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Old 07-12-2013, 03:26 AM
 
192 posts, read 247,260 times
Reputation: 198

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State: PA
This is my third week of living in the house. Moved in the day the previous tenant moved out.

A question and response from before I moved in between the landlord and I. They convey a response from the previous tenant 'Nik' (is there anyway of getting his full name off some kind of Pipl or snail mail database if I wanted to contact him directly, myself?):

"
A few questions/concerns since you guys are so receptive to them:
1. Please clarify if he has any bug problems. I would get pretty paranoid if I saw bugs on a frequent basis. Do you guys have an exterminator come by every now and then?
We spoke to our tennant. He said that it was rare for him to see a bug. To quote Nik, "There are no more bugs here than anywhere else in Pennsylvania, and probably less." In his 9 months here, after some thought, he could remember a few spiders and centipedes, but that was it and fortunately never a stink bug. He can't remember if he saw them in the apartment or laundry area; it was probably the laundry area. Our 3 projects in progress around ther laundry area will be completed soon (within a month we expect) by our plumber, HVAC guy, and electrician, after which time any small temporary cracks between that unfinished room and the outside will be sealed, which could make the sight of bugs even rarer. (they never did this, and haven't done it yet)

We have never needed an extermintator in the 4 years since we bought the house. The house had been unnoccupied for about a year before we moved in and we know that the seller had an exterminator for termites before we inspected the house. Our home inspector found some ants on the upper floors but nothing in the basement. We had the seller hire an exterminator to remove them. There have been no ants in the house or a termites in or near the house since we bought it."



So anyways, I am a Masters student and moved into a new house. The house itself is nice, the landlords seem a little strange but nice, fully renovated 'modern' apartment with a TV and couch and bed. I did my apartment hunting really late, subletted for the first two weeks of school and fell way behind in school. A few things even as I looked at the apartment it is kind of in the basement (half way). If I look outside my two windows, I would say my torso and above is above ground while my other half is below ground.My apartment, especially me bed is by the only unfinished/not shabby part of the house-the laundry room which has a lot of dark places in it. I noticed a few drainbugs when I moved in flying around, and later that the water wouldn't evaporate two days after I had taken a shower (indicating a very humidf environment


Anyways fast foward, I see three house centipedes one night while waking up. GROSS and freaked me out,they were the BIGGEST I'd ever seen. lost two days of sleep and delayed a midterm because of it (the worst part). Turns out the last tenant slammed the bed into the wall creating a hole. Landlord seals the hole. I don't see any around my bed walls (my bed is kind of in a corner). I mean these things are so ugly that you can't even look at them, and they move so fast you just need to kill them before they get away. Noticed the shower water wouldn't evaporate a day after I left it. Hand up a Damppdrid. Walk in the next day from school after hanging a Damprid in the bathroom and see a smaller centipede (than those by the beds sitting in the sink. I am not sure if this is a good sign after I kill it because if the Damprid worked well and it had to retreat to the most humid place under the sink faucet in the bathroom OR it crawled out of the drain.


I start putting DE in every crack seal opening I can find (and there are a few since its a basement job, in the drains, in any openings I see, coating my bed posts with it). I also make the landlord put one dehumidifier in my apartment. I think I might see a few more these next few days but hopefully when I get a humidity monitor it will tell me

I have a few questions. I know house centipedes, I've seen them before at my home home in NJ (but not nearly as ginormous as the ones I saw by my bed earlier this week).
1. How long do I have to run this dehumidifier intially and at what frequency (every day during the summer- every 2 days), and what humidity level should I keep in my apartment?

2. I want to prepare for the worst- breaking a lease and the landlord keeping $1300 (one months rent) in case I want to break the lease after my finals are done and move to another place. I have been emailing every problem to them. I have not taken any photos of the centipedes but there are shoe marks and part of their bodies where I left them that I could take a photo of. At a 10 coutn right now for the week. The bad thing, in terms of written record, for the landlord is they didn't do much until I really pestered them to, from internet servicing, fixing the support beam under my bed, house centipedes, a leak in the kitchen, their response was weeks late at a time. I also realize they had a honeymoon/wedding the week I moved in, and they might be sweet and nice but they seriously didn't hustle until I wrote them an email asking them urgently to work on these things. They literally came down that night. In fact I would yell their names (without going into their bedroom) and as big as the house is, I doubt they couldn't hear me. I guess they got tired of me asking them to do things. One thing they still haven't done and were suppose to have done was seal damage from a leak in the kitchen earlier. It is a big split in the kitchen roof and very noticeable.

