Thinking about.....buying home with mold

[cherie9g]

Hello everyone,

I am looking for some assistance. I have considered purchasing a home that is worth $190,000 for $126,500 and the reason that it is not selling is because the house was foreclosed and throughout the fall/winter period, the sub-pump broke and the basement flooded, leaving alot of moisture in a house that was locked up.

There is now tiny mold spots all throughout the house, some a light reddish brown, others are more green, smaller spots, not too many clumped up or dark brown/black. I was wondering if I could remove this mold with a bleach formula and then use Killz and be fine....I am going to do an inspection, but I am finding that many inspectors can only tell you that there is a mold problem and not if it is a health hazard (which I wish someone would just same, it is black mold RUN!). I have also found that many mold websites are suggesting not to hire a mold specialist to come take a look because all they will do is tell you that it is mold. My main concern is if it is in the wall itself or just surface mold. If I could receive opinions on what I should do in this case please let me know.

This is what I was considering: (1) remove all the carpet (2) bleach the walls (3) apply killz (4) lay down new flooring

purchase a dehumidifier and air purifier. Instead of hiring a company to take out all the old drywall and put up new drywall which would cost be $5,

000. The house was built in 1986 and is structurally in pretty good shape, it is also in a very nice subdivision where all other homes sell for around $200,000. Please offer some thoughts on this or any experiences that any of you have faced.

Thank you,

Cherie

[MRS. CLEAN]

Wear proper gear and masks if you're thinking about working on it.

Also, use 50-50 bleach solution, not full 100% bleach. Sounds like a great opportunity. I know I'd do it.

[<h>]

Are you sure that only the basement flooded? If there&#39;s mold everywhere, it sounds like a bigger problem. Could be you&#39;d have to tear out the drywall and paint every stud and joist with kilz. They had to do that to a house on one of those "flipping" shows, and it added something like $20,000 to the remodeling cost for a 1,000 sq. ft. house for the demolition, dumpsters, kilz spray, new drywall, trim, etc. If it was wet enough to cause that much mold, there might be electric issues as well. What about the heating system? I&#39;d be VERY careful about this one.

[Goedjn]

I suspect that the $35,000 discount is fairly close to what it will cost to guarantee fixing the problem in one go, and noticably less that it will cost if you try to fix it on the cheap, and then have to go back and do a total rehab.

Without more info, you&#39;re really just gambling that the mold/mildew isn&#39;t as bad as it might be. So the question back to you is, are you will to take that gamble, and can you afford to loose?

If the answer is "yes", then you MIGHT make a significant amount of money in exchange for taking the chance.

[J.A. Michel]

Mold kills people. Documented cases prove it. I&#39;d steer clear of it.

[LT]

----------------------------

What does a realtor say your sales price would be? You&#39;ll have to disclose the prior existence of the mold, which will greatly lower your sales price in a weak market.... LT

[cherie9g]

To reply to this: I am checking with the seller&#39;s agent. He initially said on the phone that there was a slight mold problem and that a couple walls needed to be replaced (which he said was down in the basement) and now he said he hired a company to get an estimate and they said that they would rip out all the drywall (of course they would because they want to make some money, right?). So now I am just curious what is the most accurate information and if I should just get an inspector and see what he/she has to say......I just have a feeling that they won&#39;t even want to touch the issue and they will want to forward me on to a specialist.

Now I have researched black mold and looked at all the pictures and it looks nothing like the mold that is in this house. It is small little specs (almost like condensation- like the size of a pencil eraser) and just randomly throughout the house, not in large clumps everywhere. In addition, my realtor (who is also my mom&#39;s b/f) has his own drywall company and says he has seen this before and that he would just bleach it and put killz on it. That is what he has done in the past, I just don&#39;t want the mold to be deeper than just surface is all. Are there any places that I can go through like health inspectors through the county or something like that to get an honest opinion of whether this is a health hazard or if I am just wasting my time.

I feel like my brain is overloaded now, all because I keep on getting different information. I am thinking I am going to request from the seller&#39;s agent to get a print out of the inspection/estimate that they had from the "company". I feel like they are withholding information, but at the same time, if they were....can they honestly let people off the streets enter a home with no protection that has black mold.....won&#39;t they be held liable if something were to happen to those people?

[mm]

He figures 65,000 dollar discount.

Since it&#39;s foreclosed, the original owner has nothing to gain or lose. If you could find him, you might get more info about how dry the basement was before they moved out.

Also the neighbors won&#39;t have an incentive to lie for the sake of the owner, their friend. Although they do want someone to buy it an dtake care of it, I don&#39;t know that would be enough to make them lie to your face.

[Steve B]

Some friends of mine bought a house in California where someone stuck a nail in the wall to hang a picture and punctured a pipe. It was a slow leak, then they put the house up for sale. It was on the market for a very long time, and they got a very good deal on it.

BUT, it was all one floor, and no basement. I wouldn&#39;t touch a house like that where you could not get on all sides of everything. I don&#39;t think there&#39;s enough spray in the world to kill all the stuff that is underground and unseen and can&#39;t be gotten to.

Whatever you save on price is going to be spent on continuous remediation. Plus, you will have a hard time selling it.

I wouldn&#39;t touch it with a ten foot pole. YMMV.

