Buying A Home with Rats? Everything You Need to Know in this Episode!

Aww Rats! No seriously the home you are buying may have tenants already living in it rent free, otherwise known as squatters of the fury kind. Let's make sure you not buying a petting zoo. This condition may be identified by one of your inspectors you hired after opening escrow. If the home does have evidence of pests don't panic just call a professional and have the problem dealt with. Most homeowners are not aware they have open voids in their exterior walls etc.

Rats or mice only need a small hole to gain access to free lodging in your attic, crawlspace or even worse! Inside your living area. The best way to solve this issue is to carefully inspect the exterior of your home and make sure no vegetation is concealing a open void under it and make sure large tree branches are not touching your roof, or are to close where pests can jump onto your roof. If your house has a crawlspace under it make sure the vent screens are not damaged or missing. If they are get them fixed right away.

Thanks For Listening

John Laforme

Click link below to see the damage rats and other pests can cause to your home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGlGs2TtSPI&t=42s

https://www.homeinspectionauthority.com/

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:01

Alright everybody, welcome back. Episode Six is now underway. John here from home inspection authority, today we're gonna talk about buying a new home that already comes with rats. Yeah, you can actually do that. Not sure if you're aware of that. But I've had a few different realtors, listing agents, of course, telling me that all houses have rats. And I'm like seriously, really? Wow, that's cool. So I, from what they say, I guess it's if you were to go, you know, have a custom home built. While you're picking out your backsplash for your kitchen or your or your floor tiles or your carpeting colors, you can actually pick out what color rat you want to like, can you get Can I get some white ones and a few gray ones? Wow, some of the shit that I hear at work is beyond ridiculous. And I want to let you know, make a point to any Realtors selling homes. If your home inspector makes a comment, or your maybe your termite inspector makes a comment about you know, there's evidence of pests in the house like rat droppings or mice droppings or something like that. Don't try to justify them being there. It's really, really the wrong thing to say. I don't I don't get what the big deal is myself. It's so what so the rats got in the house, or the mice get in the house. But the bigger issue is, how did they get in. And I see a lot of relatives get really defensive when this comes up in my inspections. And it happens quite often, because quite often people don't maintain the outside of their house. And rats just crawl into the crawlspace fence screens that are missing or damaged. Or maybe they're getting in through the air conditioning line from the outdoor condenser. That connect goes right into the wall of your house. That's another great way for them to get in. And in some cases, some houses have a lot of vegetation on the sides of the walls of the house. I was just on one just a few days ago that vegetation was from the ground all the way up to the roof on a two storey house. And I'm like, by the way, I did see eight rat traps up in the attic. Eight. That's a lot. That is a lot of rat traps. So how did the rat traps get there? Huh? Did they come with the house? I don't think so I'm pretty sure the owner, the current owner, installed them or had or knew they had a pest problem and just had a pest control company come by and put some traps in. So the best way to start that conversation off is hay with the seller. Excuse me seller, could you tell me why there's eight rat traps in the attic? Oh, well, we've been noticing we've been having some rodent issues. Oh, so did the people who installed it make any comments about the vegetation that goes from the ground all the way up to the roof on the house. That's my point is depending on who you call to take care of this kind of problem that is going to sell you some nonsense, a pest service. So we know we'll just come back. We'll just put some black boxes outside and we'll come back once a month and check them for you. Well, that's ridiculous. That's very ridiculous. So be careful when you're getting a service. For Roden issue, my advice is, the best thing you can do is have somebody or yourself go around the house and look for any openings now they can be very tiny openings, like a one inch opening. They can get in if they really want to. So you got to be really vigilant about that and just look at each and every possibility and assume they're getting in. And then you can go to Home Depot or Lowe's and grab some mash or some event screen and and maybe some spray foam and just fill in those voids. But then if you know you have a pest problem, you need to once you seal up the house if you're confident you find out where they're going where they're getting in from. Then you know you need to call a pest specialist to set some traps strategically so they can actually catch them and get them out of there because if they die in your house Boy, do they have an odor. I know from experience, I've had him in one of my houses in the past, and there was a dead one right above my kitchen ceiling. And man, that odor when you walked, you walked halfway into the kitchen, every time I walked like halfway into the kitchen, I'm like, Oh, what is that, and I couldn't find it. So I had to, I had to, like, you know, get up there and just look and look. And then I finally found it, you know, in between two pieces of wood under the insulation in the attic. So like, gosh, shit. So I had to get that out of there had to put some earthbags up there to kill the odor. And yeah, it wasn't that much fun. But anyway, today's topic, of course, as you figured out is rats, and we're going to talk about RATS, RATS, RATS, and why they should not be in your house, they can cause a lot of problems for your house. If you if a few rats turn into an infestation, they're gonna, if they get into your attic, they will soil, all of your insulation, that will pee and shit everywhere. That's what they do. And when they're looking around for stuff, they just keep following their own smelly trail back and forth. So you may wind up re insulating your attic, you may have to replace some building materials if they're saturated with pee and poop and everything else. So you don't want them in your house. So the first thing I would do is, like I said, check the exterior perimeter. But one of the main places they love to go in is the air conditioning line connected to your outdoor condenser. That's the first place I would look I'd say about if I do five to eight houses a week, I'm seeing at least four or five of those houses where there's a big gap where that air conditioning line goes into the exterior wall, that there is an easy access, it's like a little ladder, because it's it's got a rubber insulation, I'm sorry, the ACS got rubber insulation pad around it. So they can just easily grab onto that and climb right up and they go all the way up into the wall, and typically up into the attic. So that's the main place they the main location that they enter from. And keep in mind, they come and go. So they may come in your house for a while and and then get hungry or something or need water and they'll take off. And then they'll come and go again, they'll just keep coming and going. That's what they do. Unless you block off the