DALLAS — Seen any bugs in your house lately? You're not alone.
A recent study from Construction Coverage found that 4.3% of Dallas-area households reported seeing a rodent in the home within the last year, and 18.7% had seen at least one cockroach.
Yikes.
If that's not enough to make your skin crawl, the study also found that more than one-in-five homes built before 1939 had a rodent sighting in the past year, compared to just 1.8% of homes built since 2016. And more than 14 million American households will experience some sort of roach or rodent problem each year, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.
But it's not all bad news - at least Dallas isn't the most roach-and-rodent-infested Texas city featured in the study. That dubious honor goes to our friends in Houston. That city ranked No. 4 overall in Construction Coverage's study, with 35.2% of the homes reporting roach sightings and 6.8% reporting rodent sightings.
The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area came in at No. 17 on a list of 22 areas in the study. The worst area in the country to live in when it comes to bugs is the Washington, D.C.-Arlington-Alexandria area, what with all of its old houses that have roofs, foundations and windows that are prone to cracking and other issues that would allow easy access for the little critters to break in.
Other top roach-motel towns include Philadelphia, Memphis, New York and Kansas City. Check out the full report and methodology here.
Now, I'm off to call a pest control service. Just in case.
