Hear from Our Customers
Living in a pre-war building in Kensington means you’re dealing with more than just a nuisance. Cockroaches travel through shared plumbing chases. Mice enter through foundation gaps that have been widening for a hundred years. Bed bugs move between units through wall voids that connect your apartment to three others. When we address the source of the problem not just the surface of it you stop seeing the same pest two weeks after treatment.
Kensington’s northern edge runs right up against Prospect Park, and that 526-acre green space doesn’t just bring in joggers and dog walkers. Rats forage outward from the park’s wooded ravines into surrounding residential blocks year-round. When fall comes and temperatures drop, mice that have been living outdoors start looking for a way inside and the aging foundations and utility penetrations in Kensington’s older homes give them plenty of options. Treating the interior alone doesn’t fix that. A real solution accounts for the pressure coming from outside, not just what’s already gotten in.
The difference you actually feel is simple: you stop thinking about it. No more checking the kitchen at night. No more wondering whether your neighbor’s problem is about to become yours. No more calling the same company back for the same issue.
We’ve been operating in New York City since 1971. That’s more than five decades of treating the exact type of buildings that make up Kensington the American Foursquares on the interior blocks, the pre-war co-ops lining Ocean Parkway, the basement apartments behind the Church Avenue commercial strip. No national chain in this market comes close to that length of continuous Brooklyn operation.
We’re a family-owned and operated business, which means there’s no franchise layer between you and the people doing the work. When something isn’t right, you reach a real person who has a direct stake in fixing it. That accountability is built into how we operate not something we advertise and then quietly walk back.
Kensington’s housing stock is specific, its pest dynamics are specific, and the experience required to treat it correctly is specific. That’s what 50 years in this borough actually buys you.
It starts with a free inspection. Before anything gets applied, a licensed technician walks your space and looks at what’s actually happening where pests are entering, where they’re harboring, and what the building’s specific vulnerabilities are. In Kensington’s pre-war buildings, that inspection often turns up things that explain why a previous treatment didn’t hold: an unsealed plumbing penetration, a shared wall void, a basement entry point that was never addressed. You get a clear picture of the problem before you make any decisions.
From there, the treatment plan is built around what your specific situation requires. That might mean a targeted interior treatment for a cockroach infestation in a ground-floor apartment. It might mean a perimeter exclusion program for a rowhouse on a block that backs up toward the Green-Wood Cemetery corridor. It might mean a multi-unit bed bug protocol coordinated with your building’s management. The approach follows the inspection not the other way around.
After treatment, you’ll receive complete written documentation of everything that was done. For Kensington renters navigating a landlord-tenant situation, that paperwork matters. It’s the record you need if you’re filing an HPD complaint or following up under Local Law 55. For co-op owners and homeowners, it’s the file you keep for the next inspection or real estate transaction.
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We handle the full range of pest issues that come up in Kensington’s housing stock and climate. Cockroach extermination, rodent control, bed bug treatment, termite inspection, ant control, stinging insect removal, flea treatment if it’s a pest problem in a Brooklyn building, it’s something we’ve treated hundreds of times in buildings that look exactly like yours.
Bed bug treatment deserves specific attention here. In Kensington’s multi-unit buildings the Ocean Parkway co-ops, the rowhouses on East 4th and East 5th, the apartment buildings above the Coney Island Avenue storefronts bed bug infestations don’t stay contained to one unit for long. They move through shared wall voids and electrical outlets. Treating one apartment without addressing the building-level spread is why so many bed bug jobs have to be redone. Our approach accounts for the structure, not just the unit.
For homeowners, we also provide WDI (Wood-Destroying Insect) inspection reports for real estate transactions mortgage-ready documentation required by most lenders for FHA and VA loans. With Kensington’s median home sale price sitting around $579,000 and a steady flow of buyers coming in from Park Slope and surrounding neighborhoods, these inspections come up regularly. All treatments are performed by NYSDEC-licensed technicians using EPA-registered materials, with full written service reports provided after every visit.
Cockroaches and mice are the two most consistent issues in Kensington’s residential buildings, followed closely by bed bugs. The neighborhood’s pre-war housing stock most of it built before 1940 has decades of accumulated settling, aging pipe penetrations, and shared wall construction that gives these pests exactly what they need to move, hide, and reproduce. German cockroaches are the most common species in kitchen and bathroom environments. Norway rats and house mice are the primary rodent issues, with activity spiking in fall as outdoor temperatures drop and animals start looking for indoor warmth.
