A San Francisco Bay Area influencer has warned that buying a house in the woods, however beautiful it may be, is a complete headache to maintain.
Laureise Livingston and her husband bought their charming 100-year-old home two years ago.
It was a dream come true—until they realized their roommates were rodents and beetles that were infesting the house.
“Just a PSA about buying a house in a wooded area: Just don’t,” Livingston says in a video posted to TikTok. Because their house is so old, it had “a lot of opportunities for issues.”
She detailed those issues in the video: “Rodents, bugs, and beetles” have not only been a problem, they’ve been “eating us alive financially.”
The surprising downsides of buying a house in the woods
One problem is the Norwegian rats under the floorboards, Livingston says.
“Lying on the couch one night, we hear something scratching underneath our floorboards,” she says. “And what they are doing is munching on our HVAC piping, which is our heating piping. It’s the pipe that blows all the air through our house, which is wrapped in asbestos.”
In order to deal with that issue, the couple had to fork over $4,500 for a treatment to their heating system. The other option was to fumigate, which would have set them back $7,000.
But rats being rats, they ate through the treatment that had been applied and used it to make more nests.
“We first had to remove all the rats, and then we had to remove all the HVAC piping,” she explains. “That whole process cost us about $10,000. We had no heat, no air, nothing, for maybe six months.”
Why rats were the least of their problems
Next up, a termite company came by to inform the couple that their neighbor had termites. The company offered them a free home inspection, which the couple accepted.
“We finally finish the rats, we’re finally done with the rats, and we say, ‘ahh no more issues,’ and then boom, Terminix gives us a call,” she says.
“So they come on over, and the good news is: no termites,” Livingston says. “You have wood-boring beetles. My fiancé and I never heard of them. So, we asked, ‘What’s a wood-boring beetle?’ They say, ‘Well, they’re basically just as bad as termites. They bite through the wood and lay little larvae in the wood. And then the eggs hatch. And then, those little eggies that are no longer little eggies anymore, then go and bite into the wood until the wood is all f—ed up in your house. So we said, ‘That doesn’t sound like a good thing. How do we fix it?’”
They were given two expensive options. One, tent up the house and remove everything that can melt, including “lipstick, makeup, anything that is combustible,” for a $4,500 beetle treatment or two. This would involve fumigating the home, forcing them out for four days for $7,000.
“And it’s poison,” Livingston adds.
The two decided to get the home treated for $4,500.
“At least the beetles are gone,” Livingston says.
How to avoid a pest infestation
Livingston’s story is a horrifying lesson that homebuyers should try to check for pests before buying a house.
Pest infestations are often part of disclosures sellers must make to prospective buyers, so be sure to ask.
When in doubt, you can always hire a pest inspector to check the house, or look for clues on your own. Here are some signs of pest infestations in a house you might want to buy.