Hear from Our Customers
The hardest part about bed bugs isn’t the treatment. It’s the not knowing. Not knowing if that bite is actually a bed bug. Not knowing if they’ve spread to the next room. Not knowing whether the treatment actually worked or just pushed them deeper into the walls. That uncertainty is what keeps people up at night — sometimes longer than the infestation itself.
Here’s what changes when you call us. You get a certified canine inspection that detects live bugs and viable eggs with 90 to 98 percent accuracy — compared to 17 to 40 percent for a standard visual inspection. That’s not a small difference. That’s the difference between knowing and guessing. For homeowners in Howell’s older downtown neighborhoods, where homes dating back to the late 1800s have aged woodwork, plaster walls, and more hiding spots than any modern build, that level of detection accuracy isn’t a luxury — it’s the only way to be sure.
Howell residents also deal with a specific exposure risk that most people underestimate. Regular travel along the I-96 corridor to Detroit, Lansing, and Ann Arbor means routine contact with hotels, conference spaces, and rideshares in cities where bed bug activity is measurably higher. Detroit consistently ranks near the top of national bed bug city lists. When you’re on the road that often, early detection and fast treatment aren’t just convenient — they’re what keeps a single exposure from becoming a full-blown infestation.
We founded First Choice Pest Control on May 31, 2005 — which means 2025 marks 20 years of serving Southeast Michigan families. Roger, our owner, brings 26 years of hands-on pest control experience to every job. That’s not a résumé line — that’s the difference between someone who’s seen your situation before and someone running through a checklist for the first time.
We hold Integrated Pest Management training credentials, have earned recognition from both Angie’s List and HomeAdvisor, and are one of fewer than 100 pest control companies in the entire United States with a certified canine bed bug detection program. Those aren’t common numbers in this industry.
Howell and the surrounding Livingston County area have been part of our service territory for years. Whether it’s a century-old home near downtown Howell, a rental unit close to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, or a newer build out in Howell Township, our approach stays the same — thorough, honest, and handled by the same technician every time. No rotating strangers. No part-time college students. Just consistent, accountable service from people who know Howell and know the work.
It starts with a conversation. When you reach out to us, you’ll talk through what you’re seeing — the bites, the signs, the timeline. From there, we schedule a canine inspection, where a certified K-9 team sweeps your home and identifies exactly where live bugs and viable eggs are present. This step matters more than most people realize. Skipping straight to treatment without a precise inspection is how you end up retreating the same spaces three months later.
Once the inspection confirms the scope of the infestation, we build a treatment plan around your specific situation — the size of your home, where the bugs are concentrated, and what makes sense given your household. Howell’s mix of housing stock means no two jobs look the same. An older home near downtown with plaster walls and original woodwork requires a different approach than a newer subdivision build in Howell Township. That’s exactly why we don’t run one-size-fits-all programs.
After treatment, a follow-up inspection confirms the infestation has been cleared — not assumed, confirmed. That post-treatment verification is where the K-9 detection program pays off again. You’ll know whether it worked, not just hope that it did. And if you have questions at any point in the process, you’re talking to the same technician who was in your home — not a call center.
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Our bed bug control services cover both residential and commercial properties in Howell and across Livingston County. On the residential side, that means single-family homes, rental units, and multi-unit buildings — all handled with the same certified process. On the commercial side, that includes hotels along Grand River Avenue, property management companies, and any business where a bed bug situation could affect guests, tenants, or employees. Given that the Michigan Challenge Balloonfest draws roughly 100,000 visitors to Howell each June, local lodging properties face a real and recurring exposure risk every summer. Proactive inspections before and after high-occupancy weekends are something we can build into a plan for property managers who want to stay ahead of it.
Every service starts with the canine detection inspection. From there, treatment is targeted to where the infestation actually is — not sprayed broadly across rooms that don’t need it. We also offer price matching for reasonable competitor rates, so if you’ve already gotten a quote from another Howell-area provider, bring it. There are no binding contracts, no locked-in service agreements, and no pressure to commit to anything beyond what you actually need. Discounts are available for seniors, veterans, and first responders — a straightforward acknowledgment of the people in this community who’ve given the most.
This is one of the most common misconceptions among Michigan homeowners, and it’s worth being direct about: yes, bed bugs survive Howell’s winters without any problem. They’re not an outdoor pest. They live inside your heated home, your bedroom, your furniture — and Michigan’s cold winters do nothing to disrupt that. While temperatures below 0°F sustained for several days can kill bed bugs in exposed environments, the inside of your home stays warm and climate-controlled all winter long. That’s exactly the environment bed bugs need to survive and reproduce.
