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Termites don’t announce themselves. By the time you notice a hollow floor, a door that won’t close right, or a small pile of wings near a window, the damage has usually been building for years. In Greenpoint, that timeline gets compressed the neighborhood sits between the East River and Newtown Creek, and that waterfront position keeps soil moisture levels consistently high. Subterranean termites need moisture to survive, and the ground beneath Greenpoint’s rowhouses gives them exactly that.
What changes after a proper termite inspection and treatment isn’t just peace of mind it’s real protection for a real investment. The median home value in Greenpoint has climbed sharply, and a pre-war rowhouse on a landmarked block carries both sentimental and financial weight. Knowing your structure is clean means you can renovate, sell, refinance, or simply live there without the slow drain of undetected damage eating through your floor joists.
The other thing worth knowing: homeowner’s insurance almost never covers termite damage. If a colony has been feeding inside your foundation for five years and you find out mid-renovation, that repair bill which can run $3,000 to $10,000 or more lands entirely on you. Getting ahead of it isn’t overcautious. It’s just smart.
We’ve been operating in Brooklyn since 1971, and we’ve been serving Greenpoint and the surrounding neighborhoods for just as long. Richard Kourbage Sr. started the company, and his sons Richard Jr. and Charles joined in 1987 and 1989 we’ve been running it together ever since. That’s not a tagline. It means the people making decisions about your home are the same people whose name is on the business.
Our staff brings over 100 years of combined pest control experience, and we work exclusively with materials registered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Every job follows EPA safety protocols something that carries extra weight in a neighborhood like Greenpoint, where residents have lived with the consequences of industrial contamination along Newtown Creek and don’t take environmental shortcuts lightly.
We hold an A+ BBB rating, accredited since 1989, and we’ve been serving Kings County long enough to know exactly what’s inside the walls of a North Brooklyn rowhouse and exactly where to look.
When you call us, someone actually picks up 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From there, an appointment is scheduled within two business days, and same-day inspections are available more often than not. In a neighborhood where renovation timelines are tight and real estate closings don’t wait, that kind of availability matters.
Our inspection is thorough. A licensed technician walks the full property basement, foundation perimeter, crawl spaces, wood framing, any areas with visible moisture exposure or soil-to-wood contact. In Greenpoint’s pre-war rowhouses, that means checking original floor joists, older foundation walls, and any below-grade spaces where subterranean termites are most likely to establish mud tubes and begin feeding. The technician isn’t looking for a reason to sell you something they’re looking for what’s actually there.
If treatment is needed, we use both liquid barrier applications and termite baiting systems, depending on what the inspection reveals. Liquid treatments create a protective zone in the soil around your foundation. Baiting systems target the colony at its source workers carry the material back underground and eliminate the colony from within. For attached rowhouses with shared walls, that distinction matters, because a colony doesn’t stop at your property line. After treatment, you’ll know exactly what we did, why, and what to watch for going forward.
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We handle the full range of termite and wood-destroying organism services subterranean termite treatment, carpenter ant control, powder post beetle treatment, and certified WDO inspection reports for real estate transactions. If you’re buying or selling a property near Greenpoint Landing, along Manhattan Avenue, or anywhere in the 11222 ZIP code, and your lender is requiring a Wood Destroying Organism report before closing, we can provide that documentation with the speed and credibility that real estate attorneys and buyers expect.
For residential properties, we tailor treatment to the building. Greenpoint’s attached rowhouses and multi-family buildings share structural elements wall framing, floor joists, foundation sections with neighboring units. A termite colony that’s established in one basement doesn’t stay there. We account for the full scope of the infestation, not just the visible damage in a single room or unit.
All materials we use are NYS DEC-registered, applied by certified technicians holding the appropriate Category 7C commercial pesticide applicator credentials required by New York State. We provide free estimates, and our pricing is straightforward no hidden charges, no pressure to add services that aren’t warranted. If termite damage repair is part of the conversation, we assess and explain it clearly so you know exactly what you’re dealing with before any work begins.
The most common signs are ones that are easy to dismiss at first. Hollow-sounding floors when you walk across them. A door or window that suddenly doesn’t close the way it used to. Small piles of discarded wings near a windowsill or baseboard those are left behind after a termite swarm. Mud tubes running along a foundation wall or basement framing are one of the clearest indicators of subterranean termite activity.
