NYE Private Client · By appointment only
Clothes Moth Treatment in Alpine, Saddle River, Franklin Lakes, Englewood Cliffs and Bergen County, New Jersey
The most expensive ZIP code in New Jersey,and a dressing room the size of a city apartment.
Bergen County estates are assessed by an Associate Certified Entomologist and processed on site with heat, freezing, steam and HEPA vacuuming, garment by garment, rug by rug. Nothing leaves the property. Programs from $3,000, an hour from our Brooklyn office via the George Washington Bridge.
Jorge Bedoya, ACEUpdated November 1, 20269 min readBergen County: the Palisades estate, the dressing room and the fur that never went to the vault
Alpine (07620) closed 2025 with a median sale price of $4.35 million, the highest in New Jersey and in the same company as Beverly Hills on the national list; Englewood Cliffs (07632) sits at $1.75 million, and Saddle River, Upper Saddle River, Franklin Lakes and Ho-Ho-Kus trade so rarely that the ZIP rankings understate them, which is why Ho-Ho-Kus shows up on the per-capita income list instead. The house is a specific type: built or rebuilt since the 1990s on two acres and up, fifteen to thirty thousand square feet, with a primary suite that has two dressing rooms, a cedar room, a wine cellar, a home theater, a staff apartment and a four-car garage with mezzanine storage. Everything a clothes moth needs is behind a motorized gate off Route 9W, Chestnut Ridge Road or Franklin Lake Road.
The dressing room is the Bergen problem. It is large, climate-controlled, lit only when someone walks in, and holds more fine knitwear, tailoring and fur in one place than most boutiques. A fur coat that should winter in a furrier’s cold vault often winters in a cedar-lined closet instead, next to the cashmere, and a cedar closet deters nothing once its oil has faded. Larvae feed at the collar and underarm of a worn-once sweater, inside the horsehair canvas of a jacket, and under the fringe of the rug the dressing room stands on. The overflow garage and the staff apartment’s closets are the second site, because nobody opens them between seasons.
Bergen commutes by car and by bus across the bridge, and a large share of these households keep an apartment in Manhattan as well. When the assessment finds activity we treat the city residence under the same report within two weeks, and in New York the whole program, including any structural work, is performed by New York Exterminating under its own license. Staff-run households can book and brief us through the house manager; we work in an unmarked vehicle and reset every closet to its photographed order.
Nothing leaves your home.
Assessment, processing, monitoring and a report, in one visit.
The full program is described hour by hour on the Private Client page, and the way it runs in New Jersey on the New Jersey page. Here it runs like this.
Private assessment, $750
Jorge Bedoya, ACE, inspects every closet, storage room, barn and rug and photographs each garment as clear, at risk or infested, rated against our Fabric and Brand Care Index. You receive the inventory and a fixed program price. The fee is credited to a program booked within 30 days.
Processed on site
Heat-safe garments go through our chamber in your home with a probe in the core of the load. Cashmere, silk and anything delicate is frozen in our portable freezers. Closets are emptied, steamed and HEPA-vacuumed; rugs are done on both sides. Everything goes back in its photographed order.
Report and monitoring
You receive the Private Client Report with findings, inventory, probe and freezer logs, and the New Jersey partner’s documentation where a product was applied to the structure. Monitors are read at 30, 60 and 90 days; those visits verify, they do not re-treat.
An hour from Midwood via the George Washington Bridge and the Palisades Parkway for Alpine, Englewood Cliffs and Tenafly; seventy-five minutes to Saddle River, Franklin Lakes and Ho-Ho-Kus via Route 17. Houses with two dressing rooms and a cedar room are one-day programs; estates with a staff apartment, guest house and mezzanine storage are usually the two-day Plus program. Booked Tuesday to Thursday.