Bed bugs have become increasingly common across Brooklyn’s dense, multi-unit housing, and Kensington is no exception. The neighborhood’s high renter population and frequent tenant turnover in some buildings creates ongoing introduction risk. Termites are also a real concern in Kensington’s older wood-frame and mixed-construction homes particularly the Victorian and American Foursquare homes on the interior residential blocks and are often discovered during pre-sale inspections rather than proactively. If you’re not sure what you’re dealing with, the inspection will tell you.
Under New York City’s Housing Maintenance Code and Local Law 55 of 2018, your landlord is legally required to maintain your unit free of pests. Rats, mice, cockroaches, and mold are classified as Class C violations the most serious category and bed bugs are classified as a Class B hazardous violation that must be resolved within 30 days. If your landlord isn’t acting, you can file a complaint through NYC’s 311 system or directly with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which will conduct an inspection and issue violations if the conditions are confirmed.
Hiring a licensed exterminator independently while your landlord is non-responsive serves two purposes: it addresses the immediate problem in your unit, and it creates a professional paper trail. We provide complete written service reports and treatment documentation after every visit the kind of record that carries weight in an HPD complaint or housing court proceeding. If you’re in this situation in Kensington, getting licensed documentation of the problem and the treatment is one of the most practical steps you can take.
This is one of the most common questions we get, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a vague reassurance. All treatments we perform use EPA-registered materials applied by NYSDEC-licensed technicians according to label directions. Before any treatment begins, your technician will tell you exactly what product is being applied, where it will be applied, and how long you and your family need to stay out of the treated space. That preparation conversation happens before the job starts not after.
In Kensington, where roughly 21% of the population is under 15 and many households include young children, elderly residents, or pets, this is a real and reasonable concern not an overreaction. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) principles guide our approach, which means we use the least toxic effective treatment for each specific situation rather than defaulting to the heaviest available option. For households with particular sensitivities, that conversation about product selection and application method is part of the process, not an afterthought.
The most common reason pests return after treatment in Kensington’s older buildings is that the treatment addressed what was visible but didn’t address where the pests are coming from or how they’re getting in. In a pre-war building with shared walls, aging plumbing penetrations, and a basement that connects to neighboring units, a surface application in one apartment is a temporary fix at best. Cockroaches re-enter from adjacent units through wall voids. Mice come back through the same foundation gap that was never sealed. Bed bugs migrate from a neighboring apartment through an electrical outlet.
The other factor specific to Kensington is the park corridor. Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery create ongoing wildlife and rodent pressure from outside the building. If exterior entry points aren’t identified and addressed as part of the treatment plan, new pressure from outside will keep producing the same interior problem. A treatment that starts with a thorough inspection one that looks at the building’s structure and exterior vulnerabilities, not just the interior symptoms is what breaks the cycle.
Pricing varies depending on the type of pest, the size of the space, and what the inspection reveals. For a standard cockroach or rodent treatment in a Kensington apartment, you’re typically looking at a range that reflects the scope of the job a single-unit treatment is priced differently than a building-wide program. Bed bug treatment costs more because it’s more involved: heat treatment, chemical treatment, or a combination of both, often requiring multiple visits and follow-up inspection.
The most useful thing to know is that we offer a free inspection with no obligation. That inspection gives you a clear picture of what you’re dealing with and what the treatment will actually involve before you commit to anything. In a neighborhood like Kensington where many residents are managing costs carefully and many renters are paying out of pocket for a problem that may legally be their landlord’s responsibility knowing the real scope and cost upfront matters. There are no surprise charges after the job. What you’re told before the treatment is what you pay.
If you’re financing the purchase with an FHA or VA loan, a WDI (Wood-Destroying Insect) inspection report is typically required by your lender before closing. Even for conventional purchases, most real estate attorneys and buyers’ agents in Brooklyn recommend getting one particularly in Kensington, where the majority of the housing stock is pre-war construction. Victorian homes, American Foursquares, and brick rowhouses built between 1895 and 1940 have had decades of exposure to moisture, soil contact, and wood deterioration that creates favorable conditions for termite activity.
Termite damage is often invisible until it’s significant, and it’s almost never caught by a standard home inspection. A WDI report from a licensed pest control professional is a separate document that specifically looks for evidence of wood-destroying insects termites, carpenter ants, and wood-boring beetles and identifies conditions conducive to infestation. We provide mortgage-ready WDI inspection certificates for Kensington home buyers, sellers, real estate attorneys, and title companies. With Kensington’s median home sale price around $579,000, getting that inspection done before closing is a straightforward way to avoid a very expensive surprise after it.
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