accesses. Hopefully you block it off when they're already outside. But it's really hard to tell. And keep in mind if you have an attic with a air heating and air conditioning system that's located in the attic. And there's any kind of water in the safety pan or any maybe there's some water dripping from the AC line. That's what they like, now you've given them a place to sleep, and now you've given them water. So if there's any issues up in the attic, such as that, then you want to get those corrected. At the same time you're trying to seal off the house in case there's any in there. So same thing under the house, if you have a crawlspace and there's a water leak under the house or condensate line dripping under the house, you're giving them a reason to stay, you've given them water. So those are the things that you got to be aware of when you have a pest issue in your house. So once again, don't try to justify when the home inspector or the termite guy finds it just just say okay, let's get it looked at you know, that's all you need to say. It just turns into a debate with the realtor sometimes I'm like seriously just say okay, John, thank you for the information and so I can move on it's it's getting out of control. I mean, it's really nuts. And I don't think you're impressing the buyers one bit or anybody else when you try to justify the house has rats. So with that in mind, I know that you can't order a new house with rats, so please don't tell anybody that anymore. And another problem you may encounter with a rat issue is they can get into your HVAC ducting in the attic or the crawlspace. I've seen both and if you watch some of my videos on my YouTube channel, you'll clearly see that I point that out very clearly. So this is this is the damage they can cause and understand once they get inside your duct. They pee and poop everywhere, which now has contaminated your HVAC ducting typically Replacing HVAC duct in an attic is at least a two to $3,000 job. So it's worth it to take the time to really seal up your house to avoid these problems. And, you know, it's just being smart to carry your house, it's your house, you know, you live there, you shouldn't have rats living with you. And if you have vegetation, touching your house, or trees that are real close to your house, and maybe the branches overhanging your roof, you want to cut those back because I have personally seen rats jump very far. And land but no issues whatsoever. And also, I've seen him crawl along power lines, telephone lines, like it's nothing. They are very, very athletic, I want to say, a lack of better words, they're athletic, and when they want to get somewhere they're going to get somewhere. So don't give them away in number one. And that seems to be what most people don't quite get. That just being you know, if you don't know you don't know. But that's why I'm talking about this right now. So you will know, like I said, trees that are too close to your house, vegetation on your house. Always look behind vegetation, if you have shrubs around your house and stuff like that always take a good look behind them with a flashlight, because you may have a crawlspace access vent screen right there that's completely missing. And the only reason why you haven't seen it is because your vegetation is so thick. So you really want to take a look behind those. And here's something I learned the hard way. A long time ago, I had a house and I lived in a very, you know, off the off the path type of house and I had firewood stored up against my wall on one side of my house. And one day I was just out there grabbing a couple pieces of wood. And I heard something move and I'm like what the hell. So I started kicking the pile and no shit. Six to nine rats wind up running out of that pile. So I had no idea that they were just having a blast living in my woodpile, right against my house. So those are the things that can happen. So storing anything against your walls of your house is not a good idea. Keep everything away from the house, and no firewood up against the house. Take it from me, I know. And another way for rats to take notice of your house is if you happen to have a neighbor that is a kind of a hoarder, and has a yard full of stuff that's just disorganized is not not sanitary. You know, they'll find places to live on the neat, like little sheds and stuff like that. So if you have a neighbor like that, that could be a reason why to that you have, you know, an excessive amount of road negativity in your house. So keep that in mind. If your neighbors are dirty, well, they're not that far away. And the rats will eventually scope out your house and go hey, man, there's a hole. Let's go. So yeah, just wanted to talk about that today. I think I pretty much covered it. So basically, I wanted to really shout out there to the realtors. Just don't try to justify why there's rats in the house. Just call someone to get it fixed. It's the smartest thing you can do. It's the most professional thing you can do instead of trying to justify why they're there. There is no justification for ads in your house, they should not be there. And keep like I said, keep your exteriors clean, keep things away from your house, make sure your event screens are sealed. So I urge all of you if you have a raised foundation tomorrow morning, or today, whatever time it is for you. Go ahead and take a walk around your house with a flashlight. And really look behind everything that's outside on the perimeter of your house all your walls. Even Look under your porches that could be a hole under your porch that you can't see that goes into your crawlspace look behind your water heater if it's on the outside of the house because a lot of times the plumbers will run a hole through the wall going under the house and it will be big enough for a rat to get in there. So look behind the water heater if it's outside your house, that could be opening there as well. And the main thing like I already mentioned is the air conditioner. Definitely check that line if that line has a gap. just stick some steel wool in there and spray it with like window foam, spray foam. And that should take care of that problem for you. And then just take a peek in your attic. If you see any droppings anywhere well that means you have rats. If they're really tiny droppings, they might be mice but most of the time might what I see is big enough to be a rat. And I do see lots of dead rats and traps and stuff like that. So take a good look at everything around your house and make sure it's all sanitary. Okay, so just click on the link to my YouTube channel, in the description of this podcast and, and you'll find some crawlspace nightmare videos that I've made that shows what rats can do. And I'm currently working on an attic one right now. So attic nightmares that's coming out this month in October. And I do all the creepy stuff this month. You know, rats, mice, skunks? Maybe a few raccoons? Who knows. Maybe I'll find a skeleton under a house this month I get lucky. But anyway, thanks for listening. Hope you found this show. Informational. and helpful. That's the purpose of me doing this podcast, please leave a comment or email me. John at home inspection authority. If there's something you want me to cover, I'll be more than happy to do that if it's in line of what I do. And you can also catch me on tick tock home inspection authority on tick tock for some short videos and so forth. The YouTube channel does have a lot of stuff and that's home inspection authority on YouTube. So thanks again and we'll see you on the next one. Happy Halloween