Pest Control: Who is Responsible?

Prospective tenant beware.

While recently representing tenants, I negotiated a lease for a condo in Stamford and came up on the issue of pest control responsibility. I had always assumed any sort of pest control and eradication would be the responsibility of the landlord, but this lease (made specifically for the landlord,) tagged the tenant with this duty.

Immediately, I took this to be a red flag. Did the condo have a history with bugs? Were Mickey and Minnie Mouse once tenants? I consider pest control to be in the landlord’s best interest, so why would they want to rely on tenant’s to protect the unit from pests?

It turns out more and more landlords are now taking this route, in an effort to protect themselves from messy tenants, which in many ways makes sense. However, there are too many “what if” scenarios to convince me that this should solely be the responsibility of the tenant.

A couple of year’s back I came about a pest issue in an apartment I was renting. We were fairly clean and never had issues with pests before, but one day we started to notice mouse poop all over our kitchen. Fortunately, our landlord took responsibility of the situation and immediately remedied the problem.

As it turned out, the tenants that had lived above us had just moved out, and were not the cleanliest of people, and had presumably been hosts to some very grateful mice. When they left, the mice had to migrate elsewhere, and out of desperation, embarked on a journey to our kitchen.

I think this story is appropriate because we were ultimately the victims of other, less cleanly tenants and in no way were we responsible for our new roommates. It would have been outrageous if the landlord expected us to fix the problem.

So, if you’re looking to rent a place, it goes without saying- read the lease before you sign. If pest control isn’t defined, I would suggest making sure the lease is amended to do so to alleviate any future confusion. And if the landlord is suggesting the tenant is responsible for pest control costs, do your due diligence to make sure you are comfortable moving forward with the lease.