Tenants want pest control without finding bugs

[Winnie C.]

Hi all. I'm a relatively new landlord and I need your help.

My tenants (a couple) moved into my condo in MA a month and a half ago. They just told me they wanted pest control for bedbugs in the unit because one of them kept getting bites since moving in. They said they put their mattress in a protector, cleaning throughout, etc. but the situation didn't improve. They thought it was mosquito bites or allergies initially but it kept getting worse and worse. They haven't seen any bedbugs but they ran out of options.

This is a condo I recently purchased. I had a professional cleaning company clean the entire unit before the tenants moved in.

How should I approach this?

[Jeff Bridges]

We had a bed bug infestation in one of my condo associations that spread across several units on multiple levels. They can and will travel across units through the walls or even out the front door into another unit. Tenants are usually embarrassed to report this issue, so multiply this by an entire building and you will have several units that might not report the issue. Your tenants could for example have gotten them from an adjacent unit due to no fault of their own. In this situation, I would inform your building property manager and see if they offer pest control on the building contract and might even inspect for free. the importance of this is twofold: you might benefit from existing pest control contract used by the building and you can coordinate to find out if other units have been affected and establish a coordinated response to treatment if there is indeed several affected units. If you just try to tackle this on your own, spend $600-$1800 with the standard treatment and then more come from the untreated next door unit that hasn't been treated, it's all for naught. All nearby units would need to be inspected at the same time so that this could be nipped in the bud. association Property manager would be the best resource to help you resolve the issue effectively assuming it is a professional firm. they have likely dealt with this before. Good luck!