Real Estate & Property Manager Pest Control

Why rental properties carry pest risk

Managed properties see more pest issues than owner-occupied homes for practical reasons. Tenants turn over, gardens and subfloors are not always maintained the same way, and small problems often go unreported until they are well established or until an inspection finds them. When a problem does surface, it usually needs sorting quickly to keep the lease on track.

For a property manager, an unmanaged pest issue can mean:

• A held-up lease or a delayed bond return
• A tenant dispute over responsibility for treatment
• An owner unhappy that a problem was left to grow
• Damage to the property from rodents or termites
• A recurring complaint that returns to your desk each tenancy

Prompt attendance and clear documentation keep these off your desk and the tenancy moving.

Pests We Manage at Rental Properties

Our technicians regularly manage and prevent rats and mice, cockroaches, ants, spiders, fleas, wasps and bees, birds, possums and termites across houses, units and apartment blocks — from a single tenant callout to a scheduled program across a managed portfolio.

Pre-Sale, Pre-Lease and Vacant Property Work

Work booked ahead of a sale or a new tenancy sits on a date that cannot move, because the campaign, the first open home or the lease start is already set and advertised. We schedule against the date the property has to be ready and confirm the booking with your office, so nobody is chasing an attendance the afternoon before photography.

Before a property goes to market

The common jobs ahead of a campaign are a general treatment through the house, a rodent treatment where droppings have been found in a roof void or under a sink, wasp nest removal from an eave or a garden, and spider work through eaves, window frames, verandahs and outdoor entertaining areas. Webbing across an alfresco area or a window reveal photographs badly and reads worse at an open home, and it is one of the cheapest things to deal with before a campaign starts. A pre-purchase building and pest inspection commissioned by a buyer will report whatever it finds, so clearing visible activity beforehand keeps a sale moving to its timetable.

Before a new tenancy starts

A general internal and external treatment through a vacant property gives the incoming tenant a clean start and gives the owner a dated record of the property’s condition at handover. Where the outgoing tenant kept a pet, an end-of-lease flea treatment is usually a lease obligation and is covered in full on our end of lease pest control page. Treating between tenancies also settles the question of when a problem started, which is the detail that most often turns into a dispute later.

Vacant properties

An empty property is more attractive to pests than an occupied one. Nothing is disturbed, nobody is cleaning, floor and shower traps dry out and lose their water seal, gardens keep growing hard against the walls, and a problem has weeks to establish before anyone opens the front door. Long vacancies between tenancies, properties held during a deceased estate or a probate matter, and homes waiting on a settlement all carry that risk.

Where a property is going to sit empty, the practical measures are a treatment before it is closed up, a check of the perimeter and the roof void, cutting back vegetation touching the building, and running water through the drains and traps at each periodic inspection. Rodents and spiders are the two that most often greet an agent opening a vacant property for the first showing, and both are avoidable with a visit booked at the right point.

Owner or Tenant — Who Usually Pays

This is the question that comes up most often on a rental callout, and it is worth setting out plainly. The lease and the residential tenancy rules govern responsibility in any individual case, so what follows describes how these jobs are commonly arranged in practice. It is general information about billing, and it is not legal advice.

In broad terms:

• Activity present at the start of the tenancy is usually arranged and paid for by the owner, because the property has to be handed over in a reasonably clean and fit condition.
• Structural and building-related pests — termites, rodents entering through gaps in the building, possums in a roof void, birds nesting under eaves — are usually an owner responsibility, because the durable fix is a repair to the property.
• Issues arising during the tenancy, such as fleas left by a tenant’s pet or an infestation traced to how the property has been kept, are usually a tenant responsibility, and a pet clause commonly makes an end-of-lease flea treatment a condition of the lease.
• Recurring problems are worth treating as a property issue. The same complaint arriving with every tenancy usually points to a building or garden condition that treatment alone will never resolve, and the fix belongs in the owner’s maintenance plan.

