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No one likes bedbugs—except maybe bedbug exterminators who make bank for (hopefully) getting rid of the bedbugs—and it turns out, shocker of all shockers, that potential buyers don't like them either! The NY Times' real estate section has a big article on the effects of bedbugs on deals and opens with an example of an "elegant two-bedroom co-op in an Upper East Side prewar building had drifted on the market for nine months by the time the first-time buyers laid eyes on it this spring." The buyers loved it, especially when they could get it for $50,000 less at $625,000. But then, in their "due diligence" phase, their lawyer said, "The [co-op board] minutes referenced multiple attempts to exterminate bedbugs in the building." Oh, crap.
Eventually, the buyers decided not to go through with the deal; the wife told the Times:
"Before we found out all the details, we thought maybe if it had happened two years ago and had been taken care of, and there had been no complaints ever since, we might feel comfortable. The broker said, 'This is New York City — you have all sorts of things like cockroaches and rats.' But it’s very different to have a cockroach than something that sucks your blood and is in your bed. I would rather have rats."Good question: would you rather have bedbugs or rats?
The Times points out that while the city has bedbug measures for rental buildings, if they strike condos or co-ops, it's up to the boards to take action. One lawyer said emphatically that there are pretty much bedbugs in every NYC building, adding, "I have yet to hear of a buyer going into the apartment for the preclosing walk-through and picking up the bedspreads and looking at the mattresses. If they do, you’re going to have lots of deals not closing." And some deals even go forward: One couple that bought a place because they didn't want to lose it; their lawyer said, "We sent in our own exterminator and made the seller treat where our exterminator found the bugs. He found it in some of the cracks of the walls, in the floorboards and some of the wall-to-wall carpeting."
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Rats, definitely. From what I've read about bedbugs, at least I don't have to throw out my furniture and clothing and live out of garbage bags with a rat problem, not to mention losing every semblance of a decent night's sleep with the feasting of the flesh.
I will take the furry vermin over the blood-sucking vermin any day.
call me paranoid but i don't trust the exterminators at all. they as a group could be spreading to problem to drum up business!!
I've had the same thought...
We usually don't have mice on our apt, but almost every time the exterminators come to the other apts in our building, we find mice after a couple of days. By "we" I mean our cats...
It's fun waking up in the middle of the night with one of our cats bringing a little mouse to the bed (alive) to play with him...
Have you seen the commercial
Roscoe!
Rats are intelligent mammals, as we are, protective parents that share some 96% of our DNA. Rats are so intelligent that we use them for intelligence subjects in lab experiments.
When rats come around, it is only because the humans live in filthy conditions and the rats are looking for food. Likely, the first rats arrived with Henry Hudson, so poisoning them is futile; it hasn't succeeded yet. Besides poison is bad for the environment and kills other animals.
The only difference between a rat and a squirrel is that a squirrel has a nice fur coat and better PR.
Rats suffer from centuries-old bad PR: bubonic plague in the 13th century and a children's fairy tale, the Pied Piper.
However bubonic plague is practically non-existent here, and the only other serious disease rats carry, the Hanta viurs, is solely confined to the Four Corners region among desert rats of the southwest, not likely to affect us.
Yet the government encourages us to kill rats but arrests us if we kill a pigeon, a non-mammal that carries just as much disease. Same with other mammals: the Parks Department puts bat houses in trees to encourage these mammals which carry rabies, as do dogs. Never heard of a rat with rabies, have you? Go figure.
Now a question to the PETAphiles: Is is cruelty to animals to kill bedbugs? Just curious.
I've never seen a news story about pigeons eating a human baby. Unfortunately I can't say the same thing about rats.
Thanks for bringing that up. You notice this only happens in projects or trailer parks?
The rats look for food. They see an infant with food on its lips or fingers, because some lazy trashy parent won't clean off their offspring, which at least the rat will.
The rodent with its two sharp front teeth nibbles at the lips or hands to get some sustenance, and nips the skin of the baby. That sets off the feeding frenzy.
If the parents cleaned up their baby this wouldn't happen.
Don't blame the rat, blame the parent.
Good question: would you rather have bedbugs or rats?
Rats. You can d-CON the little fuckers.
Have any of you considered all the diseases geese spread? They are four to five times bigger than a pigeon so do the math.
And have you ever tried to clean geese crap off a lawn?
Ugh.
Funny enough I was just having this conversation with Miss Heather last night, only it was that I'd rather have roaches than bedbugs because bedbugs are much more of a nightmare to get rid of from what I understand. Ugh.
Rats -- it's not even close. Rats don't require you to throw out half your life. They just require you to buy a cat.
True. I moved into a place with rats. So, I did a thorough cleaning, borrowed a neighbor's cat for a week, and the rats never returned.
i've had both and i'll take rats any day. you can see them, hear them, so you basically know where they are, not bedbugs. rats can be killed pretty easily, not bedbugs.
i have funny stores about exterminators visiting our house in the past, we didn't have roaches till they visited. they rang bell and ask about exterminating problem. we said we didn't etc.. they left. few days later we notice roaches. we call some other folks to come in.
A piece of advice from someone who has lived through a bedbug infestation... Get as far away as possible. Roaches and rats are NOTHING compared to those little #*%(#@s... It's been over nine months since I moved away from them, leaving half my life behind, and I still have nightmares about them.
You can't bait them with traps, because they will ONLY go after blood. You can't just gas them, because they sit so deep inside cracks that the stuff doesn't always reach them. You can't starve them, because they can go a year and a half without a meal. Forget just the mattress, because they'll hide in anything and everything. They were almost extinct for a while, but the enviro-warriors managed to outlaw DDT, the one thing that really stuck it to them.
So... Rats or bedbugs? You have my answer.
DDT!!!! I went through a mild(?) case of bed bugs. We got rid of them after several treatments over several weeks. The whole time I kept thinking: why did we ever ban DDT? Couldn't it just be regulated and used in extreme cases like bed bugs?
My Dad turned out ok and there's a photo of him on LBI riding his bicycle behind a truck spraying DDT. (while this is true, I only mention it to put a humorous thought/picture in everyone's head today.)
We all but eradicated the bed bug problem back in the 40s.
Now it's back. Why?
Some people are just stupid as hell. We need a simple competency test for people trying to live in NYC. If you fail... GTFO
rats are better, there's a certain satisfaction you can only get when you hear the loud snap of a trap going off.
This is what you get when you choose to live in an apartment building. I cannot fathom paying outrageous sums of money for the potential of bedbugs, roaches, vermin, noise from neighbors. What a nightmare. I am so glad I bought a private home.
*nibble nibble scratch scratch scratch march march march*
Bed bugs are 500x worse. Though rats do spread diseases, control is easier and faster.
Both pests usually require more then one treatment, however you can prevent rats with a rodent exclusion service. The only preventative measure for bed bugs is not contracting them in the first place.
If you are interested in this, check out our blog, we write daily about tons of pests such as bed bugs and rodents.
http://www.nopests.com/blog
I know I would rather treat for a rat infestation than a bedbug infestation. It's scary to be a technician even, because those bedbugs can hitchhike so easily. I wouldn't want to bring them home with me... even though I have the tools to get rid of them. They're creepy little guys!