Chesapeake Rodent Data Report 2026

We built this report from four public datasets, all pulled on October 3, 2026, and read each one only for what it measures. Chesapeake Rodent Control is a local rodent control company serving Chesapeake, Virginia, and we wanted to know what the public record can and cannot say about rodent risk here.

The four are Census housing estimates for the city and its six ZIP code areas, the City’s 7,109 code-violation records from 2019, a random sample of 599 Virginia Department of Health food-establishment inspections from the past year, and five years of Google Trends data for “rats” and “mice”. The full method is under Data Sources & Methodology below.

One dataset does not exist publicly. Chesapeake has no 311-branded line; requests go to the City’s Customer Contact Center, and no log of those requests, rodent or otherwise, is published on any City data channel.

Chesapeake’s housing is younger than Virginia’s and the nation’s: the median home was built in 1989 (±1 year), against 1984 statewide and 1980 nationally. Of the city’s 96,816 housing units, 31.7% (±1.4 points) were built before 1980, compared with 43.5% in Virginia and 49.7% in the US.

The 1980s and 1990s built more of today’s housing than any other two decades: 39.3% (±1.4) of all units, with another 29.0% built in 2000 or later.

Chesapeake homes by decade built

The 1980s alone account for 19,556 of today’s homes; only 10.1% (±0.8) predates 1960.

Structure type shapes where a rodent can get in, and Chesapeake is overwhelmingly single-family:

• 67.4% (±1.2) of units are detached houses.
• 13.6% are attached single units, the Census category for townhouses.
• 12.2% are in buildings with five or more units.
• 25.6% (±1.3) of occupied homes are rented.

Housing age is not spread evenly. Once the margins of error are respected, the pre-1980 share falls into three groups:

ZIP code area	Housing units	Built before 1980	Compared with the city (31.7%)
23324 (covers much of South Norfolk)	10,059	59.3% ±5.5	Clearly higher
23325	7,642	61.3% ±5.6	Clearly higher
23321 (covers much of Western Branch)	15,012	35.1% ±3.7	Not distinguishable
23323 (covers much of Deep Creek)	15,077	30.0% ±3.1	Not distinguishable
23320 (covers much of Greenbrier)	26,613	19.3% ±2.1	Clearly lower
23322 (covers much of Great Bridge)	22,522	22.6% ±2.3	Clearly lower

Only 23324 and 23325 stand clearly above the city line; within each group the intervals overlap, so we do not rank 23324 against 23325 or 23320 against 23322.

Share of homes built before 1980, by ZIP code area

In 23324, 32.7% (±4.1) of homes predate 1960 and the median year is 1970 (±4); in 23322, 87.3% of units are detached houses with a median year of 1991. Our Chesapeake neighborhood pages apply these figures area by area. The table describes building stock, not rodents: an older house has had longer for gaps to open, but only an inspection shows whether yours has any.

Rodent problems start at openings and cover, and that is where Chesapeake’s two public inspection datasets point: to doors and debris, not to any part of the map.

What the City records, and what it does not

The City of Chesapeake’s published code-violation data has no rodent or pest category at all. Across 7,109 records from 2019, sorted into 29 City labels, none mentions rodents, rats, mice, pests or infestation. That is a finding about how the City files its cases: any rodent condition an inspector found would sit inside broader labels such as “Property Maintenance Violation” and cannot be separated out.

What the 2019 records do show is the outdoor condition inspectors wrote up most: overgrown grass and weeds made up 1,915 records (26.9%), and debris or junk accumulation another 1,050 (14.8%).

Code violation records in Chesapeake, 2019

Debris is not rodent evidence, but it is the cover University of California IPM describes when it says Norway rats dig burrows “along building foundations, beneath rubbish or woodpiles.” The records are also seven years old and reflect complaints and patrols as much as conditions.

