Problem:

The issue here was that the user was concerned with the difference with Views and Blocks and if views will be replaced by Blocks.

Solution:

Views and blocks are the same plugins. Which means whatever you can do in views you can do in Blocks. Blocks also has the views classic editor but this is disabled in the Editing Experience settings. So you can go to Toolset -> Settings and scroll to Editing Experience and select the 3rd option. This will give you access to both the Block and classic editor.

For the foreseeable future the views classic editor won't disappear and the Views plugin itself will still continue to receive updates because as mentioned blocks and views are the same plugins.

Features will continue to be added to the Block editor which makes it easier to use but if you're not ready to make that jump yet the Classic views editor will still be available.

Problem: After updating Toolset plugins, one option in my custom search filter is automatically selected upon page load.

Solution: Add default_label=" " to the wpv-control-postmeta filter shortcodes for Area and Bathrooms, as shown below:

...
<label>[wpml-string context="wpv-views"]Area[/wpml-string]</label>
[wpv-control-postmeta field="wpcf-region_v1" type="select" url_param="wpv-wpcf-region_v1" default_label=" "]
...
<label>[wpml-string context="wpv-views"]Bathrooms[/wpml-string]</label>
[wpv-control-postmeta field="wpcf-no-of-bathrooms" type="select" url_param="wpv-wpcf-no-of-bathrooms" default_label=" "]
...

That should resolve the problem where one of the options is selected automatically.

Relevant Documentation:
https://toolset.com/documentation/programmer-reference/views/views-shortcodes/#wpv-control-postmeta