how to review a new host

[Joi0]

I stayed at a new listing this weekend and although we had a lot of fun and there are some nice things to say about the location and property (outside) in general, inside the house itself we had many issues. Lightbulbs out, poorly organized kitchen (hard to find basic things), garbage disposal was broken...and the house was dirty. The owners are hosting long distance and I am sure they are still learning how this business works, but i've been hosting for several years and I feel the place was just not clean or funcitonal enough for most people. And I defnintely expected it to be clean. I want to be helpful to the host and I plan to give them specific feedback but I don't know how to rate the place (by number of stars). I don't want to give them terrible ratings and hurt their new business. But i also don't want to give a good rating when there are so many areas to improve. 

any advice?

[Blagoje0]

Did you tell them about that issues during your stay? How did they responde if you did?

[Blagoje0]

When I had my first guests I told them to say if it lacked something that they thought should be in the apartment. Of course I gave them a good service and a clean apartment. She was a super host and gave me excellent advice and suggestions later. She even bought me some small missing kitchen items:). She was not only a super host but a super guest also.
I think that overall rating 4 is enough punishment on Airbnb :). And in the review I would add that I would like that apartment was cleaner. But if I was on your place I would tell them about issues and give a rating based on how they respond.

[Barb6]

It is of course totally up to you.

Rate them how you feel or you could soften it and tell them everything in the private feed back. They aren't going to know unless someone tells them. If it was dirty, there is no excuse for that.  Organized kitchen is subjective to each persons taste I suppose. 

The other things you noted should be noted to them. You don't have to be mean. I think one of the choices is cleanliness. You can rate a 4 and use the private feed back if you want to give them a break.

[Sandra126]

As you are the first guest you stand a chance of completely ruining their business, since other guests are less likely to book if you slam them. How did they respond when you contacted them about the issues? I am assuming here that you did. If there is a lightbulb out in my house I would not know if nobody tells me as I don't turn everything on and off when I clean. As others have said, a 4 is bad enough and give lots of private feedback. That is helpful and gives them a chance to fix issues before they host again, hopefully. The stars you give won't show publicly until they have a few more and then it is averaged out but your review certainly will! You could say ''as it is a new listing and we are the first guests, there are a couple of minor issues which will be fixed but it shows great promise to be an excellent listing in the future.'' That is as harsh as I would want to be.