What to do about surprise cockroaches on day 1 of our lease?

May 18, 2012 10:05 AM

We just signed a year long lease on a very nice house but haven't moved in yet. The lease started on Tuesday, the checks are cashed by the landlord, and the walkthrough in the bright light of day was fine. The landlord assured us that there were no bug problems (except termites in the past, which have been treated). However, yesterday evening when we were moving the first load of stuff to the new house, we spotted multiple cockroaches (outside, but against the house/diving into cracks in the foundation). NOOOO!!! How to proceed when we would have not signed the lease under these conditions?

Cockroaches are somewhat uncommon in our area. My last few places have not had them, and i am kind of messy. We would NOT have signed the lease if we had any idea that there were cockroaches. Even though we haven't seen any inside yet, there is no way they won't infiltrate once we provide the traces of food and moisture and human stuff to lure them in, right?

From what I have read online, this breaks the reasonable habitability clause, but we need to ask the landlord to correct the problem first. After that, can we break the lease? Can we opt out without having him try to fix the problem? We don't want to live with roaches, even temporarily, and feel that since he specifically told us there wasn't any cockroaches, and that we haven't occupied yet, that this may be reasonable. Is it?

I feel TERRIBLE, because the owners and landlord are really nice, and breaking the move seems like a dick move. But, cockroaches!!!!! UGH.

posted by cakebatter to home & garden (23 answers total)

If your landlord is truly that nice, approaching him and saying "Look, we noticed that there are a few cockroaches outside of the house. Before we move our things in, we would like you to bomb the house for roaches."
Bombing the entire house takes about a day in which no-one should be there [those fumes are highly toxic], but that should take care of your problem if it isn't a serious infestation. Which, if you're not seeing cockroaches falling out of doorways and building pyramids in the closet, it definitely isn't that serious.
While cockroaches are nasty, I fail to see how a couple roaches outside of the house is grounds to break a lease. It definitely wouldn't make your home unlivable. You do know that almost every house has some number of bugs living in it, right?
posted by shesaysgo at 10:19 AM on May 18, 2012 [9 favorites]

"Bombing" (thoroughly fumigating the place) before you move in might solve the problem...

I once moved into an apartment that (unbeknownst to me) had a vicious roach infestation. I was horrified, but once they bombed it was ok. Like you, I would have chosen a different place had I known at the outset. I'm just saying, if for whatever reason you can't break the lease, it would actually be a lot better to bomb before you move in.
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:19 AM on May 18, 2012

Where are you located? In some places, cockroaches can often be found outside, and will try to get into your house. It's not exactly something a landlord can do anything about.

The easiest way to see if you have an infestation is to check under the kitchen sink for droppings (they look like little black coffee grounds). Check in any kitchen drawers for droppings.

I would say that if you find droppings, you should be a little worried.

However, if there is no sign of droppings, you can relax.

The easiest way to prevent against cockroaches is to use window and door screens at all times. And wash your dishes. And vacuum. And prevent clutter.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:22 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've lived where there were cockroaches outdoors, and the little black traps have always kept them at bay (they carry poison back to wherever they're living) -- I think I might never have attracted any at all with normal living, except I had cats, and their food and water dishes turned out to be the attractant in my apartment. If you're worried after they bomb, throw a couple of those in out-of-the-way kitchen places (one under the fridge, one at the back of the under-sink cabinet) and don't ever think of it again. They're not usually a problem if you keep a reasonably clean house.
posted by acm at 10:30 AM on May 18, 2012

You haven't moved in yet. That's a good thing. Call the landlord, tell him what you found, and ask him to get an exterminator out there pronto so the situation can be evaluated before you need to move in. Let the exterminators do their work before you move in, which will make things easier for them and you anyway, and get on with enjoying your new place.

It's unlikely that you can break the lease based on the mere presence of cockroaches outside the house before any attempts have been made to deal with the situation, but you'd want to talk to a lawyer and/or tenants' rights agency about that.
posted by zachlipton at 10:31 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Depends on the kind of roaches, where you are in the country and more.

German or Oriental or the giant "Palmetto" kind, have a bug bomb or throughout pro extermination round before all your stuff is in without mercy, for sure, but a good fumigation by a professional should do for inside and outside the house if it's really really that bad.

Don't go in the house for a while after it's been done (at least 12 hours) and then run all the fans and have all the windows open when you go in. If it's a bomb and not just a 'squirt in all the bug party spots' treatment.

Wash and wipe down all the surfaces you'll be touching (if not the walls - I have reactions to all kinds of things so I'd wash the walls) if a "bombing" was done, otherwise just counter tops and knobs and switches and baseboards and such and then start moving your stuff in.

There's another kind of 'roach not Siam but they're rounder and kind of brown and like mulch. They wander inside my tropical-area home but they're just escapees from the garden (they looove my mulch). I squish 'em and spray Orange Guard where they come in and if it rains enough the OG washes away and they come in. Their scuttling freaks the kids but as far as I know they are among the least harmful of the 'roach type o bug.

