I am using text area in ASP.NET MVC together with EF and everything is working fine. The generated HTML code is the next one:
<textarea name="Comments" class="valid" id="Comments" style="width: 100%;" rows="5" cols="20">Raul's Test User
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
eee
fff
</textarea>
And the original razor view code is:
@Html.TextAreaFor(model => model.Comments, new { cols = "62", rows = "10", style = "width: 99%; " })