A bed bug infestation can be a nightmare for a New York City tenant. But for an apartment hunter, these creepy crawlies arent always top of mind. <\/p>\n
Youd do well to check for bed bugs before you sign a lease. Dealing with an infestation can be extremely stressful for NYC renters, and its certainly a possibility in a city like New York. NYC ranked as the second-worst city for bed bugs next to Chicago this year, according to pest company Orkin. <\/p>\n
Luckily, there are a handful of ways to look into a buildings bed bug history. Read on for three steps you should take to stay away from these pesky bugs. (And dont forget to research your landlord and your lease during your apartment search.) <\/p>\n
Your first stop should be HPD Online, where you can look upa buildings past annual bed bug reports. <\/p>\n
Every year, NYC landlords are required to file an annual bed bug report with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Property owners need to disclose if any units were infested with bed bugs, if any were treated with bed bugs, and if any were infested later. <\/p>\n
The annual bed bug report should give you an overview of your buildings bed bug history, but its not a complete picture. Owners dont have to disclose bed bug infestations in a buildings common areas. And landlords often file their reports late, or may provide false information in rare cases, a Brick Underground investigation found. <\/p>\n
With the bed bug report as your starting point, your next stop should be the violations tab on HPD Online. <\/p>\n
The city website will list any open violations on the buildinghousing code violations that the landlord hasnt yet fixed. If a bed bug violation is open, that means a HPD code inspector checked out the apartment, saw live bed bugs, and then issued the violation, according to the HPD. <\/p>\n
You can also view both open and closed bed bug complaints on the building, which will be listed as pests under the complaint condition column. Each complaint will also include a description telling you whether the HPD issued violations in response to the complaint. <\/p>\n
HPD Online doesnt list closed violations on a building, meaning youll need to head to the citys massive data repositoryNYC OpenDatato look into past bug problems. <\/p>\n
You can use OpenDatas Housing Maintenance Code Violation dataset, which includes violations dating back to 2013. Simply input your buildings building ID number, which can be found on the overview page of HPD Online, into the BuildingID field when querying the data. Then youll be able to see past violations on the building. <\/p>\n
Those violations will tell you how common bed bugs have been in a building historically, not just in the past few years. You can also see how quickly an owner responded to a problem by comparing the notice of violation issued date (when the violation was mailed to the landlord) with the certified date (when the owner certified they had fixed the problem). <\/p>\n
You can also check apartment review and listing sites such as openigloo for feedback from past tenants. <\/p>\n
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