What If Your Rental Property Gets Bed Bugs?
Some things you can’t prevent, like the possibility that your rental property could get bed bugs. What happens if a tenant moves out and you’re left with the bed bugs they brought with the in their furniture? Here’s the bad news: It costs upwards of $5,000 to inspect, clean and exterminate the average home severely infested with bed bugs. The good news is that when the rental home or apartment is empty, eliminating bed bugs can be less expensive and less of a hassle. Calling an exterminator is the easiest option, but you can take additional steps on top of that.
In addition to that though, you can pick up some food grade Diatomaceous Earth (DE) to help fight against bed bugs resistant to chemical extermination efforts. DE is a non-toxic barrier that can kill and prevent bed bugs. All you do is find the areas in a home where bed bugs are hiding. They don’t like bare floors, they like to hide. Even still, don’t sweep and mop the floors before you tend to the bed bugs. That will just spread them around.
Do You Really Want To Keep The Carpet?
Pulling up the carpeting and then treating the floors beneath might be a wiser choice in the long run. (Besides, tenants love new carpeting.) Just don’t pull and replace the carpeting at the same time. Don’t install new carpet until the bedbug elimination process is complete.
Steps To Eliminating Bed Bugs Using DE
Get a vacuum with strong suction power and disposable bags. Do not use a bag-less vacuum. Before you start vacuuming, also vacuum up a little DE. This will get the DE along the entire surface of the bag and help make sure that they will die once they’ve been sucked up. Apply DE in any cracks and crevices you find, behind appliance, in door jams, along the molding and along windowsills. Use an applicator to puff areas behind outlets and switches too. Let it sit overnight.
Once the place is dark, and the bed bugs head out in search of food, they will have to walk over the DE. If they so much as touch a grain of this stuff, it will slice their exoskeleton, and they will die. DE is not something a bed bug can become resistant to, unlike the pesticides exterminators use. So, while an exterminator can get most of them, DE will finalize the job.
The next day, vaccum over the bare floors, cracks in the walls, baseboards, and window sills first. Then, slowly vacuum any carpeted areas if you intend to keep the carpeting.
Sprinkle the DE again, but this time, wait ten days to vacuum. Bed bugs like to eat every five to ten days, so if you wait ten days, any straggler bed bugs will have already ventured from their hiding spots and encountered DE. Plus, bedbug eggs take ten days to hatch, so any hidden eggs will have hatched. Ten days allows enough time for those new bed bugs to have a run in with DE.
Are You Looking for a Hard Money Loan to Flip a House?
Paces Funding is a hard money lender offering hard money loans to purchase and renovate non-owner occupied residential and commercial properties throughout the Atlanta, Nashville, Florida, or the North and South Carolina metropolitan areas. Our application process for hard money loans is easy. Just fill out this very simple online form and you will be contacted shortly. Unlike other lenders, the window between applying and funding is very small. We have funded properties in as a little as one day, but typically funding hard money loans takes about seven to ten days.
Call us at 404-814-1644 or contact us online to find out whether you might qualify for this type of funding. In the meantime, check to ensure that you meet our loan criteria. Our loan amounts can be up to 65 percent of the after-repaired value of the collateral—and if you use the loan for renovation or construction, the loan amount can be based on the collateral’s improved value.
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