The Airbnb is fairly old, inside and out. It's like renting a house in college, where the house is dilapidated, but it's cheap and you're in a nice location with parks and lots of eateries in walking distance.
I would stay here again if I had a co-guest to split the cost and take advantage of the larger space.
Upsides:
- off-street parking; because this is such a moderately busy street, it gives peace of mind to not have to find a parallel parking spot far away from the house
- self-contained space, with full kitchen!
- air conditioning
- a good value for the price, given the central location
- desks+chairs+wifi+sunlight = good place to work remotely
Downsides:
- some lightbulbs are out
- only 1 out of 7 windows seemed to open, and there's no exhaust fan for the stove
- some blinds are missing slats, which reduces privacy
- the blinds in the bedroom are the cheap, white, translucent kind, so they'll let in a lot of light in the morning
- laundry machines seem to be coin-operated ($1.25 each for washer and dryer), but in this era of pandemic-induced coin-shortage, it's hard to find quarters
- the kitchen floor is slanted, causing the fridge door to swing wide open and cooking pans to not lay flat on the stovetop
It's not so much that the shoddiness is an issue, but rather the lack of openness about how shoddy the Airbnb is.
Without mentioning in the description that lots of things don't work as expected, you'll find paint chips on your feet, etc, I feel lied-to by omission. At the very least I would expect to have a user manual that says, for example, to lock the door, you have to push really really hard against the door while it's locking. (That was one of several questions the host answered for me.)
There's so much low hanging fruit that hasn't been fixed (lightbulbs, windows, blinds), that it's scary to imagine what kinds of high-hanging fruit need to be taken care of too.
The hosts partially compensate for the low quality of the interior by being very responsive and communicative.