I love our new apartment at Madison Square North. Apparently, so do a half dozen four legged furry creatures.

I thought about blogging about our mouse-capades after the first incident, and resolved that this was an issue better dealt congenially with the building management. However, six weeks and half a dozen mice later, I’m fed up by the building’s lack of attention to this problem, and I’m very tired from maintaining nightly vigil waiting for the next mouse to drop in.

After eight visits from various exterminators, I’m now a fair expert. Here’s what I have learned — hopefully my experience will benefit other tenants or homeowners.

1. If you see a shadow move on the floor, chances are it’s a mouse. I ignored the first shadow I saw move. A week later, I found a dead mouse next to the fridge.

2. Check your apartment for mouse droppings — dark brown/black “pellets” about the size of a rye seed. Often the pellet will have one or two pointy ends. I’m told that mice leave their droppings anywhere. We found droppings in the middle of the Living Room, the Laundry Closet and, most disgustingly, between the stove top and oven.

3. The most vulnerable areas of a home are:
- Heating / A/C units that have pipes going into the wall. I guess the mice roam about between the walls, then find the openings from pipe holes into the apartment.
- Pipes that are below your kitchen and bathroom sinks. Check to make sure the pipe “covers” are really tight, or make sure to plug have the exterminator plug up the holes around the pipes.

Telltale signs of mouse presence are paint or dust sprinkles on the floor under the heating unit openings. This is a result of the mice squeezing through holes and shaking out paint / dust particles.

4. The kitchen stove. Mice are attracted to the insulation in/around the stove. We found 5 mouse droppings under the stove top.

5. Make sure your Laundry Room is carefully inspected, especially around the hoses.

We worked with two exterminators.
- Connex came in the first night and charged us $670. They explained that plugging holes with copper wire was more effective than with steel wool because steel wool eventually disintegrates, especially if it gets wet. When we called Connex for follow up visits, they were always unavailable and quite rude. I do not recommend Connex.

- Stop Pest is the exterminator for our building. The technician, Taofik, who came to us was very pleasant and appeared to be thorough. Unfortunately, Stop Pest did not stop pests the first, second, third, or fourth times. When mice revisited, Stop Pest’s main office was not responsive to calls from our doorman. However, the technician, Taofik, was very accommodating and responded to our emergency calls at 9pm and midnight. I highly recommend Taofik.

During our last six weeks, we twice borrowed a pair of sister cats. We thought maybe this would scare the mice away. We didn’t see mice when the cats were in the apartment. However, we think the mice might have been hiding in the utility closet. Meanwhile, we fell in love with these cats and are looking to adopt our own cats!

Stay tuned.

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Only 15% of Manhattan apartments are condominiums, but the market was loaded with properties that languished for months while lenders were reluctant to offer mortgages. Even before we started our search, I contacted our friendly mortgage broker to start an application. We began with a mid-range price but no specific property, understanding that the loan might be for somewhat more. Because we had all the required documentation at hand, a good faith estimate was soon followed by a mortgage commitment. This enabled us to approach the sellers with some leverage. And, when we found an apartment, we were able to plan a closing date that satisfied everyone’s timeframe. That is, until we were actually going to close.

I received repeated reassurances that everything was on track, when in fact nothing was. I had been able to put my hands on every piece of data and documentation as it was requested: 1040, 1099, tax bills, investments, properties, bank statements. Nonetheless, when I called a week before the closing a new list of required documentation appeared: global insurance for the condominium itself; verification of employment, again; bank statements showing the source of deposits, and confirmation of the source of the 5% down payment, again. An updated statement of all investments was needed, again, even though it was only 3 weeks since the last one. My mortgage consultant was as confused and frustrated as we were. She stated she felt like she was in a foreign country. No one was allowed to speak to VOE; no one was allowed to speak to Underwriting. And nothing would move until the never-ending list of documents was accumulated.

It wasn’t just frustrating; it was unfathomable and inexorable. The bank treated me like a convict instead of a customer, even though I had longstanding and large accounts in a bank they had purchased. My wife and I have credit scores over 800. I own my house, my office, my business, and have more than enough income and investments. Not enough. My daughter had scheduled the movers, had to vacate her apartment, and there were onerous penalties from the sponsor if the closing was delayed. Not enough. My attorneys, the title insurance attorney, and my mortgage broker were all long-time clients. Not enough. Nothing was enough to make this happen. Just the bank, and they weren’t going to move, so neither were we.

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