Make sure extermination is part of the agreement (paid or taken from rent) and have it done at least quarterly (treat around the edges, not bombing the house).
posted by tilde at 10:34 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thanks, I do need to calm down. My boyfriend is the one who is really upset, and he INSISTS that the inside must be infested. I really don't want to break the lease myself.

We are in the central valley, california. It is very dry so normally all we get is rattlesnakes and black widows, which I can handle. I didn't know that cockroaches were outside critters.
posted by cakebatter at 10:35 AM on May 18, 2012

However, yesterday evening when we were moving the first load of stuff to the new house, we spotted multiple cockroaches (outside, but against the house/diving into cracks in the foundation)

This doesn't mean that there are cockroach problems inside the house. Not all types of cockroaches even typically camp out inside of houses. Even so, a roach occasionally getting into your house doesn't automatically turn it into Joe's Apartment.

(I don't understand how the habitability clause would be broken?)
posted by desuetude at 10:39 AM on May 18, 2012

Call Orkin or Terminix, have them do an assessment before you move in (If you move your stuff in the landlord can say that you brought them with you.)

If they give it a clean bill of health, then great! (If he's that bug-phobic, and I totally relate, get a contract with them to spray to keep it bug-free)

If they indicate that there's an infestation, you now have expert witness testimony that it's uninhabitable.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 10:42 AM on May 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

I guess as far as habitability clause goes we thought that bugs pooping in the silverware drawer and around all of the food preparation areas was pretty unacceptable. We have zero roach experience and only have heard things like "when you see 1, there are 100 hidden". We saw about a half dozen in fifteen minutes in the foundation area under the kitchen window and they were crawling into cracks in the stucco. The previous owner has a dog door on the kitchen door, so it seems like once we have food in the kitchen they will come in hoards. Is this bad? We don't know but it is gross to the uninitiated.
posted by cakebatter at 10:46 AM on May 18, 2012

You need to check for droppings inside to have any idea if it's even a problem in the kitchen. It's entirely possible that they are not entering the house proper. Since you know where they are, and where they're entering the foundation, it should be pretty straightforward to put out some "kill the nest" bait and let it do its work. And I'd also bomb the house and have an exterminator spray, just for good measure, but it's probably the bait that will do the job on the ones you saw.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:51 AM on May 18, 2012

First, contact the landlord and notify about the roaches you saw. If they are a problem, they'll want to take care of it, and if they aren't a problem yet, they'll want to keep it from becoming one.

Then, take a deep breath and see how it goes. I have always been freaked out by roaches, and growing up in Chicago, I had a few places with a lot of 'em. Out here in southern california, I have a wonderfully clean house without any roach problems, but twice I've had a *single* roach come in the dog door (after heavy rains, naturally), and killed it. That's in more than eight years. Someone else I know moved into a rental, and there was a damp smell. A roach was seen in a less-than-stellar place, the landlord was contacted, he paid to fix the leak (source of the dampness, the previous tenants hadn't told him) and exterminate, and since then -- about a year -- only one other roach has been seen, and it was an outdoor roach. That's exactly the same number of alligator lizards that have been caught indoors in the same period of time, and the house isn't infested with those, either.

So, in short: don't panic. Just notify the landlord, make sure the weatherstripping on the bottom of the doors is in good shape, and put a panel of wood to close off the dog door.
posted by davejay at 10:54 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

As mentioned, check for dog droppings. Also, seal the doggy door immediately. After that, put roach motels at the kitchen door entrance, both inside and outside.

If you have roaches right outside like that it will definitely be an issue. On the bright side, constantly fending off roaches coming in from outside is not an infestation.

An infestation is when they establish a beachhead inside the house, and that can only happen if there is food, moisture, and clutter, and undisturbed areas close to food.

I wouldn't be too worried about it, although you are going to have to be really careful. Still, this was basically how I lived my life in Japan - we had a house with a beautiful garden and a veranda, which was how the roaches got in. I just made sure there were screens on the doors and, to add an extra layer of defense, set out roach motels just inside the doors, as well as under coaches, under the sink and next to the fridge.

Once a week I would check the traps; once a month I might find a roach.

On the other hand, I've lived in a place that was completely infested with roaches (it wasn't my fault), but if you're clean there's really nothing for them to eat. So they don't reproduce. And critical mass cannot occur.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:22 AM on May 18, 2012

Ugh, not dog droppings, roach droppings.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:23 AM on May 18, 2012

If you want to help keep the roaches on the outside (and kill them, too) you could set up a Vegas Roach Trap. What you do is you get a coffee can or a glass jar or something, and you put some attractant down in the bottom. Old coffee grounds work well, so does something like beer-soaked bread. You smear a nice layer of vaseline around the inside of the rim, and you put it outside up against the wall of the house so that roaches who are climbing on your house can get to it easily.