What food-establishment inspectors wrote down

Chesapeake food-establishment inspectors marked item 38, “Insects, rodents, animals absent,” out of compliance in 7.2% of sampled inspections, and named rodents in 1.0%. In our sample of 599 routine and risk-factor inspections at 460 establishments, item 38 was cited in 43 inspections (95% confidence interval 5.4% to 9.5%). A violation naming rodents appeared in 6 inspections (95% CI 0.5% to 2.2%), at 6 different establishments.

Food-establishment inspections citing pests, Sep 2025 to Aug 2026

Item 38 combines insects, rodents and animals, so it is not a rodent measure: of its 45 citation lines, 23 described insects, 6 named rodents and 16 named neither. All 43 item-38 citations fell on routine inspections; among the 439 routine inspections alone the rate was 9.8% (CI 7.4% to 12.9%), with rodents named in 1.4% (CI 0.6% to 2.9%).

The six rodent lines split evenly. Three recorded droppings in a kitchen or dry storage area; the other three, all under 12VAC5-421-2930.A, recorded an exterior door that was not tight against insects and rodents: a door bottom left unsealed, gaps around a closed rear door, an unprotected mesh door. These are shares of inspections, not of restaurants, and each records what one inspector saw on one day.

Relative search interest in “mice” across the TV market that includes Chesapeake rises in autumn and spring and dips in midsummer, while interest in “rats” stays flat all year. Google Trends reports an index of relative interest, not search counts or infestations.

For “mice,” November is the peak month at 113.6, where 100 is an average month. A second high runs from March to May (109.7, 110.3 and 109.8), and the low comes in July (81.3) and August (82.5). Averaged over October to March the index sits at 105.0, against 87.4 for June to September.

Search interest in "mice" by month, local TV market (DMA 544)

“Rats” shows no defensible seasonal peak: its monthly index stays between 95.4 (October) and 105.4 (June), with no month standing clearly apart.

Search interest in "rats" by month, local TV market (DMA 544)

Two cautions apply: the TV market covers several cities and part of northeastern North Carolina, because Google publishes no Chesapeake-only series at this volume, and both terms pick up pets, slang and other non-pest uses. The supportable reading: relative interest in “mice” in this market runs above average in October to December and again in March to May.

No public dataset tells you how many Chesapeake homes sit over a crawl space, how damp those crawl spaces are, or how many have open vents. The ACS records age and unit count but not foundation type, moisture or condition, so this report makes no crawl-space claim.

What the biology does establish is the size of the problem at each opening. UC IPM advises that “all holes larger than 1/4 inch should be sealed to exclude both rats and mice,” and that rats “can squeeze beneath a door with only a 1/2-inch gap.” Its house mouse guide adds that mice “can squeeze under gaps ¼ inch tall, and through openings 3/8 inch wide.” Norway rats are the burrowers, and UC IPM says they “usually dwell in the basement and ground floor areas.”

Because the data stops short of the foundation, our inspection starts there. On every job we inspect the crawl space where a house has one and walk the outside of the foundation, checking:

• runs and droppings on the soil, sill and ducts;
• burrows against the foundation wall;
• every foundation vent, access door and pipe or cable entry;
• gnaw-points on framing.

Our crawl space rodent control service covers what happens when the inspection finds activity, including vent screening that keeps the space ventilated.

The data proves facts about buildings, records and searches in Chesapeake; it does not prove how many homes or businesses have rodents, or where rodents are most common.

It supports four statements: the housing is younger than Virginia’s and the nation’s, with an older core in 23324 and 23325; the City’s code data has no rodent category; insect lines outnumbered rodent lines 23 to 6 in sampled inspections; and relative search interest in “mice” is seasonal while “rats” is not.

It does not support:

• An infestation rate. No dataset here measures one.
• “Older ZIPs have more rats.” Housing age describes buildings; nothing here shows rodents are more common in any part of the city.
• A current trend from the City data. The code records cover 2019 only.
• A restaurant ranking. The figures are shares of sampled inspections, not of restaurants, and ZIP-level counts are too small to compare.
• A rodent season. A November peak in search interest means people searched more, not that more homes had mice.

