Responsibility for Pest Control During Rental Situations

At Bug Busters, we’re proud to offer pest control services for a wide variety of building types and situations. From our residential pest control services to those we offer to commercial buildings, we cover numerous clients for all their pest control and exterminator needs that may come up.

This includes homes, condos, apartments and any other buildings occupied by renters who are paying rent to a landlord. In some of these situations, questions may arise at some point regarding who is responsible for handling the costs and other related hassle of a given pest inspection, extermination or similar theme – the landlord or the renter? While there may be several detailed factors at play here, this really boils down to some pretty simple concepts. Let’s take a look.

All About the Lease

Whether you’re renting an apartment, a condo or even a traditional home from a landlord, all such situations will come with a lease that defines all the important details of the rental situation. The lease will contain information on items ranging from standard monthly rent amounts to property rules, the rental term, plus numerous other details.

You should be checking for several things on a given rental lease, and one of them is the section that discusses pest control. This section will detail exactly who is responsible for what in this area, both in terms of existing conditions and future potential issues. Each lease is different and may come with varying expectations, so be sure to read the fine print here.

Prior to Rental

While leases will vary, the vast majority of situations require the landlord to make the space livable before a new tenant moves in – and ensuring there are no pest infestations present is generally among the requirements here. The first step here is physically ensuring there are no major pests on the property, or risks of such a presence.

Such risks include areas like cracks, holes and openings where common pests may enter from the outdoors – these must be sealed at the landlord’s expense. The landlord will generally document any work they do here, as this will allow them to provide proof of this later to the tenant in case of a future issue, determining whether said issue was due to their own negligence or something the tenant is responsible for.

Tenant Move-In Themes

If you’re a tenant moving into a new location, we highly recommend documenting everything upon the move-in. There’s generally a very short window of time where you can request certain repairs or problems be fixed by the landlord, including pest issues or risks in some cases.

One general exception here: Bed bugs, which commonly move with tenants from one home to another. This makes it tough to prove where they came from, meaning tenants are usually responsible for them.

For more on who is responsible for pest issues in a rental situation, or to learn about any of our pest control services, speak to the staff at Bug Busters today.