PEST PROSpectives

Look Before You Sign: The Critical Pest Inspection Guide for Homebuyers

• Pest Pros of Michigan

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Ask yourself: Have you honestly looked over a property you were considering renting or buying with an eye-out for signs of an infestation?

In this episode of PEST PROSpectives, Associate Certified Entomologist Tony Sorrentino discusses the top things to look for before you sign on the dotted line.

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Pest Pros of Michigan

PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Richard Piet:

I'm Richard Piet. Welcome PEST PROSpectives. It's our pest control advice podcast things you should know as it relates to pests, from the pest pros of Michigan, one of whom, of course, is Anthony Sorrentino. We call him Tony, associate certified entomologist and expert in pest control. Hello Tony, hey Richard, Thanks for having me. How are we doing? We're doing great and we have some really great information in this episode. If you are buying a home, or maybe even renting one, when you walk through, what kinds of signs should you be looking for from different sorts of pests? This is really interesting and important and I would suspect I'm thinking back in my own history, Tony, about when I bought houses. I'm all excited and I'm walking through and it never occurred to me to look for these things. This is incredibly important. What are some of the pests that we might be looking for and some of the signs of that? What's number one on the pest list?

Tony Sorrentino:

This is a huge topic that a lot of home buyers overlook. And as we moved through COVID and we moved through all that time of no contact and people were moving away from getting home inspections before they were buying, and we were in that housing market boom where people, you know, cash offer I'm coming with it. I got bags of money to buy the house. They were foregoing the pest inspection, the wood destroying insect report, the overall pest inspection, and it can cost them thousands of dollars if you're not careful. So one of the biggest ones that we run into is termites.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, this is a little bit scary and I suppose it should be said right. I mean, you close, you sign off, you buy that house, the pests are yours, that's right.

Tony Sorrentino:

The stroke of a pen. Yeah, a lot of times people will start doing some type of demolition or some type of where they're renovating the house. If it's an aged house and they want to do some updates and they'll break into that, that wall, or they want to put a new sliding glass door in and they got termites clear up to the ceiling. I don't know if you know about termites, but they don't start in the ceiling. The termites that we deal with in michigan are subterranean by nature and they're coming up from the ground. And if they're above my head at the slider door, we got a a bigger problem.

Richard Piet:

They've been lower longer and they've been making their way up. How much damage can they?

Tony Sorrentino:

really do so. A mature colony and that's typically anywhere between 200,000 and 2 million Eastern subterranean termites. That's an incredible number, but the colony is huge. They can eat up to a board foot which is 12 inches of a two by four. Now, it's never localized. It's never going to be 12 inches of a 2x4. Now, it's never localized. It's never going to be 12 inches of a 2x4. So it's going to be spread out along your baseboard or up your door frame or around your window frames or your floor joists, the sill plate in the basement.

Richard Piet:

Okay, that makes sense. They're not that neat or orderly, so it won't be 12 inches in a row. It's going to be spread out. But that means the impact is greater, does it not?

Tony Sorrentino:

Yeah, over time, subterranean termite activity can lead to a loss of structural integrity.

Richard Piet:

Now you're talking about the notion that we might do some reno after we buy the house and we find this out. How do we see signs of termites when we're just walking through?

Tony Sorrentino:

So termites? You're looking for a shelter tube that looks like a mud tunnel, typically on a foundation wall. You'll see galleries, which is where you can see the termites, where they've consumed the wood and where they've been moving through there. It looks like the grain has been exposed to a deeper level as they've moved through there and consumed the wood. There's that. If you see termite swarmers, when they're in the ground and eating your wood, the workers are all white. When the major reproductives come out in the springtime, they come out by the hundreds and they're black. They look like flying ants, but they differ If you know what you're looking at. If you've got a swarm of flying ants that come popping out on a warm spring day, it might not be ants. You might want to call it percussional on the double.

Richard Piet:

Okay, here's another one, the second on our list wood-boring beetles Boy. They like to be like termites, don't they?

Tony Sorrentino:

Well, so they cause the same type of structural damage where you're going to lose structural integrity. And typically we see wood-boring beetles in older homes your 1890s farmhouse, the barn structural habit. It's typically multiple conducive conditions that lead to a wood-boring beetle infestation and then again you can have catastrophic loss of structural integrity.

Richard Piet:

So are the signs of wood boring beetles, like that of termites. Can you see it walking through?

Tony Sorrentino:

The wood-boring beetles, the signs are a little different. There's going to be pin-sized holes, like the head of a pin size. It's very small and there will be fine powdery frass. You may see insects, but they're incredibly small. When the wood-boring adults emerge, that's where all the damage happens is. The larval stages are the ones that damage the wood, and when they emerge as adults, their only job is to breed and then they will reinfest. So it's a problem in Michigan.

