I bought a £320k house – then discovered it was full of fleas ...Middle East

Over the summer, my husband and I finally bought our first property after a decade of renting. Our two-bed home in a family-friendly area of Edinburgh seemed like an ideal place for us to raise our toddler son. That is, until we got the keys and reality started to bite – literally. We soon discovered it had a major flea infestation.

At first, everything seemed fine. After all, we hadn’t noticed anything unusual during the house viewing. We knew the previous owners had cats, but the possibility of fleas never crossed our mind.

We had a three-week overlap with the end of the tenancy on our rental flat so we decided to take things slowly with the move. We decided we would do some painting (with the help of my in-laws) before moving over boxes and furniture.

By the end of the first day of walking around the new house in our painting gear, we noticed small bites on our ankles and legs. The next morning, we started seeing the fleas themselves hopping onto our socks any time we walked through the flat.

Until then, I had never seen a flea before in my life (a quick Google search confirmed our fears). Once you do spot one, there’s no mistaking them for anything else. Fleas have a very distinctive “hop” (they can jump up to 200 times their own body length) and move incredibly quickly.

Adult fleas are a reddy-brown colour, while baby fleas are smaller and appear black in colour. They survive by feeding on the blood of birds and mammals. Fleas can also go dormant and re-emerge when they sense vibrations eg from footsteps, which is why they began to appear in a flat which had been lying empty on the market for months.

Before this, the most likely scenario is that the fleas hitched a ride into the property on a pet, then started to lay eggs around the house. Although fleas are often associated with dirty environments – which made the obsessive cleaner within me cringe – the pests aren’t actually fussy at all. They will happily infest clean properties too as long as a warm-blooded host such as a pet cat is around.

After our discovery, one of our new neighbours (with a cat) kindly gave us some leftover household flea spray from the vet. Job done… or so we thought.

The day after spraying all of the floorboards and skirting boards, I went to the new house on my own. After walking from the front door to the main bedroom, I noticed seven or eight live fleas feasting on my ankles yet again. This was an incredibly stressful moment.

We had just gone through the process of buying a house – it cost us £320,000 – and navigating a move with a toddler. We were also physically drained from painting, cleaning, packing and unpacking. Now we had to accept that the fleas were a much bigger problem than we had initially anticipated. They weren’t being deterred with household spray. I began to feel very stupid. Is this something we should have noticed beforehand? Had we made a huge mistake in buying the flat?

By this point, our rental was finished so we had to fully move into the property as well. We did briefly explore the possibility of legal action. In Scotland, Standard Clauses are clauses used for residential house purchases. Standard Clause 2 states that “so far as the Seller is aware (but declaring that the Seller has made no enquiry or investigation into such matters) the property… is not affected by: … other infestation by insects or other animals.”

Our solicitor advised us that the important wording here is “so far as the Seller is aware” meaning we would need to prove that the seller was aware of the problem and lied, which is basically impossible.

So we moved in. I had phantom itching all the time, particularly at night. Fleas kept appearing in my son’s hair whenever he was playing on the floor. This made me feel particularly ashamed, as if somehow I wasn’t doing my best to provide him with a safe, clean home to enjoy.

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Worst of all, my husband suffered a severe allergic reaction to the flea bites. Generally, flea bites look like tiny pin pricks. But the bites on my husband’s skin soon became swollen, red, itchy and deeply painful, to the point where he was having to regularly soak his skin in hot water to gain relief. I considered temporarily moving us out to a hotel but of course, we had very little money to spare after buying the house so it was a short-lived dream.

Despite all of the extra anxiety we experienced thanks to the infestation, we had to keep reminding ourselves that a flea problem is treatable. As Niall Gallagher, of the British Pest Control Association, advises, targeting fleas at every stage of their life cycle will get rid of them completely.

Fleas “go through a complete metamorphosis, from egg to larvae to pupae to adult. At the egg phase, they can enter a form of stasis,” he says. This means they can go dormant (as the ones in our property did) and re-emerge once a new host appears.

So knowing how to get rid of adult fleas, plus any of their offspring, is key to eliminating the problem for good. Below are the steps we took to get rid of the infestation, which will hopefully prove useful for anyone else with a flea problem on their hands (and ankles, legs…)

1. Over-the-counter sprays and a rigorous cleaning routine

There’s a small chance you won’t need professional help if the fleas aren’t widespread. For a mild infestation, vacuuming thoroughly may eliminate then at all stages of their life cycle. Just remember to dispose of the hoover bag in an outside bin immediately afterwards to prevent reinfestation.

You can also buy over-the-counter household pest sprays, such as Indorex, which kill adult fleas and prevent eggs from developing. However, we used these DIY sprays and hoovered several times: fleas kept appearing.

Fleas dwell in hidden areas like floorboards and gaps in skirting boards, meaning that even the most rigorous vacuuming regime likely won’t catch all of the insects.

2. Professional pest control services

Eventually we hired a professional pest control service to administer a powerful insecticide. Before the treatment began, we moved our furniture to the middle of each room so that the spray could penetrate hidden areas like skirting boards. We also had to leave the house for a few hours while the treatment was applied. After this time, the insecticide turns to an invisible dust which is harmless to humans but kills fleas.

We didn’t hoover or mop the floor for three weeks after the treatment, so that any remaining fleas would land on the residual dust and die. Unfortunately we had to go through this process twice, but the pest control firm we used said this was incredibly rare, especially considering we don’t have any pets ourselves. Our first treatment cost £270 and the firm was kind enough to come back the second time for free.

3. Other tips and tricks

We noticed a reduction in the number of fleas after disposing of the cardboard moving boxes inside our new house. So if you’ve just moved into a home and find fleas, it’s worth unpacking boxes as quickly as possible so that insecticides can penetrate as much floor area as possible.

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Don’t forget about the outside areas of your house too. Gallagher states that “fleas can survive in the natural environment but not for a long time because they still require feeding from hosts”. In our case, the seller left behind two external doormats that I ignored until I noticed live fleas hopping about in the material and quickly binned them.

So should we have noticed them before we bought the property? Gallagher advises that fleas are “not really something you can detect during a house viewing, unless it’s a very heavy infestation”. However, if you know you are going to view a property where the seller has cats and/or dogs, you could ask the seller directly if they have had any issues with fleas (or indeed any other pests) and they are bound to answer honestly.

Finally, if you ever find yourself faced with a flea infestation, try to ignore that feeling of your skin crawling and trust that fleas can be dealt with effectively, even when reality is biting hard.

Hence then, the article about i bought a 320k house then discovered it was full of fleas was published today ( Wednesday 12/11/2025 - 01:01 PM ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.

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