Elliman broker provides shelter for lost rat

While it’s not uncommon to smell a rat in the real estate industry, it’s slightly less customary to catch one. Nevertheless, Douglas Elliman broker Sonia Stock is providing shelter for a domestic white rat she found outside her home on Tribeca’s Hudson Street several weeks ago, she told The Real Deal yesterday. She has posted flyers all over the neighborhood in the hopes of finding the rat’s real owner, or at least a more permanent home for the friendly rodent. “Are you missing your little friend here in this photo?” the flyer reads. “It’s friendly, cute and now looking for its home.”

She encountered Razco, as she has named the rat, on a cold evening earlier this month. The rat appeared to be domestic, she said, and was shivering and hungry. She offered it food and then picked it up with a jacket.

“It practically came out and took the food from my hand so I figured that was a good sign,” she said. “It was 20 degrees outside. I couldn’t leave it out there in the cold. It wouldn’t have survived the night. The other rats would have killed it.”

British-born Stock, who works out of Elliman’s Hudson Street office, would keep Razco if it were not for her cat. Brokers in her office were not eager to adopt the rat.

“It needs to be able to run around and discover things and you can’t do that with a cat in the house,” she said. “They’re very clean animals, despite what people think. They’re constantly cleaning themselves.”