Mark is such a great host! He’s very responsive to communication. The apartment has everything you need for a long stay (enough toiletries, cleaning supplies, many towels, etc.). The apartment looks exactly like the pictures, so there are no surprises (except there is no full length mirror in the bathroom). Keep in mind, it is a basement though, so you do hear what’s happening upstairs often, which can be a bit annoying when you’re in a Zoom meeting, though they aren’t terribly loud upstairs.
The main dealbreaker for me though were the smells. When I first arrived, the place smelled musty, like someone had been living there for a while and never opened the windows. I literally opened all the windows and doors for 3 days and diffused lavender oil 24/7. That seemed to do the trick. Then, day 3 of my week stay, I started to smell something really putrid, like garbage, and as the days went on it just got stronger and stronger, even though I cleaned the place from top to bottom, I couldn’t find the source of the smell. I think maybe a small pest died in one of the vents or something. It might not always be like that, but unfortunately it was for my stay.
Long story short, I had to end my stay and come home a night early. A disappointing end to a stay with great potential.