two weeks into my stay, I realized I should not have done that, because Faith’s place was very uncomfortable for more-than-a-week stay and I should have made myself available and have free time to move out of her place to another place. Once I got back from my trip and I was available to move out, I worked with Airbnb to see if I can cancel my stay; she even yelled at me twice like the way she yells at her boyfriend and if you don’t stand for yourself, she even does it more. After week 2, I tried to make my stay tolerable by only staying in my room and coming to the house mostly for sleeping, but it was very tiring. It can work for short stays, not long stays.
- They offered me bread, milk, and eggs and they were a few months past expiration date, and some bread had molds, without giving me warnings. They also offered me some fresh stuff like fruits which was nice of them, but I would have preferred to just have a place with peace, and enough room in the fridge so I could buy groceries.
- There were some good things about the stay too, like the neighborhood is safe and there is greenery around, and I actually enjoyed having some conversations with Dave. And some other essentials like there is hot water and a decent internet, and a parking spot in front of the house, they offered to wash the bathroom towels, and my room was clean. But you will have a place with all these typical essentials plus peace and quiet, with fewer people and less couple fights, and feeling less controlled, and actually being able to use the kitchen and fridge, at another place on Airbnb with less or comparable price. With $1300-2000 range per month extended stay in Seattle, you can very easily get a way better and more comfortable private room in a shared place.