Pest Control Service

The first real decision is what you are buying: an answer, a knockdown, or a boundary. If you only need to know what you are dealing with — mud tubes on a Locust Point foundation wall, gnaw marks on a Hampden basement door, bites you cannot explain — buy the inspection first, roughly $250 to $400, and get written findings you can act on or hand to a landlord. If the pest is already identified and confined to one kitchen or one bathroom, a single targeted treatment at $250 to $425 is usually the right call. If the pest keeps coming back no matter what you spray, you do not have a bug problem, you have an opening problem, and the money belongs in exclusion work rather than another can of product. The trade-off is patience: an inspection-first path costs a visit before anything gets treated, but it stops you from paying twice for the wrong treatment. On rodents, choose by where the animals live. If mice are inside the walls of an attached home and you are hearing them at night, interior trapping and monitoring, about $275 to $500 per visit, removes the population you already have. If Norway rats are burrowing along the alley pad, the fence line or under a shed, exterior burrow treatment and tamper-resistant stations, about $350 to $750, is the correct starting point because the colony is outside the building. If neighbors on both sides of a shared party wall have the same problem, sealing is the only move that holds — hardware cloth, copper mesh, door sweeps and mortar work at $600 to $2,500, sized to how many openings the house actually has. The trade-off is honest: baiting is cheaper and faster, exclusion is more expensive and lasts, and in Baltimore row homes doing only the cheap half is why people are back on the phone in six weeks. On German cockroaches, choose by how far the population has spread. If you are seeing two or three roaches near a dishwasher, one gel-bait and growth-regulator visit often ends it. If you are seeing them on counters in daylight, or in more than one unit of a building, a multi-visit program at 14-day intervals, roughly $450 to $900, is what actually breaks the breeding cycle, because eggs already laid will hatch after the first treatment. The trade-off is prep work: the multi-visit path asks you to clear cabinets and keep the kitchen accessible, and that homework is most of the difference between a two-visit job and a five-visit one. On bed bugs, choose by unit count and timeline. A single bedroom treated chemically, about $650 to $1,200 over two to three visits spaced roughly two weeks apart, fits a homeowner who can live in the house during treatment. A whole two- or three-bedroom row home, about $1,200 to $2,800, fits a landlord facing a lease turnover in Canton or Charles Village who needs the unit clear before the next tenant signs. The trade-off is disruption versus cost: staged chemical work is cheaper and slower, whole-home work is more expensive and pulls furniture, mattresses and closets apart in one pass. On termites, choose by structure and by how long you want protection. A liquid barrier trenched around the foundation, roughly $1,200 to $3,000 for a typical Baltimore row home, treats the soil the eastern subterranean termite travels through and fits a house with accessible exterior walls. A bait station system, roughly $1,000 to $2,200 in year one, fits properties where slabs, alley walls, porches and hardscape make trenching awkward, and it monitors continuously instead of treating once. The trade-off is speed against surveillance: a barrier acts on the soil now, baits work on the colony over months but keep telling you whether pressure is still there. If you are buying or selling near the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus or anywhere in the older housing stock, start with the inspection and let the findings pick the method — not the other way around.