Pest in the walls of a row house

[Tarik N.]

A tenant contacted me because she thinks she hears rats in the walls. The apartment is the top floor of a duplex which itself is a row house. My understanding is that getting rid of pest is not the landlord’s responsibility. Any thoughts? Thank you, Tarik Baltimore, MD

[Max T.]

You can provide traps. You can seal up all openings in the apartments, and all openings into the building in the basement. You can't control the openings in your neighbors houses. But if you do everything you can do, you should be able to prevent rodents from coming into the finished space. You may not ever be fully successful in eliminating their noise inside wall cavities. Tip - cut a small hole where the noise is coming from and drop in some rodent poison.