Five Boro Mold Specialist

A complete joke and this is why. We had a renter who claimed that mold was in the apartment he rented from us. After viewing the area (above the dryer) it was clear there was ‘mold’ at least visually. FBM were called and their ‘investigative’ report said the area was mold and there were other areas.
When we asked for more explanation Mr Katz, as his staff refer him by, barely talked to him, missed things, was short on the phone and barely have any information for the $ 450 and just wanted to do then$ 3,000 cleaning of a 650sq ft apt.
We wanted more answers but nothing. In the end it cost us our Tennant and a few months rent. We went it to look at the area and thought we would just touch it and wipe it to see what happened and it was lint from the dryer !!! Not mold. Nothing.
So FBM professional service and therma imaging etc are BS. Plus those devices will find mold anywhere because mold exists everywhere. Unreal. Total farce.

Here is my problem with this company. They came in, took air samples, used their infrared camera to spot moisture in my ceiling and told me I had a moisture problem in my livingroom and that they could kill the mold for $ 1650 and also sell me dehumidifiers. The inspection was $ 550 and took about 30 minutes, they moved fast and seemed to be in a hurry. Now, 2 days after hurricane Sandy, I took photos for my adjuster, and started tearing down my kitchen and bathroom and hardwood floors. To my amazement, just under my kitchen and bathroom cabinets, in plain site if anyone had bothered to open them and look, was an infestation of green mold that was completely covering my cabinets, there was also a leaky pipe. The thickness and amount of infestation was frightening and it was obvious to me that this mold had been there a long time, especially since weeks later mold in other areas flooded by Sandy are just starting to grow. I even found a large amount of green mold growing under my hardwood floors. Yet, these supposed experts that were in my house no more than 30 minutes completely missed all these sources of mold, including one of the most common and easiest places for mold growth, a place they olnly had to open a door and peek into to see the growth, and then sent me a proposol to clean out completely different areas without ever trying to get me to fix the source of the moisture first. So, I would have wasted a total of $ 2200 dollars for nothing. My mold infested bathrooms would have remained intact and other areas would have just grown more mold. For the amount of money they charge for their «Expert» inspection I really expected more from fiveboromold than 40 pages of mostly general mold info I could get on Google for free. The one thing they did do right was get an outdoor and indoor sample to show the abnormally high amount of mold in the house as compared to outside. This is very important because if the outside count is high then the inside count will likely also be high. If the outside count is low, as it was with my home and the inside count is high, then you know you have a source of mold growth in your home.
My advice to home owners is to become your own expert, read, read read, and if you use such a company, do not expect anything more from them than a detailed mold report (which is actually done by an outside lab) from the air samples they take. After that, it’s up to you to open walls, check behind and under cabinets and floors.