It’s Saturday night and you have had a long week. You are relaxing on your couch watching TV, when unexpectedly you hear a knock at the door. You rise, walk to the door, and ask, “Who is it?” A sweet young voice replies, “It’s me Karen, I live upstairs, do you have a moment?” You open the door and there stands this tiny little woman with a smile on her face.

You invite her in and lead her to your dining room table. You both sit down and she says, “I have a problem and I don’t know how to say this”. With human concern you ask, “Are you OK?” She goes on to say that, since she and her child moved in they have been experiencing some kinds of rash or bites and they itch very bad. She added she was not sure what the rash was from at first but she read an article about other people having similar problems that turned out to bed bugs.

She says, “Now I am not accusing you, but we just moved here and we have never had this problem before and I just want to check and see if just maybe, this could be the problem. The article also said that some people may have them and don’t get affected by the bites, so months could go by before they realize they have them, and then they spread through the surrounding walls into others apartments.

“Would you do me a favor and check to see “if” you might have bed bugs?”

“Bed bugs! I haven’t a clue what you are talking about, what’s a bed bug?”

This young woman was more than kind and offered to go in and look. They both rose from the table and walked to his bedroom. She said, “I am not real sure but from what I have read and the pictures I have seen, they can leave marks on the sheets and when they grow out of their previous skins they leave the old ones behind.

The man turned and asked her, “Where did you get all this information?” She replied, I called MassBedBugBusters and a lady told me what to look for and emailed me some great information about multi-unit apartments”. She also added, “She’s a professional bed bug dog detection company and works with a lot of properties. She said the signs of bed bugs are obvious when someone has had them for a while, if you know what to look for but sometimes they can be hard to find and that is where the dogs come in”.

She pulled back the comforter, lifted the corners of the sheets from the mattress and saw colonies of bed bugs riddled upon the edges of the mattress. The guy’s eyes opened wide and he gasped and said “OMG, I had no clue!”

To make a long story short, this situation is more common than most people realize. Unfortunately, property owners do not check their units before renting them out and in cases like this, bed bugs could be residing in surrounding units without anyone knowing. They hide deep in the walls, carpet edges and other places. It is only after a person moves in that the bed bugs come searching for a blood meal and the person reacts from the bites to discover bed bugs in the unit.

This happens more than you can imagine!

Don’t let this happen! Wake up and see the possibilities of bed bugs in your properties. Before you lease one of your units to anyone, call for the services of our bed bug detection dogs. They are trained to sniff out live bed bugs, their eggs and nymphs. Knowing if you have a problem with bed bugs before you rent to a new tenant can certainly keep you out of a possible lawsuit.

Within the law of “pests” that occupy a rental unit are laws that hold the owner responsible for providing safe habitable premises. If you ignore the possibilities of bed bugs residing in a unit, send in maintenance to clean the unit, and don’t check for bed bugs, the next tenant can fall victim to your negligence.

In this case, the property owner was notified and the proper inspections and treatment of all surrounding units was overseen. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen often. Wake up people, know bed bugs are something that is part of our lives and can be found in even the cleanest of properties and the best clients.

MassBedBugBusters got into the business in order to help people. We go in and do regular inspections of many of their client’s buildings. They educate property owners, hotel management, tenants so that everyone knows upfront what the possibilities are, and teach them how to deal with it properly.

Call MassBedBugBusters at 508-713-8267 or (508) 868-5579

Or visit us at www.massbedbugbusters.com and fill out a service request form. You will be glad you did!