Are landlords liable for treating bed bug infestations?

Question

Dear fellow investors:

I received a $700 bill from my property management to treat a bed bug infestation in a small duplex.
Can I hold the renters responsible for this bill - or at least part of it?
I've owned the building for ~1.5 years; one renter came with the property when I purchased it, the other has been there for ~1 year. It's a clean building and to the best of my knowledge there has been no such infestation before. By deduction one of the renters must have introduced he bed bugs but they blame each other.
Thanks in advance for sharing your relevant experience with such situations and your thoughts.

Ian Walsh · Answer

I believe it depends on the market.  City, township etc.

Jessica J. · Answer

Thanks for the advice! This is super helpful. Apologies in advance for the SUPER LONG reply. As the person living in the other unit (house-hacking) I have been definitely losing sleep over the possibility of the bed bugs coming over to our side and am doing my best to try to get it right the first time.

Below I will describe my approach, please feel free to point out if there is something that I am missing that I haven't yet considered. Would love to get a second opinion.

Before I describe my plans, a few things to note about the property:

1. The units share one wall, the infested unit is a 1 story unit. Our unit is 2 stories and the shared wall is our living room, all of our bedrooms are on the second floor.

2. The infested unit doesn't have access to our garage, they do street parking. The units face different street so their cars is no where near our car, garage or storage unit.

3. We have regular outdoor trash bins for each unit and we line them up in a row. So I will be sure to ask them to get these chemically treated as well. Thanks for the tip!

4. When the inspectors came over, they checked the unit that reported the bed bugs and said that they couldn't really even tell that there were bed bugs. There were no obvious signs of infestation.

My current plan:

1. Treatment Plan:

I am thinking of first having a canine inspection done on my side of the unit to confirm if the bed bugs have already traveled to our side of the unit. He should be able to detect if they are already in our walls is what I am told but not sure about the electrical outlets? If the bedbugs are in both units then I was thinking of just getting the entire building treated at once, possibly by fumigation or heat treatment.

If it there are no bed bugs on our side what I was told we can do is to do a chemical or heat treatment only on the infested unit and then on our unit we would do a chemical treatment of our baseboards to make sure that we kill the bed bugs if they do travel over to our side. Dusting the electrical outlets was not on my radar, so thanks for the tip. I will ask about that. Also about getting our trash cans treated.

Is this what you meant by also making sure to treat the other unit? This is more of a preventative treatment, so not sure if this is sufficient or if you were suggesting to just do the full fumigation, chemical and heat treatment on the entire building?

2. A bit more info on the pest companies:

Do you have any recommendations for California pest companies? Maybe I can find one that also has a local branch here in San Diego.

To be honest I have had a hard time looking for the right pest company.I have had several inspectors come by. The majority of companies don't guarantee that the bed bugs will be exterminated, especially if it means fumigating the entire building. :/ I found two companies, one that guarantees the bed bug extermination for 30 days (Orkin LLC) for heat treatment only and the other for chemical treatment only (HomeGuard). However, the company that guarantees the chemical treatment for 30-days also has a quarterly pest control service that also covers bed bugs. Most pest control services I have seen do not cover bed bugs. With this quarterly service they also do called in visits for the external/internal of the property.

Orkin is quoting me at $4k to do the heat treatment on one unit, guaranteed for 30-days and include canine inspections 2 weeks after the treatment. They will also cover chemical treatment of my unit for all baseboards in that price. However, if I do treat only the one unit they don't guarantee no bed bugs on my unit. :/ Fumigation for the entire building would be $10k and heat treatment for both units would be $13k.

HomeGuard is quoting me at $850 for doing a chemical treatment on the one unit and guarantees it for 30-days, no canine inspections included. They also have quarterly pest control that covers bed bugs. So if any unit sees bed bugs we can call and they can come over and treat it. My concern with doing the chemical treatment from the get go is that it won't kill the bed bugs in the walls whereas the fumigation and heat treatment will. Which is why I am leaning towards fumigation if both units need to be treated and heat treatment if only the one unit needs to be treated.

The third company that has come over is Western Exterminators. They quoted me at $1800 for heat treatment on the one unit, no guarantees, canine inspection would be an add-on expense. Fumigation would be between $3600-4k, also no guarantees.