What we expect to rate most often in Bergen County houses:
| Garment | Why moths want it | Rating | How we handle it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fine knitwear in volume: Loro Piana, Brunello Cucinelli, Kiton, Zegna | The finest keratin fibres, hung in a dressing room that is rarely disturbed | Freeze | Frozen on site in archival bags; refolded in acid-free tissue. |
| Furs and shearling kept at home over summer | Hair on hide, in a cedar closet instead of a cold vault | Specialist | Inspected, bagged in breathable cloth and routed to a furrier’s vault; never in a chamber or freezer. |
| Bespoke and ready-to-wear tailoring (Brioni, Tom Ford, Savile Row) | Horsehair canvas inside the chest is food; larvae feed where you cannot see | Heat, probed | Probe between cloth and canvas; chamber hold counted from that probe. Fused collars checked first. |
| Silk and cashmere-silk eveningwear, beaded gowns | Protein fibres with glues, beads and sequins | Specialist | Documented and isolated; coordinated with your conservator. Never heated or frozen on a guess. |
| Silk and hand-knotted rugs in the dressing rooms and halls | Wool pile under furniture that has not moved since the decorator left | Case by case | Both sides inspected; steamed and vacuumed in place, or frozen by size. Antique and silk rugs go to your restorer. |
Brand names describe fibre, construction and care only. New York Exterminating is not affiliated with any maker named. The full Luxury Fabric and Brand Care Index, sixty entries from vicuña to piano felt, is the reference behind every rating on this page.
Three ways to engage us.
Prices are fixed at the assessment.
Wardrobe Assessment
Estate Wardrobe Program
Estate Wardrobe Program Plus
In New Jersey, New York Exterminating performs the assessment, the on-site heat, freezing, steam and HEPA processing, the monitoring and the report. Any pesticide application to the structure, when the assessment finds one is warranted, is performed by a New Jersey-licensed company under its own license, scheduled by us and shown as a separate line. How New Jersey is different. Any repeat service within six months of a program is 50% of the original price. Payment plans are available.
The same program,
on every side of the city.
“I do the assessment myself because the assessment is the job. Anyone can run a heat chamber. Knowing which jacket has horsehair canvas inside it, which coat will delaminate at 120 degrees and which rug is the actual source is what you are paying for. If I would not put a garment of my own through a step, it does not go through that step.”
Environmental scientist by training. NYSDEC #15140. What an ACE is · About Jorge
Request a private assessment in Alpine, Saddle River or Franklin Lakes.
Tell us the town, the number of dressing rooms, whether there is a city apartment, and what you have seen. We reply the same business day.
New York Exterminating, Inc. · 1115 E 13th St, Brooklyn, NY 11230 · NYSDEC #15140 · 4.9 stars from 82 Google reviews · English and Spanish
Luxury Fabric and Brand Care IndexSixty entries: cashmere, vicuña, tailoring, fur, rugs, and how each is treated
The Complete Guide to Treating Clothes Moths ProperlyMethod, chamber, screening rules and service day
Clothes moth larvae: identificationCasings, webbing and grazing on wool and silk
Carpet beetles in New Jersey estate homesShed skins, bare patches on rugs and a colony outside the wardrobe: the other program, same day, same report
Clothes moths in Bergen County: FAQ
How is an Alpine or Saddle River estate priced?
Most are the two-day Estate Wardrobe Program Plus at $4,500: every closet, dressing room, cedar room, staff apartment and garage storage, up to six rugs. A house with two or three closets and two rugs is the one-day $3,000 program. The price is fixed at the $750 assessment and does not change on the day.
Our furs are at home. What happens to them?
They are inspected, photographed and bagged in breathable cloth, and we route them to a furrier’s cold vault. Fur is never put in a chamber or a domestic freezer: heat dries and cracks the skin, and long cold stresses it. Storing fur at home beside cashmere is the single most common reason a Bergen dressing room becomes a source, and the report says so plainly.
Is New York Exterminating licensed in New Jersey?
Our pesticide business registration and applicator certification are in New York State. In Bergen County we perform the assessment, the on-site heat, freezing, steam and HEPA processing, the monitoring and the report, none of which is a pesticide application. If the structure needs a product applied, a New Jersey-licensed company performs it under its own license, scheduled by us and documented in your report. The arrangement is set out on our New Jersey page.
Can our house manager handle the whole thing?
Yes. The manager books, briefs us on access and alarm codes, opens the house, and receives the report first. We work in an unmarked vehicle and reset every closet to its photographed order.
What if a piece is beyond what you can process on site?
It goes to the right specialist, and we make the call: a furrier’s cold vault for furs and shearling, a textile conservator for couture and beaded gowns, a rug restorer for antique and silk rugs. Each hand-off is recorded in the report so nothing is lost between the house and the specialist.
