I find that the only thing that works with Airnbnb is just to read all the reviews after excluding anything that isn't close to a 5.0 rating. Some kinds of negative comments in reviews can safely be ignored (e.g. the people who rented an apartment in the middle of downtown and were surprised that it's noisy), but almost any substantial negative comment in any review should be a red flag, no matter how many positive reviews there are.
for both Booking and AirBnB make sure to read recent reviews. Booking especially likes to default to "relevant" reviews (which are always glowing reviews from five years ago)
