All Forum Posts by: Kevin Farrell

 CimeXa is very effective but way too expensive to treat a whole house. A common mistake that people make when trying to treat for BB is they treat one or two rooms. That almost never works because a small percentage of the bugs are always migrating. They end up in weird  places. Delta Dust is more affordable but is still used in addition to a liquid spray pesticide.

Kim Morrisey - I would add that once they get into one of your units, it's just a matter of time for them to get into all the units. They will spread to adjacent units very quickly and people will carry them from unit to unit. Frequent inspections, perimeter spray all units, and treat each occurrence asap. This is especially true in all D properties. Less so in C properties. 

Molly Mac Killian - diatomaceous earth is no longer an effective treatment for Bed Bugs. The demonstrated performance is only about 50% lethality. Not nearly enough to eliminate them from the home.

Use about 5 X more traps than you think you needd. For example, 32 traps in a 3/2 home is not too many. Biggest mistake people make is under trapping. They harvest some mice and think they are done.

@Tracy Thornton - I have a pest control business in Indianapolis and 80% of my business is in treating bed bugs.

1. Chemical treatment is as effective as heat. Both depend on the technician but heat has no residual to handle survivors.

2. The tenants almost certainly brought these in. If they were in the home, they would have complained in one to two weeks after moving in.

3. As others have asked - what is in your lease? Treat the home and charge it back to them if you can. It is better to treat the home while they are still residing in it. Vacant homes are a bit more challenging to treat for BB with chemical.

4. Shop around. I do a 3 bedroom SFR for $600 with written 90 guarantee for landlords. You will find an amazing range of prices for this work. Look for the written guarantee - most don't offer it.

Best of luck to you.

Just following up here. It is 9/23/16 today. I created a nice list using AgentPro247. The data for the county that I have targeted was pulled on 8/15/2016 and compared well with the most recent tax sale list from the same county. So I filtered the list down to what I think I want and created the mailing list. I created a postcard and loaded the list and the postcard up to Click2Mail. Click2Mail was a little bit confusing but after going through the order process once I have to say I like it. They printed and mailed in less than 24 hours. Bam! I plan to send out a different county list each week.

I will follow up here in the future with some results of this campaign. This is my first attempt at a mail campaign. Thanks to BP and all who made suggestions here.

Dennis - I found the SRI website and it is very useful. What I am looking for in each county is a list that contains seller address. That is the ultimate goal so that I can send mail. If I can get it included on a list, it makes my job easier.

Thanks to all.

@Wayne Brooks - very true. Each county seems to have a little bit different view of this type of request. It's all part of learning the ropes.

Ned, thanks for jumping in here. I've been busy trying to crack this nut and I have made some progress. First of all, I should have just moved on to another county but I wanted to start with a particular county and I couldn't get it out of my head. As you suggested, I looked up the law and in Indiana they have what's called the Access to Public Records Act (APRA). In that law they have a form letter for use in requesting information. The agency has 7 days to respond. If they can not provide the information, they must state the statute that prevents them from releasing the information, etc. I sent the letter attached to a polite email to the clerk who refused me the first time. The response came from the County Treasurer who said that the records are available in their offices from 8 to 5 blah, blah, blah. In other words, yes they have to let me have access to the records, but no, they won't make it at all convenient (even though they can).

The tax sale data is out on each county's website here in Indiana - until the sale is over. Then the list is GONE. It is a very brief list. It has the owner's name but not address. That is why it doesn't really satisfy what I really need in a list.

I have tried signing up for both Rebogateway and AgentPro247. I got full membership in both because I can't tell what the data looks like on a trial with either of them. For tax delinquent lists AgentPro247 is the way to go. I can not speak for the quality of the data - yet.

My mailing list is all set up and I am going to order postcards as soon as I get done with this post.

Still looking for some practical tips on getting lists from the county. I am hoping to be armed with some information when I call them again. I looked at the state law regarding access to public records and found a paragraph that excludes access to the data if it is to be used for business or political purposes. So maybe this is a recent development.

The County tax lien sale list has the owner name but not their address. I would have to look up each record separately. Is there a better way??

Part 2 - I looked at AgentPro247 and came away mostly confused. Is anyone using AgentPro247 to get Tax sale data from counties? Not necessarily in Indiana - I just wondered how to use it. It looked to me like I can select sale type=tax and that will get the records that I want. Not sure about it though. Trial account does not allow CSV export so I can't examine the data. I am ready to pay for their information but not sure if it works the way I want. Any tips would be appreciated.

Thanks for reading this.