TL;DR - Allergy sufferers of any kind, this is not the place for you.
I'm not really fond of writing bad reviews, but I depend on reviews to help me find a place to stay, so here it goes. I'll start with the issues and then go into a few positive things.
-There was construction next door (only a few feet away from the apartment) that started at 7am every morning, including Saturday. I'm not sure how long it had been going on or how long it will continue, but I was not alerted to this before my stay.
-The first day, I walked around barefoot for 5 minutes and the bottoms of my feet turned black. I ended up washing the floor, but I wore flip-flops after that.
-When I went to make coffee, there were grounds still in the pot and they had grown mold (they did replace the coffee pot a day later). When I went to use a pan, it was dirty. I opened up the dishwasher and it was filled with water and dirt. When I ran it, it seemed to help, but on another run the black specks reappeared.
-I would actually consider this unit a basement unit. Even though it has full doors to the outside, it's built into a hill and incredibly damp. I got very sick after being there for a few days, so I suspect there might be mold there. I also had to stop leaving some of the doors and windows open I was using for a cross breeze because of the lack of privacy. Once I had to stop doing that I really had trouble down there.
-The first day Rachel told me it was imperative to the safety of myself and the whole property to lock the entrance gate to my area, which I took very seriously. That night, I walked around the bend in the garden and found a second gate to the street wide open with no way to lock it. I aligned the doors so they at least looked closed. I alerted Rachel around 10p and didn't hear back until 12p the next day.
-Privacy: The listing says you have your own private entrance, but between the gate that leads to the apartment and the apartment door is a storage area Rachel and her husband Michael use and the laundry room for the unit, which they also use to store things (although they do their laundry upstairs). When they were replacing the coffee pot (which was very nice) Michael, without warning, popped down to find something in the laundry space. It was startling to say the least. He came down a second time and I think because of my response the first time, Rachel did send me a text. However, the next morning, while I was eating breakfast on the porch I saw a man I didn't know let himself into the gate. It turned out gardeners were coming to work on the property. This is Rachel's home and I get that, but again, I was given no warning. And all I see is a man I don't know opening the gate with a key that also opens my apartment. When I called Rachel to ask for heads up, she acted like it wasn't an issue at all and told me the gardeners were "so nice," completely missing the point. She did offer to give a heads up when I told her I keep the doors and windows open, but then hours after I thought the gardeners had left I was exiting the apartment, and sure enough coming through the gate were Michael and the gardener (and I was given no warning). Overall, the unit is private if no one comes downstairs and there aren't construction workers right next door, but otherwise I would not consider it private at all.
-Also, they store trash in the patio outside the apartment unit. It's on the side closer to the street and not the unit, but it was not a fun smell to walk by.
-Finally, overall, Rachel was pretty slow to respond over text. Sometimes it would take her a day or half a day to respond. I just never counted on getting a response.
Some good things:
-I ended up leaving early and Rachel refunded me for the remaining days, which I really appreciate.
-Rachel tried to accommodate my fragrance sensitivity and had fragrance free products waiting for me. She also asked her cleaning staff to accommodate me, but I think a.) they probably didn't follow or receive substantial instructions and b.) because the dryer was so dirty there was no way to remove allergens from the linens.
-She also had coffee, tea, almond milk and (expired, lol) snacks waiting for you.
-She didn't mind if my dog roamed the garden and peed there. (I always picked up the poop, of course.)
-The location is great. The neighborhood is cute.
If it had only been a couple of the problems listed above I think I could have lasted my full stay, but everything combined was just too much.