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Buying a Bank Owned Mold House? Think You Can Handle the Clean Up? Beware Even The Pros Screw Up!

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Buying a Bank Owned Mold House? Think You Can Handle the Clean Up? Beware Even The Pros Screw Up!

With the rash of recent foreclosures over the last several years there is a tremendous amount of backlogged inventory just sitting there which is Bank owned Office cleaning fargo. These properties are called REO, which stands for real estate owned (that's Bank owned in other words).

These properties have created tremendous investment opportunities for serious investors and hobby investors alike! but, alas with the tremendous opportunity comes an amazing amount of potential liability as well. You see when a home sits empty, there are multiple issues which can create water intrusions, and with water comes- Mold!

Many investors have been led to believe that mold is a very easy way to buy a property far below market value- and they are right! Most of these investors believe that they can just have their handyman go in rip out the moldy drywall and spray some bleach paint it over with kills and voila- mold problem solved! Sadly this can create multiple problems. Many many times i have been called out to inspect one of these "flips" i am usually called by the end buyer who is now experiencing health problems or worse their small children have developed asthma allergies or worse! Then I get paid to test the air and wall cavities. When I find mold a whole new beast rears its ugly head-- lawsuits and liability! Lawyers just love these cases, you see juries are very sympathetic towards homeowners who they believe to have been "cheated" by unscrupulous home flippers.

Whats worse is in some cases the investor have even hired "certified" mold companies to do the clean up for them! Most of the time they falsely believe that they have eliminated the liability by hiring a third party. sadly this is not always the case! i should know i have been paid to act as an expert witness on multiple occasions and believe me these attorneys can be downright vicious when they smell an asset (victim).

You see when a house has sat empty for a long period of time, especially in houses with basements or crawlspaces a physical source of puddling water is not even required... Water can move through out the house invisibly in the form of vapour. This invisible movement of water is one of the main reasons that both amatuers and so-called professional remediation contractors screw up and leave the structure contaminated after all visible flowering mold has been removed!

You see most professional mold companies, received their certification from a two or a three day seminar. What's worse is this is usually completed by the company owner and not by the actual workers who are performing the work! It takes me usually an average of at least six months in order for me to adequately train someone to work for me with 40 hour a week on the job training! It is absolutely impossible to cramm all of the essential information necessary to become a competent mold professional into a two or three day class, and then expect that person to become a qualified instructor for his own workers! When it relates to bank owned properties the learning curve is even greater.

I have spent the last 9 years specializing in bank owned and foreclosure mold clean up work. This means we have had the opportunity to treat thousands of empty houses. In many cases we must completely gut these properties to the studs!

When working on a bank owned property the remediation professional is "flying blind"In other words there is little or no background information available to the contractor. This makes it especially difficult. You see when working for the large banks the only way to be paid is to pass an air clearance test. This means that all of the mold, even the invisible to the naked eye mold, must be removed in order to pass these stringent air tests. Only by having stripped so many houses to the studs does one learn all of the suspect areas where water moves in the form of vapor which creates hidden pockets of mold!

When attempting to clean up a mold project the average contractor and home flipper alike, is hampered by a lack of understanding of the basic life processes of fungus and decay organisms. Most assume that if they "rip out the moldy drywall and boards " then spray it with a product that is labelled as a fungicide that the mold is dead and no longer a problem! this could not be further from the truth! Molds possess a defense mechanism called bursting or sporulation. This is a mechanism designed to allow species durvival even if the host parent is killed. What happens is as the mold becomes disturbed or as it is sprayed with a chemical fungicide the mold senses that it is being attack and it releases a massive amount of tiny spores into the air. The spores are like the "seeds" . In fact they are so tiny that ten thousand of them cam fit onto the head of a pin! In one square inch of flowering mold there are anywhere from one to five million spores! When you have a few square feet of flowering mold they can number in the billions and trillions! That is why the national mold authorities recommend that if there is more than a ten by ten square foot area the structure much be treated by a certified professional with air scrubbing equipment and negative air flow containment training. Whats even more depressing is that just because a product is labeled as a fungicide, does not mean that it kills spores which are the most important things to kill! Alas just because it says fungicide does not even mean it will work on porolus surfaces which is where mold grows in a house. In fact most fungicides are NOT approved for porous surfaces life wood drywall and concrete!

Sadly even the "professionals" are often ill equipped to handle large REO , bank owned projects! In fact last year alone we had to re-treat over 40 projects that had been done by "certified mold companies" and about as many more that had been attempted by uncertified home owners, handymen and flippers alike. We were brought into the bulk of these by attorneys, sadly.

It is possible however to buy these foreclosure mold homes, and make a tremendous profit. It is possible to do this without fear of litigation and liability. How, you ask? Well the key lies in hiring a mold professional with vast experience , with these bank owned REO's. In getting a pre-cost to have it professionally treated, prior to negotiating with the bank!

We have worked with banks like HSBC Household, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Ocwen, First Merit, Wells Fargo and the like for nearly ten years specializing in just these types of clean-ups House cleaning service fargo. What is better yet, is that we offer wholesale mold abatement pricing for the banks and offer the same wholesale pricing to individual investors and REO realtors!

Remember, before you negotiate with the bank, call a professional mold contractor with experience handling, empty foreclosure properties. Ask for investor and bank references. Google the company's name and the owners name with tags like service calls, problems, and lawsuits. It is pretty easy in the information age to discover if you are dealing with someone you can trust!

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