Park Slope Bedbug Disaster

I’m hoping someone can offer some advice about this difficult situation – I’ve spoken to some lawyers but I wanted the Brownstoner take.

About the middle of September, I signed a lease on a dream apartment – recent gut renovation, really close to the park, beautiful block. The property manager allowed us early access, since the place had been empty for some time. Apparently the entire building had vacated; we and the ground floor duplex were both 9/1 leases.

So last Friday, we loaded up the U Haul and spent all day carrying things up the stairs. It literally wasn’t until the last item was walked through the door that I looked down at a speck on the wall and realized I was staring at a bedbug.

I caught it and stuck it in a bottle, and immediately got online to verify. It was the real deal. I just happened to google the address of the place, too, when I found a posting about an infestation there on bedbugregistry.com. I thought I recognized the poster’s username from some of the old mail in our mailbox, so I googled that person as well – turns out they lived nearby.

Forgoing inhibition, I walked directly over to the previous tenant and knocked on the door. ‘Lo and behold, they knew exactly why I was coming. Turns out, there had been a serious problem with bedbugs in the building, and all the tenants had moved out before their leases were up. The landlord was not only notified, but was well aware of the problem and had not effectively addressed it, requiring previous tenants to hire their own pest control people.

The next day, I phoned the property manager to ask if he knew anything about a prior infestation, which he denied. When I mentioned that I’d spoken to previous tenants and could substantiate with email chains, photos, and an actual specimen, he relented and said that if I wanted to get out of the lease and get my money back, that would be alright since it wasn’t even the 1st yet.

At great expense, I hired a moving company to come get all our stuff and take it to a storage facility while we found a new apartment. The apartment was completely vacant by last night, the 30th. Both the property manager and broker were informed that the apartment was open to be shown to prospective tenants.

I called the property manager this morning to schedule a time to come pick up the rent and deposit (they have first, last, and security). He told me to stop by the office tomorrow afternoon.

Not less than an hour later, I got a call from the landlord himself, informing me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that the building had no bedbug problem now or ever, and that he considered the lease to still be in effect and binding. I told him that not informing us ahead of time that there had been an infestation was something I considered fraudulent, and that he had plenty of time to rent the apartment, that all we wanted was our money back and no bad blood was necessary – I was willing to eat the cost of the movers. He responded that he wouldn’t allow it. I told him that I guessed, then, we’d have to talk to an attorney. He dared me to do so.

He also suggested that my own home (I own an investment property) might just as easily turn up on a site like bedbugregistry.com – although I’d never mentioned the site. I asked him what exactly he meant by that and he quickly changed the topic. But I’m pretty sure we both understood what he was after.

So that’s my nightmare, which is as of yet ongoing. Does anyone here have any thoughts or advice? I’m contacting everyone I know to try to figure out what our next step will be.

ANY advice will be appreciated!