Steve

[Tim Smith]

It&#39;s not clear from your post if you are thinking of this to flip and sell, or thinking of this as a way to get a home for yourself to live in at a good price.

If the former, take into account that you&#39;ll probably have to disclose the mold fix to buyers, and buyers will probably not be interested unless the fix is sure. Basically, if you are doing this to sell, you are going to have to do this the right and careful way.

On the other hand, if you are buying the home for yourself to live in, you don&#39;t have to be as careful. You might be willing to go for a cheaper solution that has, say, an 80% chance of taking care of the problem, taking the risk that you&#39;ll have to do more later, whereas a buyer is not likely to find that acceptable.

In other words, people have different levels of risk they find acceptable. If the house is for you, you only have to bring it up to your level. If it is to sell, you&#39;ll probably have to bring it to a higher level.

[Grahmey]

mold is EVERYWHERE. it is only a problem if it is wet. dry it up. clean with soapy water. you&#39;ll never know how bad it is in the walls till you tear off the sheetrock. does the sheetrock on the above floors look eaten up by the mold or just some surface mold? you can guess by looking up at the floor from the basement. do the joists look really bad? or just some surface mold that can be washed off? maybe tear off small area of sheetrock where it looks the worst to see whats in the wall.

[Steve B]

Or, as the seller is doing now, you will have to mark down the price once more and find a "motivated" buyer. At which point, someone will buy it below appraisal, and there will be an electrical short.

Steve

[Art]

You are underestimating potential problem. The governor&#39;s house in NC was just redone for a second time for mold because the first time did not work. Hundred&#39;s of thousands of taxpayers dollars. A student dorm took years to clean up. I would walk away unless you enjoy gambling.

[cherie9g]

I believe it is just surface mold. We pulled up the carpet and there was no water marks what so ever or any mold residue underneath the carpet. It was the basement that flooded as I was told. It wasn&#39;t even all the way, it was just the subpump that was broken for a little while but is fixed now. I am going to the house again on Sunday to do some cleanup tests...grab just a little bleach and do some test spots to see if it is just surface. The wall isn&#39;t bubbling or cracking or anything, we have checked the floors, no soft spots... I was also thinking about buying a mold kit....so after we do the small bleach tests....to see if we disturbed any of the spores and see if it is airborne. If something forms I will consider sending it in to see if it is black mold. If it is anything else I will not be as concerned... especially if it is just surface. I will see if I can take pictures on Sunday and I will try to post them up here for all of you.

I do not th>> Hello everyone,

[mm]

I wouldn&#39;t let a boyfriend run my financial life (or a girlfriend, in my case.)

[trader4]

I guess that assumes this is the last house she&#39;ll ever buy, because if it&#39;s not she still has a similar problem when she goes to sell it. Granted, if you live there for 110 years and there is no more evidence of a mold problem, then it&#39;s less of an issue, but in many places it would still have to be disclosed and could scare off some buyers.

Any house with mold this extensive, I&#39;d be very cautious about. At a minimum, I&#39;d have the mold lab tested and document what mold it is. If it&#39;s stachybotrys, the house is a tear down. If it&#39;s harmless, you have documentation of what it is and can choose the appropriate remediation.

[trader4]

I agree. To think you&#39;re gonna buy a test kit, and maybe just wash the walls with bleach is nuts. I wouldn&#39;t live there unless I knew what exactly the mold is. And when you go to sell, most places today you&#39;d have to disclose that the house had this problem, even if it&#39;s been remediated. So, how do you think a buyer is going to react if you say "The house had mold everywhere, I just bought a test kit, tested it myself, and washed the walls with bleach? It&#39;s OK now"

I&#39;d want a documented report from an expert company with lab work as a minimum. There have been homes that had to be abandoned and torn down because of stachybotrys. And I don;&#39;t buy that all this came about from a sump pump failure that caused the basement to flood for awhile. It would have to be flooded for a hell of a long time for the moisture to get through the entire house. And the bad news is, if the moisture made it all the way from the basement through the entire house, it&#39;s very likely the mold is everywhere, ie inside the walls, etc.

[longshot]

I agree that mold is everywhere. It always has been. People make a big deal out of everything that is potentially dangerous. wash off what you can with the bleach solution. (a garden sprayer will work awesome) Seal up the areas with Kilz. (removing the oxygen kills it). put a dehumidifier in the basement. Take everything you see in here with a grain of salt. be leary of what a professional mold removal company has to say, they want your money.

just my 2 cents

Rob

[Doug Miller]

Other posters have addressed the mold issues pretty thoroughly. I want to address a misconception that you appear to have regarding the financial aspect of this house.

It is NOT "worth $190,000".

If it were, you wouldn&#39;t be able to buy it for only two-thirds that much. What you&#39;re considering purchasing is a home that MIGHT BE worth $190K AFTER the mold problem is fixed. Or it might be worth only two-thirds of that.

The market value of something -- a home, a car, a loaf of bread, whatever -- is what someone is willing to pay for it. No more, no less. What an appraiser or some "blue book" says it&#39;s worth it not relevant: if nobody will buy it at that price, it isn&#39;t worth that much. Nobody&#39;s buying this house at $190K, not even you. Ergo, it isn&#39;t worth that much. It might be someday, but it isn&#39;t now.

[Avery]

Well said!