A tenant just asked you about roaches. What do you say?

What you know that nobody else does

Four apartments on the same line reporting roaches is a completely different problem from one apartment with roaches. It gets fixed a different way. Roaches move between apartments through wall voids and pipe runs, so a single unit treated on its own can be reinfested from the one above it by the end of the month.

Here is the thing: nobody sees that pattern except you.

Each tenant thinks it is only them. The managing agent sees complaints arrive one at a time, weeks apart, and often from only the tenants who bother to call. We see the building once a month. You see all of it, every day.

Same with a leak under a sink that has been dripping for a year, an opening behind the compactor, a unit where nobody ever answers the door. Those are the things that keep a building infested, and they do not show up on a work order unless somebody says them out loud.

The questions you get asked, and what to say

Short answers, written to be said out loud. Each one links to a page you can send the tenant if they want the long version.

• “Is the treatment going to make it worse? Are they going to come out everywhere?”Say: That was the old sprays. What they use now does not chase them out, so they stay where they are and it gets them there. Full answer for the tenant.
• “Should I just buy my own gel from the hardware store?”Say: Gel is the right stuff. If you put some down, tell them what it was and where you put it, so it does not fight what they are using. Gel bait is what a professional treatment uses, so the instinct is right. Placement and knowing what is already down are what make the difference.
• “Is it safe? I have kids. I have a cat.”Say: You can ask exactly what is being used before they come, and you are entitled to that. The label decides what is safe, and management has the label information. Full answer for the tenant.
• “How long do I have to stay out of my apartment?”Say: Depends what they use. Ask before the visit and you will get a real number. Do not guess at this one. There is no universal answer and the honest one is short. Full answer for the tenant.
• “I do not want anybody in my apartment.”Say: Understood. Let me get you a different time instead, because the apartment that gets skipped is usually where it comes back from. Full answer for the tenant.

Why “let me get you on the list” is the right answer

You do not have to know the chemistry. You have to get the unit onto the schedule. That is the whole job at that moment, and it is a complete answer.

It also protects you. If you tell a tenant to handle it themselves and it does not work, they come back to you and it is your problem. If you get them on the list, it is ours. We are the ones who have to show up and make it work.

What to tell us when we get there

These take ten seconds each and they change what we do:

• Which apartments have said somethingIncluding the ones who mentioned it to you in the hallway and never called anyone. Those are the ones nobody else knows about.
• Any leak, however smallA slow drip under a sink feeds a population through a whole winter. Roaches need water more than they need food.
• Who never opens the doorThe unit we cannot get into is often the one the building keeps getting reinfested from. If you know a schedule that works for them, that is gold.
• Anything that changedPlumbing work, a wall opened, an appliance pulled out, a new tenant who moved in with used furniture. Timing like that explains a lot.

The one that backfires

Sending a tenant to the hardware store instead of onto the schedule.

The product is usually fine. The problem is what happens after. There is now an unknown product in an apartment in a building on a monthly program, nobody knows what it is or where it went, and the unit is not on the record as having been treated. If the managing agent ever has to show HPD that an apartment was serviced, that visit does not exist.

It also lands back on you. The tenant bought something on your say-so, and if it does not work you are the one they tell.