If you were ever tucked in as a child with the sweet sing-songy phrase, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” you may not have the worst opinion of the pest known as the bedbug. Outside of your grandmother’s nuturing rituals, however, bedbugs are highly frustrating and anything but cute.
Bedbugs are small, parasitic insects from the family Cimicidae. Although they will feed on any warm blooded animal, they have a particular soft spot for the taste of human blood. They are flat, reddish-brown in color, wingless, and about the size of an apple seed when mature. Because of the microscopic hairs on their bodies, they may look as though they have stripes. They are elusive and generally nocturnal, and because not all humans have a reaction to their bites, infestations can progress and spread to a serious degree before a problem is even detected.
Gross, right? Wait, there’s more. Unlike other pests (rats, mice, roaches, ants, etc) bedbugs aren’t at all selective. They aren’t drawn to filth, and there is very little that can be done to prevent them. They are extremely adept hitchhikers, and will gladly move in with the rich, the poor, the meticulous, and the messy. Having a warm blooded animal around would seem to be their only screening criteria, but even that doesn’t pass the test. Able to live up to 18 months (no, that’s not a typo) without feeding, they are content to wait it out in duct work, walls, carpets, or any number of other hiding places until their next meal moves in. Bedbugs do have a few natural enemies, but because they tend to be other bugs like roaches, spiders, and biting ants, most people are reluctant to invite those kinds of troops to fight a bedbug war.
Fifteen or twenty years ago, you would have had a much tougher time finding cases of bedbug infestation. Chances are, if you were a property manager back then, it wasn’t even on your radar. This is because bedbugs were all but eliminated from the US by the 1960s. A variety of factors, including a sharp spike in international travel, the banning and regulation of certain pesticides like DDT, and even an increase in the sale and exchange of second hand furnishings have given the bedbug new power. Cases have steadily been on the rise since the mid 1990’s, and by some accounts the number of infestations nationwide has increased up to 500% in that time period. In NYC alone, complaints jumped from 1,839 in 2005 to 8, 830 in 2008.
Overwhelmingly in property management, the biggest question after “How do I get rid of them?” is “Who has to pay for it?” It’s question that is not at all black and white. Treatment is often a long term process with multiple visits from a service provider and can be expensive (a few hundred dollars if detected early, thousands in other cases). Some non profit organizations will help with the cost for low income victims, but all cases will require a great deal of landlord/tenant cooperation. No one could or should put cost aside, but bedbugs are unique in their obstinance and neither party can get them out on his or her own. Laws vary by state, and the expense is often considered to be the tenant’s. However, the rise in cases has more states adopting tenant protections when it comes to bedbugs, and more courts are finding against property management companies in these matters.
Unlike most damage to your property, the origination of a bedbug infestion is often impossible to pinpoint. Culpability is not only difficult, it becomes extremely tricky when you consider a tenant plagued by bedbugs may have picked them up on a movie theatre seat, or by brushing up next to the wrong person on the train. Yet placing extermination costs solely with a property owner is arguably unfair as well, particularly if a tenant fails to report the problem early or doesn’t cooperate with treatment preparations and follow up. That said, when it comes to disputes, a court may fall back to the unique nature of this problem. In 2004, Judge Cyril Bedford sided with a tenant in Ludlow Properties, LLC v. Young. The tenant refused to pay rent for six months because of a persistent bed bug problem, and Judge Bedford wrote, “Although bed bugs are classified as vermin, they are unlike … mice and roaches, which, although offensive, do not have the effect on one’s life as bed bugs do, feeding upon one’s blood in hoards nightly turning what is supposed to be bed rest or sleep into a hellish experience.”
By now, you’re already reviewing your lease to check on your pest control treatment language. Nearly as important as the guidelines you establish for financial responsibility are your requirements for treatment preparation, temporary displacement, and any necessary moving or discarding of personal property that goes along with it. First and foremost, when you learn about a bedbug problem, don’t lose months in a back and forth debate over who will pay. One female bedbug can lay 500 eggs over a year, and they are mature and ready to feed every three to five days in as little as 5 weeks. To say time is of the essence is a horrible understatement, since a bedbug family can turn into a booming metropolis, infecting not just one but all of your units, in the blink of an eye.
When it comes to deciding just how much responsibility you will take (should your state’s laws leave it up to you), there are a few important things to consider. As mentioned before, a bedbug issue should be approached differently than any other pest or damage concern, and the importance of working with your tenant(s) to solve the problem can’t be overemphasized. For this reason, fully absorbing or sharing the cost of elimination may be in your best interest.
Taking on or sharing responsibility allows you one important liberty that can have an impact on a successful result: control over the pest management provider. Having a say in the extermination process means being able to work with someone who has direct experience with multi-family dwellings, which is extremely important since bedbugs are crafty travelers. Having a tenant in a multi-family property hire his or her own exterminator to treat a single space may simply send them running into another unit. In fact, when an infestation begins, you can generally count on the fact that it won’t be or stay confined to a single living space. Now a problem that began in one unit becomes the problem of two or more units, and the question of who pays to fix it gets even fuzzier.
Unfortunately, basic fairness can’t really be a tool in the handling of bedbugs in a rental property, as nothing is fair in bedbugs. No human behavior or habit invites them, and they are exceptionally difficult to remove. Yet, the job is impossible without making it a group effort. Though it’s an expense that no one wants to take on, agreeing to do so in full or in part may be the best solution to a problem that really bites.
Filed under: General Information, Property Maintenance, Property Management Topics, Real Estate Investment, affordable housing, bedbugs, customer service, investment, Landabout, Landlord, lease, lease law, multi-family, multi-family safety, pest control, Property Management, real estate management, reduced vacancy, rent, rental, security deposit, tenant pet policies, tenant relationships, tenant turnover, unified communications
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