What then happens is that the roaches flock to the can (rather than exploring your house) and crawl in looking for the bait, whereupon they are trapped because they can't cross the vaseline to get back out. These kind of traps can hold a really disgusting number of roaches.

Here is a link to a slightly more advanced version of the trap that seems like it'd do a better job of actually killing roaches rather than just trapping them.

Good luck. I just moved out of a place in New Orleans (where everybody has roaches to some degree) which was badly infested. Right now I'm working on keeping the stowaways who travelled with me in my things from getting established in my new house. Gotta go down to the hardware store and buy more gel baits today.
posted by Scientist at 11:57 AM on May 18, 2012

Roaches are actually outside bugs in their regular state; like lots of bugs, they are part of the waste-processing bit of the ecosystem. Human homes just provided them a niche that they happened to fit well, and they exploited it.

So don't freak out about outside roaches, yet. Nthing the advice to get the house bombed before you move in and really, you should be fine.

After a few months, you might also buy this excellent stuff called Maxforce gel (which I read about here on Ask Mefi) and put it down near any cracks you are concerned about. That stuff is great, and it cleared up our chronic bathroom roach problem pronto. But I'd wait till you actually see a roach first.

Be sure and dispose of all your moving boxes after you're unpacked; cardboard is attractive to roaches, especially left out on a porch or in a shed.

Otherwise, just keep your trash from piling up and you will be fine. Overally, I've had far more problems with those effing little sugar ants in houses then with roaches.
posted by emjaybee at 12:17 PM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Roach gel or roach paste works great.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:39 PM on May 18, 2012

Reaches are incredibly common in the hot dry flatlands of CA. Seriously, they're everywhere from Imperial Valley desert up through the hotter parts of the central Valley. In Palm Springs you sew them running around at night like something out of a horror movie. But they don't seem to infest houses like they do elsewhere, they are mostly outdoor bugs. There is no way your landlord cam eliminate all the roaches from your yard and there's no evidence of a problem inside so I'd hold off on panic for now.

If you are not a good housekeeper your real problem in that area is going to be ants. Those things are relentless.
posted by fshgrl at 12:48 PM on May 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Any chance they could have been crickets? Before asking for chemical treatment, check the corners of top kitchen cabinet shelves for bit of legs and egg casings that a cleaner might have missed. Check the tops of the cabinets for sticky brown spots of poop. Pull kitchen drawers right out of the cabinet and check the outsides, bottoms and backs for poop spots.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:55 PM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, they could be crickets. The first time I ever saw one (black, shiny, long legs) I was completely disgusted.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:05 PM on May 18, 2012

Check your lease. In the houses I've rented, there's always been a section about bugs and vermin or whatever. Usually if it's within a certain number of time (I've seen 10 days to 2 weeks) after you've moved in, the landlord is responsible for it.

I moved into a house that, a week after we moved in, we discovered had roaches and mice. I curled up and cried, envisioning vermin burrowing in my hair and stealing food out of my hand. Then I called the landlord politely, but repeatedly, until he sent over exterminators. We were also super-careful about not leaving food or crumbs out or puddles of water in the sink or on the counters. (Which you should do anyway, of course. But you know.) The cockroaches went away. They had to spray one more time, a few months later after a really heavy rain drove them in.

I hate hate hate hate hate them and I totally sympathize.
posted by Aquifer at 6:20 PM on May 18, 2012

Are there trees close to the house and/or with branches spread over the roof? I lived in two apartments in the same complex: the first a scrupulously clean apartment with ongoing roach sightings, the second a dusty, disorganized apartment with zero roaches. The only difference according to the complex exterminator was that the first apartment had tree branches that draped over the roof and near the windows, allowing tree-dwelling, usually-outdoor roaches to wander inside.
posted by nicebookrack at 9:07 AM on May 20, 2012

With all due respect to the helpful posters above, you should read this before you jump to conclusions and/or treat anything with poison; 6 possible species in California, all with different culture, biology and most importantly, control methods. A professional is generally the way to go for two reasons: identification and proper(hopefully least-toxic) control.

We're having sightings from what may be mainly outdoor roaches in a 20 unit apartment building and are debating how to approach(ha!) the issue. Identification is our primary hindrance atm.

I have a feeling that many landlords give a spray after a complaint, but the roaches are primarily outdoors ones. The spray repels them enough and the problem is "solved", but with poison for a problem that had less toxic solutions easily available. For real infestations of the worst roaches(I lived in an apt as a kid with one), a simple 'bombing' wouldn't help IME and according to the paper linked above. As the only residents in a house, you will have a much easier time of it I think.

Educate yourself and work with the owners/landlord, it's not the end of the world :)
posted by a_green_man at 1:46 AM on June 13, 2012