Where responsibility is disputed, a dated report describing what was found and what caused it is usually what settles it. Our reports separate the treatment applied from the site conditions behind the problem, which gives your office something factual to put to an owner or a tenant. We invoice the agency, the owner or the tenant as your office instructs on each job, and the report and receipt are kept on file for the property either way.

A Program That Fits Your Agency

Every agency works differently. We fit around how your office runs, from ad-hoc callouts to a standing account across a portfolio.

Our services for property managers include:

• Prompt reactive callouts for tenant complaints
• Between-tenancy and end-of-lease treatments
• Scheduled programs across managed portfolios
• Rodent, cockroach, ant, spider and flea treatments
• Termite inspections at owner request
• Direct liaison with tenants to arrange access
• Clear invoicing to the agency or owner as instructed
• A digital report and receipt after every visit

You deal with one team that keeps the service history for each address, so the next callout starts with the property already known.

Managing a portfolio under one account

Agencies running a rent roll of any size get a single account covering every managed address. That gives you one point of contact who knows the properties, a service history kept per address, consolidated reporting across the portfolio, and invoicing directed to the agency, the owner or the tenant as your office instructs on each individual job. Adding a new management to the account takes a phone call.

Consolidated reporting also shows the pattern across a rent roll, which a job-by-job invoice never does. When three properties in the same street report rodents in the same month, or one address produces the identical complaint at every changeover, that is visible in the history and worth putting to the owner as a maintenance item. Agencies also managing owners corporations can hold common-property work on the same account, covered on our strata pest control page.

Scheduling around open homes and inspections

Agency work runs on a calendar set weeks ahead, so we book around it. Treatments are scheduled clear of open homes, auctions and routine inspections, with enough margin for any re-entry period to pass and for odour to clear before people walk through the property. Where a routine inspection has just turned up a problem, we can usually attend the same day, and we arrange access directly with the tenant wherever your office prefers to keep that off the property manager’s desk.

For urgent situations at an occupied property — a wasp nest at a front door, a rodent problem a tenant has reported as a health concern — we are available 24/7 including emergency callouts, with same-day service normally available.

Reporting You Can Forward Straight On

Property managers live and die by documentation, so we make ours easy to pass on. Every service visit generates a detailed digital report and receipt covering the pest activity, the treatment applied, site observations and any recommendations.

It is formatted so you can forward it as-is to settle an owner query, support a bond matter or answer a tenant, and we keep the full history for each property on file so nothing is ever lost between tenancies.

Each report covers:

• The date of attendance, the property address and the technician who carried out the work
• The pest activity found, and exactly where in the property it was found
• The treatment applied and the products used
• Site observations, including the building and garden conditions contributing to the problem
• Recommendations, separated into what the owner should address and what the tenant can do
• A receipt for the job, for the property file, the tenant ledger or the bond record

Safety data sheets for any product applied are available on request, which covers the occasional tenant query about what has been used inside the property. Our digital reporting page shows the full format, and the same reporting standard runs across our commercial pest control programs.

Building & Pest Inspections for a Sale

Where a property is being sold or bought, a pre-purchase building and pest inspection is a separate piece of work from a treatment. It is a physical inspection of the property and a written report on its condition and on any evidence of termite activity or damage, and buyers commonly make it a condition of the contract of sale. Agents are often asked to recommend someone to carry it out.

Our building and pest inspection page sets out what the inspection covers and what the written report contains, and the price is published on our pest control prices page along with our termite inspection and treatment pricing, so an agent can quote a figure to a client without making a phone call first.

Where an inspection finds termite activity or damage, the treatment options are set out on our termite control page, and the recommendation is documented for the owner alongside the inspection report.

To set up an account for your agency, call Protech on 03 9449 4244 or request a free quote. We are HACCP, NPMA and AEPMA accredited, our technicians are licensed and insured, and we have serviced Melbourne properties since 2001.