Houston Cracks Terminix's Rodent Top Five, With Dallas-Fort Worth Not Far Behind

Two Texas metros are back in the top ten of a national rodent ranking released Monday, and one of them moved up the kind of notch that gets noticed. Terminix placed Houston fifth on its fall "Worst Cities for Rodents" list, pushing Chicago down to No. 6 — the first time in this ranking's recent run that the Windy City has fallen out of the top five. Dallas-Fort Worth took ninth, behind Boston and ahead of Detroit, which climbed into the top ten for the first time this fall.

New York City held first, followed by Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Washington, D.C. rounded out the group at seventh.

Terminix timed the release to the seasonal shift rather than to any single city's bad year. The company's technical service manager, board-certified entomologist Emory Matts, said the drivers vary by market. Weather, drought, development, population shifts, and the availability of food and shelter all play a part, he said in the announcement, and dry conditions have a way of pushing rodents indoors to look for water. Milder falls and winters, he added, extend breeding windows and let populations build before the cold actually arrives.

For Texas, the practical question is not whether the ranking is fair, but what happens in the next eight weeks. Both metros carry the conditions rodents exploit in autumn: large stock of aging rental housing and commercial kitchens, constant construction on the edges, and drainage systems that collect water when a fall storm stalls out. Add the usual cooling trend and the pressure moves inside, into garages, attics, wall voids and restaurant back-of-house.

The biology favors them. The National Pest Management Association notes that a mouse can squeeze through a gap the size of a dime and a rat through an opening the size of a quarter, which is why a crawlspace vent with a torn screen or a pipe penetration that was sealed with expanding foam two winters ago reads as an open door. Roof rats, the climbers, favor attics and the spaces above commercial ceilings; Norway rats stay closer to the ground, drawn to dumpsters, loading docks and foundation lines.

Houston's ranking is not new territory — the metro has been a fixture on these lists for years — but the Dallas-Fort Worth showing reflects a region that has added residents and rooftops faster than it has added exclusion work. Suburban construction leaves fresh soil lines against slabs, utility trenches and irrigation boxes, all of which give rodents a path in that has nothing to do with how tidy the yard looks.

The two big lists that supply most of this coverage use different methods. Orkin's Rattiest Cities ranking, which tracked Chicago at the top for a decade before Los Angeles took the title in 2025, has not published its 2026 edition yet. Terminix's list lands in early October, deliberately ahead of the indoor migration.

Property managers and homeowners who want to get in front of it have a short, unglamorous checklist. Seal cracks and voids, including the gaps around utility penetrations and door sweeps, and keep foundation drainage moving water away from the structure rather than into the soil line. Trim tree limbs back from the roof, since roof rats use them as a highway, and move pet food and birdseed into sealed containers at night. Attic and garage inspections matter more in October than in July, because the evidence — droppings, rub marks along joists, gnawed insulation — is fresh and the entry point is usually still visible.

When those signs show up in more than one room, the trade's own guidance is to stop treating it as a DIY project. Rodents are among the harder pests to keep out of a structure, and the reason is arithmetic: the openings are small, the animals are nocturnal, and one missed gap resets the whole job.