Just Moved in Montreal and Waking Up with Bites? Here's What's Actually Going On

Then You Wake Up With Bites

You finally got the boxes into the new place. The couch is in the wrong spot, half your stuff is still wrapped in blankets, and you just want to collapse into bed and not think about anything for twelve hours. Then you wake up. And there are bites you didn't have yesterday. Take a breath. You're not dirty, you didn't do anything wrong, and this happens to more people than you'd think, especially right now. Bed bugs don't care whose name is on the lease. They ride along in boxes, mattresses, couches, and moving trucks, and they show up in brand new apartments just as easily as old ones. So before you spiral into a 2am scrolling session trying to diagnose your own arm: here's what's actually happening and what to do about it.

It Probably Wasn't the New Apartment's Fault

There are three common ways bed bugs end up in a place right after a move. None of these are about cleanliness. Bed bugs aren't attracted to mess — they're attracted to warmth, carbon dioxide, and a steady place to feed. A brand new, freshly cleaned condo is just as appealing to them as anywhere else.

They Were Already There, Dormant

Bed bugs can survive for months without feeding. A unit can look spotless and still have bugs waiting in the baseboards or behind an outlet cover from a previous tenant.

They Came in the Moving Truck

Shared trucks, used moving boxes, and rented equipment all pass through a lot of homes before they get to yours.

They Hitched a Ride in Something Second Hand

That great deal couch or mattress from a marketplace listing is one of the most common ways bugs travel across the city.

Important Note for Montreal Tenants

If you just moved in this week and found bugs, the law is on your side. In Quebec, landlords are legally responsible for structural pest control. But you need to act immediately. If you wait two weeks, they will try to claim you brought them in. An official EliteXterm assessment report within the first 48 hours is the definitive proof you need to make your landlord pay for the knockout.

Why This Week Specifically

Montreal has one of the highest concentrations of bed bug activity in the country, and moving season is when it spikes hardest. Thousands of leases turn over on the same day, which means thousands of mattresses, couches, and boxes are all in motion at once. If even a small percentage of those units had an active infestation, that's a lot of opportunity for bugs to travel into a new home unnoticed. That's exactly why so many people who've never dealt with this before suddenly find themselves googling bite patterns at 1am, a week after moving.

What Not to Do

Don't panic and start throwing out furniture — most of what you own can be treated and saved. Don't spray random store-bought insecticide on your mattress; it rarely reaches where the bugs actually live, and it can make an infestation harder to treat properly later. Don't wait to see if it gets worse — bed bugs don't go away on their own, and every week you wait is another week they've had to spread into more of the apartment. And don't call a generic spray-and-pray exterminator: if someone offers to come spray a light chemical on your mattress and tells you to sleep in garbage bags for three weeks, hang up. You just moved. Your life is already in boxes. You don't have the time or the mental energy to play games with multi-week chemical cycles.

What Actually Works

The only method that reliably ends an infestation in one shot, without weeks of follow-up treatments, is heat. Bed bugs and their eggs die at a specific temperature, and a proper heat treatment raises the entire space above that threshold in a single visit. No chemical residue, no waiting for eggs to hatch so a second round can catch them, no living out of garbage bags for a month. You leave for the day. We heat the space. You come home to a treated apartment and you sleep in your own bed that night.

Get It Handled. Sleep Sound Tonight.

You just moved. You're exhausted. You don't need a research project — you need your new sanctuary back. EliteXterm offers two distinct dispatch protocols to fit your urgency:

• Premium Emergency Protocol: Full priority line-skipping. We deploy our specialized heat equipment to your unit within 24 hours to execute a total one-day clearance.
• Standard Clearance Protocol: Full heat deployment scheduled within our standard 48-hour operational routing grid.