Carpenter Ants!! (Rotterdam: houses, neighborhood, buy)

[Vaedur]

Well,

I found a great home finally, it's in Rotterdam, the price is great, it's outdated. But .. it's got the size our family needs, is in a great neighborhood, and is like 35k under market value.. but..

It has carpenter ants! we found minor damage to a joist (sp?) under the floor which needs to be replaced. We have pest control coming to take a look today.

THoughts? Anyone ever buy a house with carpenter ants? Some people say no big issue, some people say run like heck. Seems very very common in this area of Ny

[j12308]

Me personally I'd say wait and see what the pest person says. I've had 2 houses, the first had current carpenter ants. We didn't know it, looked fine from the exterior. There was rotten pieces on an open porch that we knew needed to be replaced. As we were tearing the wood out the ants flowed out like crazy, the wood was lacey w/holes. It was gross! BUT, once the rotten wood was replaced the problem was taken care of. At my current place also on the porch there was old damage done by carpenter ants. Meaning there are not current ants eating wet wood. The column at one time had been chewed and repaired/patched by the previous owner. We have not seen ants in that area or current damage. On rare occasion we find an ant inside. We spray the outside perimeter of the house and that's that. To me it's kind of like roaches in the South, it's hard to not have a few. Beside the pest person have you had the house inspected by a building inspector to make sure structurally it's in good shape? No roof leaks, etc.

I wanted to add that for some reason this year in particular I've hear a lot of people complain about ants. It must be all the rain.

[Vaedur]

Yes we had it inspected. There is a roof leak that needs to be patched, but my best friend is a roofer...

The porch is also old, and he figured it had rot that was patched...