What this means practically is that bed bug infestations don’t slow down in January the way mosquitoes or ants do. If you have them in November, you’ll still have them in February — and likely more of them. Howell winters are not a natural reset button for this pest. If you’re seeing signs of bed bugs at any point in the year, the season doesn’t change the urgency.
Misidentification is extremely common, and it’s one of the main reasons people either panic unnecessarily or ignore a real problem for too long. Bed bug bites can look like mosquito bites, flea bites, or a minor skin reaction — and bites alone aren’t enough to confirm an infestation. What you’re looking for in addition to bites are small rust-colored stains on your sheets or mattress seams, tiny dark specks that look like pepper (bed bug fecal matter), shed skins near the edges of your mattress or box spring, or a faint musty odor in the bedroom.
That said, even experienced pest control technicians doing a visual inspection only identify infestations correctly 17 to 40 percent of the time. The harborage spots bed bugs use — inside wall voids, behind electrical outlets, deep in furniture joints — are genuinely hard to access and assess visually. This is exactly why the canine detection inspection exists. A certified K-9 team can confirm or rule out bed bugs with 90 to 98 percent accuracy, giving you a real answer instead of a best guess.
In a multi-unit building, bed bugs don’t stay in one apartment. They move through wall voids, electrical conduits, and plumbing chases to adjacent units — often without the neighboring tenant knowing anything is happening. By the time a second or third unit shows signs, the infestation has typically been active for weeks. This is one of the reasons early detection matters so much in rental settings, and why a single-unit treatment without inspecting the surrounding units often leads to re-infestation.
For landlords and property managers in Howell, Michigan’s implied warranty of habitability creates a legal obligation to address reported bed bug infestations promptly. A documented infestation that goes unaddressed can compromise habitability standards under state law. Beyond the legal side, the practical cost of treating multiple units after an infestation spreads is significantly higher than catching it in one unit early. We work with property managers on both sides of that equation — detection before it spreads, and treatment when it already has.
It’s a fair question, and the honest answer is: probably not from the outdoor event itself, but potentially from the lodging around it. Bed bugs don’t live in grass or open-air environments — they need a warm host and a place to hide. The real exposure risk tied to events like the Michigan Challenge Balloonfest, which draws around 100,000 people to Howell each June, is concentrated in the hotels, short-term rentals, and Airbnb properties that fill up during those weekends.
Guests traveling from across Michigan and neighboring states bring luggage and personal belongings that can harbor bed bugs, and those items end up in local hotel rooms. If you stayed somewhere in or around Howell during a high-occupancy weekend and started noticing bites a week or two later, that’s a timeline worth paying attention to. Bed bugs typically take seven to ten days to begin showing signs after being introduced into a new environment. If the timing lines up, a canine inspection is the fastest way to know for sure.
The most important thing you can do before a bed bug inspection or treatment is avoid the instinct to start cleaning, moving furniture, or spraying store-bought products. Rearranging items or applying DIY sprays before a professional arrives can scatter bed bugs deeper into wall voids and harborage areas, making them harder to detect and treat. It can also interfere with the canine inspection by introducing chemical scents that affect detection accuracy.
What you should do is set aside bedding, clothing, and soft items from the affected areas so they can be laundered on high heat — bed bugs and their eggs are killed by sustained temperatures above 120°F. Keep a record of where you’ve seen activity: which rooms, which furniture, what the bites look like and when they appeared. That information helps the technician build a more accurate picture of the infestation before the inspection even begins. We’ll walk you through any additional preparation steps specific to your home when you schedule.
Yes — we offer discounts for seniors, veterans, and first responders. Howell and Livingston County have a meaningful veteran population, and a community that takes that service seriously. Extending a discount isn’t a complicated policy — it’s just the right thing to do for people who’ve spent years putting others first.
If you or someone in your household qualifies, mention it when you call. The discount applies to bed bug control services in Howell, MI along with the rest of our service area. We also offer price matching for reasonable competitor rates, so if you’ve already gotten a quote from another provider in the area, bring it to the conversation. The goal is to make sure cost isn’t the reason someone in Howell puts off treating a bed bug problem that’s only going to get harder to resolve the longer it sits.
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