I have basically been making written logs of this (emails I send to them) but receive very few responses. Should I proceed with emailing them or just writing this just for myself? I asked them to call pest control and gave them a few suggestions on mesh wiring for laundry room drians, caulk, got an iffy response/we'll wait on your result with the humidifier, no date for the handyman to come by and seal and caulk these drains etc. It seems like I practically have to beg these people to do what they should do. They would literally ignore my calling out their name in the same house (I could hear them but they couldn't hear me- go fiure). The sad part is had I waited a month I would have gotten a cheaper more reputable apartment, but since rental housing is so hard and I had school in Western Philly suburbs. I took it.

3. The lady who owns the place used to be a leasing agent. I noticed in the agreement that my father co-signed with me (since I'm financially dependent on him as a student) there is no explicit mention of pest control, even though from my conversation with her she was fine with paying for it. I wonder even if I let her keep the extra month deposit (or take her to a small calims court) will it affect my dad's credit score at all?

My largest concern and expense is my education at this point. I won't be moving until my last final on the 23rd, and I just need a few good nights of sleep. For paying slightly more than apartments around me, I seem to be getting a lot less service. I also don't think a dehumidifier is the solution to a lot more structural problems that I discoverd (ie crawl space behidn the refrigarator) after I moved in


Edit: Ended up seeing and killing another two while typing this.

Last edited by toobusytoday; 07-12-2013 at 07:25 AM.. Reason: removed crude part.
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Old 07-12-2013, 07:24 AM
 
13,249 posts, read 33,374,613 times
Reputation: 8098
I hope that one of the questions you ask yourself is if you are perhaps dealing with an exaggerated fear of bugs, and that instead of expecting to live in a bug free life, you learn some coping mechanisms? We have bugs and I generally just pick them up and throw them outside or kill them, and this includes centipedes. Twice a year or so we'll get some tiny ants and I just spray them a couple of times with whatever household cleaner I have around and then wipe them away. It's pretty normal to have some bugs.

We do not have an exterminator as I would much rather live with bugs then have poison sprayed around my house. However, if you do want an exterminator, I would suggest that you get an estimate, tell your landlord the price and if he refuses to pay, you can decide if it's worth it to you to pay that. Certainly that would be cheaper then breaking your lease.
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Old 07-12-2013, 07:42 AM
 
Location: Drexel Hill/Lansdowne
301 posts, read 918,394 times
Reputation: 164
yeah...one of the things I had to deal with while living in 75+ year old rowhomes in Philly were rats in the basement or elsewhere and now that I live in the burbs, there's bugs everywhere, though luckily not in my house.

I usually go to home depot and put that Ortho Home Defense stuff around the perimeter of my house every couple of years...I guess it's working.

Look around the house...maybe there's openings in his siding or windows frames and ask the landlord if you (or he) can spray "Good Stuff" in the cracks
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Old 07-12-2013, 02:54 PM
 
154 posts, read 321,292 times
Reputation: 135
honestly, no offense, but I think you need to toughen up a bit. If it is bothering you that much that you are prepared to lose $1300...............why not just hire an exterminator? We had Orkin after we bought our house in South Philthy and found out the night we moved in that it was infested with fleas. Now that we're in the burbs, we just transferred the service.

Originally it was $100 every three months (8 years ago). They would come out quarterly. It's gone up since then and I think it's around $120-$130 per quarter. But you are covered in between visits as well. so if something should happen (roaches, mice, etc.) they will come back out and treat / set traps.

