3 Long-Term Strategies for Keeping Rats and Rodents Away From Your Rental Properties

No one wants to rent or live in an apartment that’s infested with rats. Unfortunately, with highly visible review platforms online, even a single, short-term rodent problem can diminish the long-term marketability of your units. The good news is that there are three easy ways to keep these pests at bay, even when neighboring buildings are riddled with them.

1. Hire a Property Management Service

If you don’t live onsite and aren’t able to regularly maintain the grounds yourself, consider hiring a property management company. Although you may have fastidious tenants, rubbish that’s left in common areas by guests, residents, and passersby is guaranteed to attract animals. The maintenance teams that property management companies dispatch can take ongoing preventative measures such as:

  • Patching up holes in building materials and other points of ingress
  • Eliminating standing bodies of water or other accessible water sources
  • Trimming, pruning, and limbing onsite trees and shrubs to remove hiding areas and living spaces
  • Making sure that all outside waste collection areas are clean and securely closed

With property managers handling these and other aspects of your building operations, pest problems of any type are far less likely to crop up. Best of all, management companies work hard to attract desirable tenants. With these professionals screening new applicants, you’re more apt to units to people who actually care about their surroundings.

2. Hire a Pest Control Service

Pest extermination and pest control are two vastly different things. Unlike bed bugs and certain species of cockroaches, rats and rodents naturally thrive in the outside environment. Pests like rodents, termites, and ants aren’t necessarily brought into buildings. Instead, they’re attracted to interior living spaces by inviting property conditions. Pest control is everything that you or an outside party does to deter local inspections and animals from entering your building. Rather than being reactive like pest extermination, pest control or pest management is largely preventative in nature. It’s also much cheaper than treating residential units after an infestation has already arrived.

3. Clean Out All Storage Units

If you have storage units onsite, schedule an annual or twice-annual cleaning. Rodents are just as happy munching on non-food items as they are rifling through pantries. They’ll eat just about anything organic that they can get their hands on, and they’re content to build their homes in empty boxes, collections of old newspapers, and in many other things that are commonly housed in onsite storage units.

Remember, even a single problem with rodents can have a terrible and long-lasting impact on the reputation of your rental property. Taking proactive steps to prevent rodent infestations is always the cheapest course of action. With the tips above, you can eliminate all of the features that are known to invite these unwanted guests in.