Of late bed bug infestations in London are in the increase. It is mainly due to our high mobility as Londoners, and also to overcrowding.
Bed bug do not fly, so you first need to pick them up from somewhere. What seem quite plain and obvious is actually impossible to foresee. In my experience, my clients have bought second hand items coming from an infested bedroom such as picture frame, bed side table, mattress or complete bed.
In other cases, they would have travelled. Slept some time in an infested bedroom, most likely keeping the suitcase under the bed, or close enough. Then the suitcase would have travelled and in the process, the vibrations might have caused the bed bug to move away from their hiding place. This is how I guess, they could go from one suitcase to another, or end up in the tube, having them no other alternative to die, or take a ride on an unsuspecting tube traveller back home?
Well you get the picture, you are the ones who introduce them inside your home. And it is only once you take notice of them, that you can do something about it.
There is then a potential dispute with the landlord about who should pay for the treatment. For me I would tend to say the landlord. Why should the landlord pay for it? For a start renting is a business like any other, and unexpected expenses happen and should be catered for. If the boiler fails, the landlord in the same line of thought would not charge the tenant, but just get on with it.
Is it fair if the tenant actually brought them in? No it is not! But the larger picture makes it essential for the landlord to pay for it. Otherwise what happen is tenants denying the infestation, moving out, and leaving an infested property for the next tenants. When the new tenants take notice of the problem, they may complain, request compensations (up to the length of the treatment 2-4 weeks of rent) and leave no choice for the landlord, but for him to pay for the treatment.
In clear it is not worth the hassle for the landlord. It is best to keep the tenant happy, and have them to suffer the consequence of the infestation (that they brought in) while the treatment takes place.
Note that it is illegal, to rent a property that is actively infested. And the catch is that a bed bug treatment may not be successful if nobody sleeps in. The sleeping tenant act primarily as bait, giving an incentive for the bed bug to get out of their hiding place, and therefore walking on the pesticides that will kill them.
Well it is quite difficult to give convincing arguments in a blog, but you should know that once I explained it in details to some estate agents who used to try charging the tenants for bed bug treatment, they changed their protocols.
Landlords, protect your assets, it is really in your benefit to make sure that you don’t end up with a vacant infested property that you can rent out for weeks. Paying for the treatment will work out cheaper at the end.
Daniel Neves
http://www.inoculand.co.uk/
