Mold: How much to discount?

[Jim Mootrey]

I am in the due diligence period on a short sale. The inspector found mold in multiple places in the finished basement. The house has been empty since July and the utilities were turned off. I think that is the source of the mold. It is not an extreme case: If you did not know what to look for, you would not even see it. But it will need to be dealt with and will get worse between now and the closing. The closing will not happen until at least January. I am fairly confident i can remove the mold for under $5,000.

How much would you ask as a discount? Assume any other issues have been accounted for in the original offer. We are talking a 2 bath 3 bedroom SF in the $140,000 range.

Thanks

[Travis West]

@Simon Campbell.

Spraying any solution onto a reservoir of mold spores is one more of those things that we (you) should never do. While some portion of the spores do get wet and perhaps die, the spraying action causes many of those spores to become airborne ... only to move on to another surface.

If you can imagine what the spores would do if you chose to spray them with compressed air - then you can imagine how much the same thing would occur by spraying a water solution on the surface.

Sure, some of the spores do get wet, but many more (and remember that spores are too small to see with the naked eye) become airborne.

The solution (as I referenced in the EPA document) is to wet a rag, wipe the surface, turn the rag, wipe the surface, turn the rag, etc. Always wipe the surface with a clean portion of the rag, and rinse the rag out when it becomes dirty.

Travis West