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Disgusting, Yes. But a Deal Breaker?

HOW can home buyers determine whether a bedbug infestation in a building is cause for serious concern? Real estate lawyers and pest management experts have some guidelines:

The first thing to consider is location.

“It’s not an issue to any significant extent if it’s in another wing of the building,” said Gil Bloom, an entomologist who is the vice president of the Standard Exterminating Company in Queens. But because the bugs travel through walls and floors, “moving next to, above or below a seriously infested apartment is a really big problem. You could spend several thousand dollars exterminating your apartment, but if you haven’t been able to address that root problem, you will be doing it again in three or four months.”

Infestations are also considered serious if they have been going on for a long time — six months to a year. That could signal an ineffective board ill equipped to deal with this or other important issues.

“If I had two apartments that were dog positive and the board pooh-poohing the situation, and there was no plan of action in the minutes, no program in place for dealing with it,” said Jeffrey S. Reich, a real estate lawyer at Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, “I would be much more concerned by that than a building with bugs in 25 percent of the units that had a plan in place, a contract with a well-known exterminator, doing things like bagging mattresses and removing clothing and furniture.”

Buyers are also advised to consider how widespread the infestation is. Two units among 200 is one thing, but 30 percent is the threshold at which pest management companies often start treating the entire building as “sick.”

Similarly, it’s ominous if the infestation has spread beyond the early-stage clover-leaf cluster — the targeted apartment and the three or four next to it, above it and below it.

One of the predictive factors as to whether a co-op or condo can control a bedbug incursion is the compliance of residents to eradication efforts.

Apartments belonging to infirm, elderly or mentally or financially challenged individuals are often the ground zero of infestations.

“Some people are just physically or financially not capable of doing the intense type of clutter reduction that is necessary,” Mr. Bloom, the entomologist, said.

And some refuse to provide the access necessary for others to help.

“It becomes a sick building,” says Dov Treiman, a real estate lawyer at Adam Leitman Bailey. “I have seen it take three to four years to cure a bedbug problem.”

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