Pest control in Park Cities, Dallas.

That is the better order by a wide margin, and it is worth a call as soon as the site notice goes up. Treating and sealing before a neighboring building comes down puts the barrier in place ahead of the displacement rather than behind it. Doing it afterwards means dealing with whatever has already arrived inside a Park Cities home instead.

It matters a great deal. The older house has decades of settlement, original penetrations and probably a raised floor, while the new one has sound framing and very few gaps left by the builder. On adjoining Park Cities lots those two properties need genuinely different work, and a plan that treats them alike will be wrong about one of them.

Not directly, though the disruption around it is. Site work turns over ground, strips away cover and opens up buildings, all of which relocates populations rather than destroying them. In the Park Cities the useful response is to read what is happening on the lots around you and weight the treatment toward whichever elevation happens to face the activity.

Through the demolition and the early groundwork, then it settles. The wave arrives in the first days and tails off once the new slab is down and the ground closes again. What tends to catch a Park Cities household out is the second wave, when the next lot on the street goes the same way a year later.

Some do. The wooded banks of Turtle Creek and its parks give roof rats and Norway rats cover through the middle of the Park Cities, and homes backing onto the creek or its tributaries see them first. Fallen pecans, bird feeders and pet food left outdoors keep them nearby. When rats get inside, a free interior inspection comes first, then sealing at the roofline and foundation before trapping.

The canopy hands them a bridge. Limbs from old oaks and pecans touch dormers, cornices and eaves on pre-war Park Cities houses, and where decades of weather have softened that trim, carpenter ants carve nests. Big black ants on the roof or inside upper rooms each spring give them away. Baits and non-repellent sprays reach the colony or its trails, and a carpenter replaces the damaged wood.

They can. Rebuilds in the Park Cities keep a dumpster on the street for months, and crews' lunch scraps, drink cans and food wrappers draw flies, yellowjackets and rats at night. Debris piles beside the dumpster give rats somewhere to hide. Asking the builder to keep a lidded trash can for food waste helps. Your exterminator treats your side of the property line and checks entry points facing the site.