Anonymous wrote:Areas with large lots. We have no have one mouse since moving to our 1970s house on 1/2 an acre.

Lol. I have 2 acres and tons of mice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The weather drives rodents indoors- heat, rain, cold. So you see more of them st various times of year, no matter how clean your house.

Interesting. We have never seen a mouse in our 20 year old house in Rockville. I thought it was a common problem in DC and its close-in suburbs. Do mice in newer houses suggest holes or cracks in the foundation?

Rats are in cities, mice are everywhere.

+1 on the black rat snake. We have a snake in our cellar who keeps the mice out.

How do you make certain that the snake stays in the cellar?

Anonymous wrote:Areas with large lots. We have no have one mouse since moving to our 1970s house on 1/2 an acre.

And I live in a 1970's house on 1/2 an acre, and we've had mice off and on over the years.

I stopped seeing evidence of them, for the most part, a little over a year ago. Right around the time we got a cat.

Get a $500 annual contract with a good pest control company and have them seal points of entry and put out traps to address the existing problem. This should not be dictating your choice of home as it's an easily solvable problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The weather drives rodents indoors- heat, rain, cold. So you see more of them st various times of year, no matter how clean your house.

Interesting. We have never seen a mouse in our 20 year old house in Rockville. I thought it was a common problem in DC and its close-in suburbs. Do mice in newer houses suggest holes or cracks in the foundation?

Rats are in cities, mice are everywhere.

+1 on the black rat snake. We have a snake in our cellar who keeps the mice out.

Anonymous wrote:The weather drives rodents indoors- heat, rain, cold. So you see more of them st various times of year, no matter how clean your house.

Interesting. We have never seen a mouse in our 20 year old house in Rockville. I thought it was a common problem in DC and its close-in suburbs. Do mice in newer houses suggest holes or cracks in the foundation?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New builds are tighter and have less issues with rodents. Also trees cause rodents

The mice just autogenerate right out of the roots. Similar to how fruit flies are caused by fruit.

Can mammals autogenerate?

The weather drives rodents indoors- heat, rain, cold. So you see more of them st various times of year, no matter how clean your house.

I've had mice in my house in Bethesda 2 times in 25 years and it was easy to get rid of them both times. My beach house gets them every year despite a pest control contract. I've learned to just deal with it.

I had a big rat snake in my house. It was probably there to eat the mice.

This is an easy problem to fix, OP. In the list of deal-breakers, I would not call that a deal-breaker! Too much radon in the basement, asbestos insulation, too much mold, active termites, un-fixable flooding issues because the house is at the bottom of a hill or in a flood zone, those are deal-breakers.

If everything else is great, just get mice traps, the humane ones.

Anonymous wrote:Haven't spotted a mouse in our 30yr old Fairfax townhome since we moved here 2 yrs ago.

Maybe they just hide well?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New builds are tighter and have less issues with rodents. Also trees cause rodents

The mice just autogenerate right out of the roots. Similar to how fruit flies are caused by fruit.

Thank you--I was wondering how that worked!

Haven't spotted a mouse in our 30yr old Fairfax townhome since we moved here 2 yrs ago.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have owned seven homes and have never had mice. Weird question, OP.

Never? What do you attribute it to?
It’s a pretty common problem.

Never. I keep food in air tight containers, never in the original packaging. I’m a little OCD about cleaning. Maybe we have just been lucky? Even our farmhouse on 30 acres never had mice.