*** Probably the first 2-star review I’ve ever made. I will give a quick review (if you only have 30 seconds) and full review (recommended).
Quick review: great location and solid house with 4 rooms, each room having a queen bed. At my stay, it came with Keurig coffee, but otherwise, was extremely bare bones. Our stay was actually mostly good. I am giving a bad review because of the extreme lack of communication from the host, which very much disturbed one day of our trip and could have made it a disaster. It’s been 9 days (at the time writing this review) and still no response from the host after the power went out upstairs, which was the host’s fault for not notifying us basic information of the old home. Multiple other questions via Airbnb messages to the host, to go along with a phone call/voicemail, were also not responded to. We might not have had power upstairs for multiple days, as the breaker box is not accessible in the house. Luckily, I saw the host’s brother walk by the window shortly before night time, and flagged him down, at which point he went to the ADU and turned the upstairs power back on. 2-star review: great house + almost no amenities + no communication = very risky home to book.
Full review: as other reviews have said, it’s a cool quirky old house in a fun eclectic part of Portland, very walkable to many restaurants, bars, and entertainment. If you want a modern house with tons of amenities, then it’s not for you. If you want space and a cool area in Portland that’s close to downtown, it’s perfect (should be at least). It’s far from cheap, but given that it’s 4 bedrooms with 4 queen beds, it was a decent price (as of when booking in the summer of 2021). When booking months prior, the host’s communication was great and assisted me with getting the place booked, plus cancelling one which my mother was previously trying to make. But starting three days before my trip, after the first auto generated Airbnb message from my host (they were all auto generated starting at this point), the host largely stopped communicating. He did somewhat answer my first inquiry in an odd roundabout way a day later, but other than that, kept messaging me only auto generated messages. These messages said if I had any questions to please message him, but when I did ask something, the host did not respond. I have no idea if it’s the host or a foreign service doing the Airbnb messages, but either way, do not expect a response. The house was great for what we needed, being six adults, three couples. A solid TV, couch, and table in the large main living room. From reading past reviews, I had expected the place to not have many amenities, but it was even less than I thought, without even salt/pepper or more than one towel per person. There is only one shower in the entire house, with only a half bath downstairs. One of the upstairs bedroom doors also didn’t work. But we could deal with all of this and I had expected some of this, considering it’s an old house. Luckily it was not super-hot when we were there, as the house is listed as having air conditioning, but it only had a small portable AC downstairs and a wall unit upstairs. This wasn’t a huge deal for us, but if we had arrived during the triple digit heatwave, it would be terrible. The refrigerator barely worked, as the freezer was icing up too much and maybe some other issues, which was also never communicated to us. A company actually showed up on our 3rd day to deliver a refrigerator, which I told the company I was using Airbnb so they should contact the host. Once again though, we could deal with this. On the 2nd morning we found out that apparently the upstairs electricity is all run on one breaker (remember it’s an old house). This wasn’t an issue until we used the hair dryer while the upstairs wall unit AC was on. There was no message or note in the bathroom to warn not to do this. We used the hair dryer supplied by the host, which was left upstairs. Then we’re without upstairs power and I remembered someone wrote a negative review about this same thing happening in the prior month and the host didn’t respond until the next day; they were getting ready for a wedding with 8 people and lost power, which I’m sure was a much bigger deal than our situation. It didn’t bother me until five hours had passed and the host had not yet responded (thank goodness for that past guest’s prior review). Night time was coming soon, and while not having upstairs power was fine during the day, it would have been quite unpleasant at night. Knowing the prior review said Airbnb couldn’t help them because the guest did not report the issue within 24 hours, I made sure to call Airbnb after five hours, before night time, after giving the host time to respond. I also made sure to get picture and video evidence. Airbnb helped me a ton and eventually gave me a 50% off one night refund, so if you’re reading this review, make sure to contact Airbnb within 24 hours of anything bad happening. I went home (upsetting my entire family) early that evening to see if the power was back on (past review said the brother turned it on randomly when they weren’t home). Luckily, by complete chance, I was sitting at the living room table an hour after getting there and noticed a person walk past the window. I expected a knock on the front door. After no knock, I opened the door, didn’t see anyone, but did see a car running with people in it. I flagged the