Greg:
I had roach problems through the years.
You’ll need to think “the Vietnam war”, and the notorious and stealty “Viet Cong”. How did they win?? It was the inabilty to choke off supplies to the enemy. We ran away with our tails between our legs.
Looks like the roach “insurgents” got you beat, mainly because filthy tenants supply “aid and comfort” to the enemy.
I got rid of a tenant or two for this reason. In one of the worst cases, I went with an exterminator, and he lifted a rubber mat underneath the dish rack, and about 100 roaches ran in all directions. It’s the first time ever I saw an exterminator literally jumped.
Fortunately, when I rehabbed that house, and before the roach problem arose, I insisted on CAULKING all the opening between floors, particularly where pipes comes out of walls, or into the floors. The exterminator asked about doing the entire building, and was surprised to hear that neighboring units had no problems, and those tenants did not want the place treated. Normally, roaches would infest neighboring units, and you’ll have to treat all the adjoining rentals.
After I evicted this filthy tenant, I went though the unit:
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I sprayed a loose molding above a wooden baseboard, and roaches were shooting out like bullets. So I caulked spaces between kitchen cabinets and the celings and walls, and I went around the unit caulking any cracks, especially around moldings.
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I lifted up the “wall to wall” carpets, and roaches were crawling around underneath there too!! I sprayed and and I cleaned up roach eggs. I tacked down and reused the carpeting, and would’ve ripped up the padding below, replaced all of the carpeting, if the problem peristed. Turned out I didn’t need to
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Cleaned underneath stoves, refigerators.
Took a month, and did not re-rent till I saw no roaches roaming the vacant unit. I then declared MSSION ACOMPLISHED. The enemy was crushed.
Had another tenant that I decided to keep, still with me, but only after we showed the “stay at home” mom how to "roach proof the place.
- No dirty dished allowed in the sink. Wash dishes immediately
- We keep a small quart size bag next to the sink where we discard all leftover foodstuff before we discard into the regular garbage, and we had the tenant do the same.
- Do not leave food on table, keep everything in the fridge. Tenants tend to leave snacks laying around.
And we done frequent “roach inspections” since for this tenant, where we drop off fresh supplies of roach control supplies. The roach problem went down considerably, to almost non-existent now.
In the beginning, we had exterminators come, but we found the issue had to do with housekeeping.