This place was overall very nice, but had a few kind of irritating or unsavory things here and there that culminated to a less than perfect stay. The pros: overall nice apartment unit, comfortable bed, hot shower, and the best part: about a 10 minute walk to Pike’s Place Market. The greeter Jasaan and the host Vince is thorough, patient, and consistent in communication, which I appreciate. I liked that Vince offered a more comprehensive introduction to the unit and suggestions for restaurants around the area in a second-party app, which he sends you after booking. The space was mostly tidy and I appreciated the Roku TV in the unit after a long day.
However, there were some things that I think could be improved on. The most obvious critique would be the surrounding area. While I understand that the host is not solely responsible for the surrounding area, this unit is not in the best location. There are different routes to Pike Place, but my partner and I mistakenly took the route first suggested by Apple Maps, which led us to the overpass where a small homeless camp with open syringes, feces, and strewn garbage was less than a minute walking distance from the unit. I don’t think this location would be safe to walk around in as a solo woman traveler. At night, it was pretty sketchy on the road from other pedestrians and we had a couple loudly fighting in the parking lot right below the unit. The public areas of building are dimly lit and smelled of weed for most of our stay. Beyond the general safety of the area, the unit had little things here and there that were kind of irritating: the provided laundry detergent was basically empty, a metal part of the kitchen entrance was loose and came up every time you walked across it, and the only trash can in the apartment was the small one in the bathroom - you have to go to a completely other floor and locate their trash room if you have anything larger than the small bathroom waste basket. This is a small nag, but the check out time of 10am seemed kind of early too. Vince kindly suggests using a second service as a way to store our bags if needed, but the closest one that’s even open by the time of checkout ended up being the corner gas station that charges $8 per bag and ends up just shoving them behind the register and a folded up cardboard box. Vince is not responsible for this second party service, but I can’t help feeling a little peeved that we had to pay $30+ to store our luggage for the day because check out time is so early and there’s no other way to deal with our luggage if we have an afternoon / evening flight. To give them as much credit as possible, Vince and Jasaan did offer their contact info in case any major problems / questions arose, but a lot of these complaints that are fixable seemed so petty that it wasn’t worth contacting them, for instance, to just give us a trash can. Again, overall nice unit, but there’s definitely room for improvement/ greater transparency.