I am currently torn with my options. I was thinking of doing a combination, and am not trying to cheap out for think of it logically with the following assumptions:

1. the 2 companies only guarantee for 30-days

2. the canine inspection can only be done 2 weeks after the treatment

With these two assumptions that they are really only guaranteeing to do 2 treatments at most. Since if the canine inspection finds bugs they would do the treatment again and then we wouldn't be able to get another canine inspection for another 2 weeks out. At that point regardless of what that second canine inspection reports, the 30-day guarantee would be over.

With that information I am thinking of doing the following combination:

1. Hire Western to do a heat treatment on the infested unit and have them do a chemical treatment on the baseboards of my unit and of course now ask them to also dust the electrical outlets and treat both trash cans. $2k

2. Do a canine inspection of the entire property 2 weeks after the initial treatment with Western or Orkin. Around $350. Oh man not sure what I would do if the canine finds bedbugs on either unit. :/ Possibly fumigate the entire building? which would mean another $350-4k.

3. Hire HomeGuard for their quarterly pest control, that way if we see signs of bed bugs later down the road they can do some kind of chemical treatment on the infested area.

I would greatly appreciate any advice anyone has. Please help poke holes in my plan if there is something I am not considering. I may just continue to call other pest companies tomorrow to ask if they guarantee their services and for what amount of time. I am hoping I can get that information without having to wait for a technician to come out and see the property. I have called around so many places that require an inspection before even talking about pricing, and getting the inspections setup in a timely manner has been a challenge.

Greg M. · Answer

First thing is to get the bed bug situation taken care of regardless of fault. Do not cheap out on the company doing it. Make sure it's not just a come once type company. Make sure they not only treat the unit, but inside the walls and "dust" the electrical outlets. Have them treat the outside of the unit including garage where the renters park and the trash cans. I would also have them treat your side of the duplex even if you don't see a bed bug. A landlord I knew had his unit treated and the bed bugs just moved to the unit next door. Even worse, his tenant stored stuff in a garage cabinet and that was infested and got into another neighbors car!

Assuming there are none on your side and the exterminator will say this and point to the other unit as the root cause, you should be able to charge the tenant for the extermination. Expect the tenant to balk at paying. Professional bed bug treatment is expensive. It can easily be over $1,000.

Drew Sygit · Answer

@Stephan Mayer recommend you handle the treatment so you have all the records and can make sure it was done to your satisfaction. No telling what the tenants might do. This is a separate issue than charing the tenants.

What you may consider doing to better determine which tenant is responsible is hire a BB company with a canine detector. Check with them upfront, but they may be able to determine which unit has a higher concentraion of bugs - which MAY mean that unit is where the infestation started. Ask the experts.

Just be sure to review your lease and determine how pests are covered. We have a clause in our lease that a tenant has 30 days from MoveIn to alert us to any pest issues, otherise they are responsible.

Kyle J. · Answer

Well if the property is in Tennessee, that’s a little different. However, I still think you’d have a hard time charging a tenant if you don’t know which one they actually came from. After all, it wouldn’t be right to charge both if they only came from one.

I think you’d have a better case if it was a single family residence, but since it’s a duplex and you’re not sure which tenant introduced them, I’d say the cost for treating them should be on the landlord (in my opinion).

For what it’s worth, here’s a post from a Tennessee attorney that would seem to agree: Just Answer. Landlord-Tenant: What is the law about bed bugs in TN.

Good luck either way and hope it works out for you.

Stephan Mayer · Answer

@Kenny, thank you. The property is in TN.

Stephan Mayer · Answer

@Greg M., thank you. The property is in TN, however.

Stephan Mayer · Answer

@Kyle J., thanks for your input.

This property is located in TN.

Kyle J. · Answer

@Stephan Mayer Is this property in California? If so, based on the relatively new laws about bed bugs here, and the fact that you can’t identify specifically which unit introduced them, and - lastly - that our state considers any unit infested with bedbugs to be uninhabitable, I’d say you’ll have to eat the cost on this.

Here’s some links with some more info on the topic:

SF Gate: A Landlord's Responsibilities for Bug Infestations in California

AAOA: New Bed Bug Laws Apply to California Landlords

Bed Bugs and the Law in California - Contra Costa Health Services

Are landlords liable for treating bed bug infestations?

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