Exterminator in Apex, NC

Local Knowledge

A Historic Core Ringed by Subdivisions — Two Different Jobs

Last updated: September 4, 2026

Apex has managed something unusual: it has grown explosively while keeping a genuine historic downtown rather than replacing it. That leaves a small core of century-old buildings surrounded by decades of subdivision, and the two need entirely different attention. In the historic district the questions are about damp sills, crawlspace ventilation, powderpost beetles in old floors and the gaps that a hundred years of settling opens in masonry. A mile out, in a subdivision from the 2010s, none of that applies.

On the newer streets the questions become fire ants on graded turf — Wake County falls inside North Carolina’s imported fire ant quarantine, which now covers 81 counties — wasps on new eaves, and whether the pre-construction termite treatment has survived later landscaping. One reassurance holds across the whole town: Formosan termites are confined to Brunswick and Rutherford counties in North Carolina, so the native eastern subterranean termite is the local threat. Sending the same treatment to both halves of Apex would be lazy.

Most of Apex is neither the historic core nor last year’s phase; it is the twenty to forty year old subdivisions in between, and those are the ones people underestimate. That age is precisely when the grade has settled, downspout extensions have gone missing, decks and patios have been added across the treated soil line, and the shrubs planted at construction have grown into the siding. It is the least dramatic housing in town and it generates a good share of the termite findings — and if you are selling, North Carolina closings use the WDIR-100 report, current within 30 days.

The historic core is more precisely dated than most, because Apex burned twice. A fire in February 1905 took a number of frame commercial buildings and a second on June 12, 1911 destroyed much of the business district, and the Town notes the fires gave merchants a strong incentive to rebuild in fireproof brick. Town Hall went up in 1912, the 100 block of Salem Street was rebuilt with pressed-brick front stores by 1913 and Union Depot in 1914. So downtown is masonry of a known age rather than the frame that preceded it, and the Apex Historic District was listed on the National Register in 1994 with boundary increases in 1995, 2001 and 2008.