For a Chesapeake homeowner, the data says your house’s age and type tell you where to look, not whether you have rodents.

1. Most of the city is post-1980 single-family housing. 81.0% of units are single-family and the median home dates from 1989, so for most houses the openings to check are those of a newer home: garage doors, utility penetrations, soffits and vents.
2. The 23324 and 23325 areas are the older exception. Their pre-1980 shares are 59.3% and 61.3%, nearly double the city’s 31.7%.
3. Doors and clutter show up in the record. Three of the six rodent-naming lines in sampled food-establishment inspections were exterior doors, and debris or junk made up 14.8% of 2019 code violations.
4. Interest in “mice” climbs in autumn. In the local TV market it peaks in November and is above average again from March to May.

The practical step is the same everywhere in the city: find the openings. Sealing them with hardened materials sized to each gap is what our rodent proofing and exclusion work does, and our rodent guides for Chesapeake homes cover entry points, droppings and signs room by room. To have yours checked, call Chesapeake Rodent Control at (757) 551-3952 or request a free callback.

All data was pulled on October 3, 2026. Every figure is reproduced by our analysis scripts from the downloaded files.

US Census Bureau, American Community Survey

• Tables: B25034, B25024, B25035, B25001 and B25003 (year built, units in structure, median year built, housing units, tenure), 2020-2024 5-year estimates, the latest release, from data.census.gov.
• Geographies: Chesapeake city (FIPS 51550), Virginia, the United States, and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas 23320, 23321, 23322, 23323, 23324 and 23325.
• Selection rule: every ZCTA with land inside Chesapeake in the Census 2020 ZCTA-to-county relationship file. Together they cover the city’s entire land area; 23321 also has about 0.2% of its land in two neighboring cities.
• Caveats: survey estimates with 90% margins of error, shown wherever we compare. ZCTAs approximate ZIP areas, not neighborhoods. Year built is reported by residents.

City of Chesapeake, CodeViolations2019

• Source: the City’s public ArcGIS layer CodeViolations2019, 7,109 records dated January 1 to December 31, 2019, last edited January 21, 2021.
• Selection rule: every record was kept. A record counts as rodent or pest related only if its label names rodents, rats, mice, pests, vermin, infestation or harborage; none does.
• Caveats: one year, seven years old, not listed on the City’s open-data Hub, and shaped by complaints, patrols and the City’s 29-label category list.

City service requests

• Searched: the City’s open-data Hub (38 items, all base mapping layers) and its ArcGIS Online organization (769 services), for terms including 311, rodent, pest and service request.
• Result: no public service-request dataset exists; the only request feeds published are for mosquito control. Rodent requests would require a Virginia FOIA request to the City.

Virginia Department of Health, food establishment inspections

• Source: the VDH inspection portal for the Chesapeake Health District. The index held 1,597 inspections dated September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026.
• Selection rule: the sampling frame was the 1,386 routine and risk-factor inspections. We drew a random sample of 600, allocated by inspection month, which rounded to 599 inspections at 460 establishments, about 43% of the frame. All 599 reports were read.
• Classification: item 38 citations (insects, rodents and animals combined), plus any violation whose observation text names a rodent, rat, mouse or mice; 95% confidence intervals.
• Caveats: shares are of inspections, not establishments; inspectors word findings differently; no establishment is named.

Google Trends

• Source: Google Trends, search terms “rats” and “mice” compared together, web search, Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News TV market (DMA 544), weekly data from September 2021 to August 2026 (262 weeks).
• Method: each week assigned to a calendar month; the seasonal index is each month’s average divided by the average of all twelve months, times 100.
• Caveats: relative, sampled values for a multi-city market, not search counts; both terms include non-pest meanings.