Could probably ask the landlord to split the cost. Losing around $500 over the course of 12 months is better than losing $1300, plus the piece of mind that nothing is crawling in your mouth while you sleep is priceless.
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Old 07-12-2013, 05:11 PM
 
Location: Midwest
1,283 posts, read 2,214,617 times
Reputation: 983
Caulk up. If the landlord won't do it, do it yourself. Much more useful than exterminators.

I've had centipede problems. Neat animals and I've become acquainted with them since moving to Philadelphia. They still give me the creeps and I kill them. But did you know they live up to 5 years? You have to have some respect for that.

Also, stay out of basement apartments. That's something I'd resort to only to save money - and at 1300 a month it doesn't sound like you're saving much.
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Old 07-12-2013, 05:34 PM
 
43,011 posts, read 107,670,068 times
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Centipedes are good! They eat spiders!

If you break this lease, I wouldn't cosign another lease if I was your father.
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Old 07-13-2013, 03:29 PM
MJ7
 
6,221 posts, read 10,686,370 times
Reputation: 6606
Tell the landlord, read over the lease see what it says about maintenance. Usually just pay for it out of pocket, and subtract it from the rent with the receipt when you pay your next months rent, if the landlord says it was too expensive and he could of had it done cheaper then tell him he was forewarned and needed to act faster. this might actually make him do his job next time.
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Old 07-14-2013, 01:49 AM
FBJ
 
Location: Tall Building down by the river
39,605 posts, read 58,814,079 times
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I been at my place 5 weeks and have seen bugs but the fact that I have not seen any mice makes the bugs a minor issue


I rather see a bug I can pick up and kill then a mouse running across the room
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Old 07-14-2013, 09:55 AM
 
2,048 posts, read 2,137,136 times
Reputation: 7231
1. Why are you yelling their names from the first floor, allegedly loud enough for the whole house to hear, and expecting them to respond to that? They're not your house servants, not that anyone should even treat servants that way.

2. We run our dehumidifier constantly, in the pseudo-basement (the front part is street level, the back part is underground, as we're situated on a hill). It's a small one, but we empty it sometimes twice a day. Off the top of my head, I'd say it holds about a gallon of water when full. It's pretty normal for basement and pseudo-basement (sorry, I don't know what the proper term is here) spaces to have a dampness issue.

3. I'm curious about how many emails you've sent them. It sounds like you've been emailing them non-stop with every little thing that isn't to your liking. You might be right that they've grown tired of the constant requests for fixes and are only selectively answering you now. Honestly, this is pretty normal for landlords (especially ones that got married and honeymooned within the 3 weeks you've been there). At one point you say that you have to wait for "weeks" for them to respond - yet you've only lived there for 3 weeks. I'd advise you to read some threads in C-D from other renters who feel they have unresponsive landlords. Most people can't get a landlord to invest in an expensive dehumidifier within their first 3 weeks of living in a place!

4. If you lost two nights of sleep and had to postpone an exam because you saw 3 bugs, you may have a serious bug phobia (and I'm not judging - I'm a bit of an arachnaphobe myself). I suspect you're thinking that this tidbit will sound good in small claims court, but you may find that the judge will draw the same conclusion.

I'm trying really hard to see this from your point of view and stop short of labeling you a 'problem tenant'. Honestly, I think you should break the lease. I don't think you'll ever be happy living there.

(Also - seriously? You bellow their names from the basement and expect them to drop what they're doing and race downstairs to see how they can be of service to you? That is so disrespectful.)
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Old 07-14-2013, 02:00 PM
 
2,048 posts, read 2,137,136 times
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The funny thing is that I just went to Craigslist looking at apartments (for me, for when my sublet runs out), and today there's a furnished basement apartment for $1300 near 50th & Hazel in West Philly. Fully furnished, kitchenette. If that happens to be yours, maybe I side a little bit more with you - that's way too much money to charge, for that street (I'd live there, personally, but it's not exactly prime real estate in UC), for a basement 1BR with a tiny bedroom and a kitchen that's essentially just up against a wall in the living room. If I lived there and paid that much for so little, maybe I *would* expect instant service from my landlord/housemates! (I'm being kind of facetious, here). Anyway, good luck to you.
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