Richard Piet:

And frass is like sawdust. It looks like that, absolutely.

Tony Sorrentino:

It's powdery. It's really fine sawdust Okay.

Richard Piet:

So you really have to put on your eagle eyes here and be looking for signs like this. I keep thinking about my own experience, which you described very well. I wasn't looking for things like this when I was buying, now, rodents. There's the third thing on our list to watch for A sign that a rodent has maybe brought his friends and began an infestation. This seems like it would be a little easier to spot.

Tony Sorrentino:

Is that true? Right, but again, if you're not sure what you're looking at or if you're not a trained professional eye, the biggest signs that we see are the droppings, gnaw marks and nesting materials piled up. You'll move something in the basement. There's a pile of shredded newspaper there with some fecal matter or maybe some urine around it. You'll see the corners of your garage door chewed out. You'll see claw marks and sebum staining with the body oils as they climb up into the house and they'll leave a track mark where they've been traveling. Now, all of that, you put it all together and it's a perfect equation. You understand exactly what it is if you know what you're looking at. But again, awareness is the key, especially with with mice and rats. They, they love to chew. They love to chew on wires. They it's a rodent characteristic. Their incisors never stopped growing, so they're obligated to chew on things. And they will chew on structural building members. They will chew on wiring, they can expose wiring, and then we have a fire hazard. It gets out of control quick.

Richard Piet:

All right, those signs maybe are a little easier than frass to see, but, as you point out, boy, you really got to be watching and be mindful. Now there's also wildlife. That's the fourth thing on our list to watch for before you close or sign that lease Maybe squirrels or bats, things like that.

Tony Sorrentino:

Right, and so that's where you're going to want to do the exterior inspection. You're going to want to look for signs of squirrels, chewed up soffits or damaged vent screens For bats. You're going to want to look for signs of guano in the attic or near attic vents or chimneys, where the chimney meets the side of the house, the soffit right there In the attic. You're going to look for a strong ammonia-like smell and that's a telltale sign that something's going on in your attic. Again, call a professional. Don't try to go up there. There are public health risks associated with mice rats I don't think squirrels as much but definitely with bats.

Richard Piet:

Absolutely. Does a typical home inspection by a professional home inspector reveal some of these things? Or would a generally speaking a home inspector say you got to call a pest control expert because I see things?

Tony Sorrentino:

That's a really good question. So some home inspectors are trained or know what they're looking for and they will disclose. Other home inspectors might step over it Like it's. It's not my job. So really it depends on the integrity and the thoroughness of the inspector that you're dealing with. I wouldn't rely on a structural specialist, a structural inspection specialist, to give me a pest inspection. I want a pest control company, somebody that knows what they're doing, to do my inspection because they've got the trained eye. I wouldn't go to a car mechanic to get my haircut, you know.

Richard Piet:

Good point. So before closing, then we might want to request a pest inspection of the seller or the landlord. Is that a fair assumption then?

Tony Sorrentino:

So there's non-wood destroying pests, non-critical pests. In my mind, critical pests are anything that causes damage, disease or discomfort right, it's going to cause damage to the structure, it can spread diseases or it can cause discomfort, like in the case of bedbugs right, it's going to cause me discomfort. Or hornets Hornets are a critical pest because they sting me, and so that's a critical pest because if I'm allergic, so we've got critical pests that have been found during a routine WDI inspection. When I'm doing a wood destroying insect inspection and we come up on bed bug activity or we see something, it's my job. That won't go on the wood destroying insect report but it will get disclosed because it's going to get disclosed to my client, who is the person who hired me to do the inspection, and they're there, the buyer's agent or whoever else may be you know, on their team.

Richard Piet:

All right. So you have a decision to make whether or not to proceed. I suppose if there is an infestation of some kind, but certainly a home inspection by a pest control expert can begin to look for things that maybe we might not see in our casual pass-through, or even a more detailed pass-through. I'm thinking again about myself. Would I have known if I saw some of these clues that you've talked about? I'm not sure I would. I would wager some buyers or tenants would also not really know that. So this kind of inspection could prove to be very useful. And then, of course, if it is serious, you have a choice to make about whether or not you want to walk away or negotiate and continue to pursue this particular residence. But boy, these are really good things to think about. And, of course, if folks want more information or they want a pest pros inspection, you do these right. All they have to do is get on your radio.

Tony Sorrentino:

All they got to do is call it's 269-993-0051.

Richard Piet:

993-0051, area code 269, Pest Pros of Michigan. PEST PROSpectives podcast is where you find podcasts. Search it and subscribe. We're bringing you a number of good episodes with great information about some of the pests and approaches and things that you should know living with pests or near them. Tony Sorrentino, thank you for this update.

Tony Sorrentino:

Thanks, Richard. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. We'll see you soon.