In Greenpoint’s pre-war rowhouses, these signs tend to show up in basements and along the lower framing of older structures first. The building stock here is mostly pre-1940s construction, which means original wood framing that has been exposed to moisture and soil contact for decades. If you’re mid-renovation and a contractor opens a wall or pulls up flooring and finds soft, damaged wood that warrants an immediate inspection, not a wait-and-see approach.
The cost depends on the size of the property, the extent of the infestation, and the treatment method that makes the most sense for your specific situation. For a typical Greenpoint rowhouse or multi-family building, termite treatment generally runs somewhere between $1,500 and $5,000. Larger infestations or properties requiring both liquid barrier treatment and baiting systems will land toward the higher end of that range.
What’s worth keeping in mind is the alternative. Termite repair costs average around $3,000 nationally, and structural damage in older buildings can push well past $10,000. Homeowner’s insurance almost universally excludes termite damage, which means every dollar of repair comes directly out of pocket. In a neighborhood where pre-war rowhouses are selling well above the borough median, treating a termite problem early is significantly less expensive than discovering it late especially mid-sale or mid-renovation when timing is everything.
Yes, and this is one of the more important things to understand about termite infestations in Greenpoint’s building typology. Subterranean termite colonies live underground and travel through the soil and into structures through foundation walls, floor joists, and any wood that makes direct or near-direct contact with the ground. In an attached rowhouse or multi-family building, those structural elements are often shared across property lines.
A colony established beneath one unit’s basement doesn’t recognize where your property ends and your neighbor’s begins. It follows the wood. That’s why treatment in attached buildings needs to account for the full scope of the infestation not just the damage visible in one unit. If you’re a property manager or co-op board member dealing with a termite issue in a Greenpoint building, a whole-building assessment is the responsible starting point, not unit-by-unit spot treatment.
For FHA and VA mortgage loans, a Wood Destroying Organism (WDO) inspection report is required before closing no exceptions. Conventional lenders are increasingly requiring them as well, particularly for older properties. Given that the majority of Greenpoint’s housing stock was built before 1940, most properties in the neighborhood fall into the category where lenders want documentation.
Even when a lender doesn’t require it, a WDO inspection is a reasonable ask in a real estate transaction involving a pre-war rowhouse. Buyers want to know what they’re purchasing. Sellers benefit from having a clean report in hand before listing, because it removes one of the most common negotiation pressure points. We provide certified WDO inspection reports that meet lender requirements, and with 24/7 availability and same-day scheduling frequently possible, we can work within the tight timelines that Greenpoint’s active property market demands.
Termite swarm season in New York City typically peaks between March and May, usually triggered by the first stretch of warm, rainy days after winter. Swarmers the winged reproductive termites emerge to start new colonies, and they’re often the first visible sign that a mature colony is already established nearby.
Greenpoint’s waterfront position between the East River and Newtown Creek keeps ambient moisture levels higher than more inland Brooklyn neighborhoods, which can extend the conditions favorable to swarming. If you see a swarm inside your home near a window, emerging from a wall, or clustered near a basement entry point don’t wait. That swarm is a signal, not the problem itself. The problem is the colony that produced it, which has likely been underground and feeding for years. Call for an inspection as soon as you can. Swarmers that don’t find a new nesting site die off quickly, but the original colony doesn’t go anywhere.
It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is nuanced. The ExxonMobil oil contamination that affected more than 100 acres of Greenpoint’s soil doesn’t directly cause termite infestations. But the decades of remediation activity, soil disturbance, and groundwater treatment associated with that contamination have had indirect effects worth understanding.
Ongoing excavation and soil remediation can expose previously buried wood elements old pilings, buried lumber, tree root systems and create new points of soil-to-wood contact that subterranean termites exploit. The same remediation activity that disturbs the soil also maintains elevated moisture levels in the ground, particularly in northern Greenpoint closest to the creek. Subterranean termites thrive in moist soil, and Greenpoint’s environmental history has kept parts of the neighborhood’s subsurface consistently wet. That doesn’t mean every home near Newtown Creek has termites but it does mean the conditions that support termite colony establishment are more persistently present here than in drier, more inland parts of Brooklyn. A professional inspection is the only way to know for certain what’s happening beneath your specific property.
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