Pros:
Big beautiful apartment, sun drenched space, roof deck, it was convenient for my stay, shabd is kind and easy to communicate with, her cat Ramses is absolutely adorable and sat on my lap while I worked from the apartment.
Cons:
The apartment was dirty. She warned me she wasn’t able to deep clean it for a couple of weeks before I arrived, and gave me a discount as a result.
But it was dirtier than what she warned me of: The mattresses and pillows were super stained, the apartment smelled bad. The cat litter hadn’t been cleaned for easily a week when I arrived. She asked me to bring my own sheets which I gladly did - but the comforter was also torn up and dirty.
The image of the deck in the pictures is not accurate. The couch cushions were completely destroyed and dirty/ falling apart, the chair had no cushions at all.
There are 2 bright lights that shine into in the downstairs bedroom at night. There are no blinds or drapes on any of the windows in the apartment (so if you get dressed to go out at night, you basically have to get dressed in the bathroom otherwise someone will see you naked). She did offer me a piece of cardboard that was under the bed to put up in the window after the first night, which helped a bit, but didn’t cover the whole window.
The cat is so snuggly but also needy. He woke me up almost hourly every night to snuggle, move my arm, scratch me and make biscuits on my back, etc etc. he would snuggle for an hour, then jump off, and start all over again. The first night I put him outside the bedroom door and he scratched and whined at it all night, which was actually more disruptive. It was not easy to sleep in this apartment. (And I have lived in Brooklyn for years and own a cat).
I wouldn’t recommend a stay here.