Renting a home in Ho Chi Minh City brings a set of pest questions that do not come up in most other countries: who pays when something appears, what the building actually covers, how to arrange a treatment when nobody at the other end speaks English, and what happens to your deposit at handover.
This page collects everything on the site that answers those questions, in the order you are likely to need it.
Before you sign
- Twelve checks to make during a viewing — fifteen minutes that tell you more than any question to the agent.
- Landlord or tenant: who pays? — what is reasonable to expect, and what belongs in the agreement.
- What building management covers — the gap between a building programme and your unit.
Moving in
- How to move without taking cockroaches with you — cardboard, appliances and electronics are the three carriers.
- Shipping furniture and containers into Vietnam — treated timber, quarantine, and what six weeks at sea does.
- Booking a treatment without speaking Vietnamese.
Living here: your building type
- Why pests still reach the twentieth floor — service risers, refuse chutes and the lift.
- Older buildings and shophouses — shared voids and original drainage.
- Villa compounds with gardens and pools — where mosquitoes actually breed outdoors.
- Living above a restaurant or cafe — the drainage stack you share.
- Serviced apartments and short lets — who is responsible, and what to check on arrival.
Moving out
- End-of-lease treatment and your deposit — why a dated report settles the argument.
Where we work
We cover the districts where most English-speaking residents live, and each area page describes what is specific to it — the river and gardens in Thao Dien, the canal network in Phu My Hung, the restaurant streets of District 1.
Safety at home
If there is an infant, a pregnancy or a pet in the home, the method should be chosen around them rather than applied and hoped for. Pest control safety for children, pets and pregnancy explains what changes, and reading the product label covers what you are entitled to ask.
Book an inspection
Site inspections are free of charge and carry no obligation. A technician walks the property, identifies the species and the harbourage, and sends a written quotation with the method and the schedule — normally within one working day.
Request an inspection · See indicative prices · Apartment pest control
The first week in a new home
Four things done in the first week prevent most of what people call back about in month three, and none of them costs anything.
- Run water down every floor drain, including in a bathroom you do not intend to use. A dry trap is an open pipe from the building drainage into your home, and it is the single commonest reason a clean new apartment reports large cockroaches.
- Check second-hand and shipped furniture before it enters a bedroom. Mattress seams, bed frame joints, the underside of drawers. Furniture is the commonest route for bed bugs into an otherwise clean building.
- Look under the kitchen sink and behind the fridge before you fill the cupboards. If there is old debris or droppings there, you want to know now rather than after your things are in.
- Find where the waste goes and how the refuse room works. In a managed building this determines more of your exposure than anything inside your apartment does.
Talking to your building when you do not speak Vietnamese
Most apartment problems in this city are partly the building's and partly yours, and the split is decided in a conversation with management. That conversation goes far better with a document: a dated technician report naming the species and identifying the route is specific, whereas a complaint is an opinion. We write reports in a form you can forward, and where the discussion itself needs to happen in Vietnamese we can have it on your behalf. See booking pest control without speaking Vietnamese.
If you are a landlord rather than a tenant
The same events look completely different from the other side of the lease. The two visits that prevent almost every deposit argument — one before occupation, one at handover — are set out in pest control for landlords and property managers.