Found asbestos During rehabbing 1st rental property
Fate, TX · Member since 2017 · 9 posts · 2 votes
As a former owner of an Environmental Abatement company (operated in California), I have a bit of background on this subject. Before starting my abatement firm I owned a testing company, which provided the analysis & narrative reports, such as the one which contained the lab results you referred to.
A large factor in "what to do with it" is based on what your intentions are with the property. However, at the end of the day it all comes down to liability. If you are the property owner, you own the liability. Which is why if I have the opportunity to do so, I have the property tested for ASB & Lead Based Paint during the due diligence phase. If I can not get access to the property, I will assume anything built before 1982 will contain asbestos/lead in common materials (based on my experience there's a 90% chance this is the case).
I believe Texas requires any "contractor" performing ASB abatement to have a license, which means Texas has some regulations established regarding removal & disposal.
In California, if you are the property owner you can perform the removal/abatement yourself (assuming SFR), the only requirement is that the asbestos waste be bagged up & taken to a designated facility (in my case in Santa Barbara there is a facility at UCSB where homeowners can take the waste at no/minimal charge). Federal law (EPA) requires asbestos be disposed of at an approved facility. I have development projects in CA & the Mid-West, the requirements are basically the same on disposal.
- If you are rehabbing to flip/sell, there may be State disclosure laws you need to be aware of on the Disclosure Statement. Consider this before you cover/encapsulate material that you may need to disclose to a potential buyer. I've seen owner's have to rip out everything they covered up just to keep a potential sale alive. Costly.
- If you are rehabbing to turn into a rental, it all comes down to how comfortable are you with liability. Most of the work we performed in residential/multi-family facilities was due to liability/risk management on the owner/manager's part. Texas may have requirements on disclosure rules to tenants for asbestos. If it were one of my rental units, I'd mainly be worried about the acoustic "popcorn" ceiling texture. If this material is "hot" I always have it removed since it is a friable material, generally has the highest percentage of asbestos in it & can easily be disturbed. Wet it, scrape it, re-texture & move on.
Not to complicate matters but since we are on the topic of environmental concerns, if you are not already aware, you should educate yourself on the federal EPA "RRP Rule". This is actually more of a liability (larger penalties & fines) than asbestos. I will not go into detail here on this post for fear of boredom, but this is a federal law that requires disclosure in all aspects of dealing with a property built before 1978. This is an issue for ANYONE dealing with a property for monetary gains over $500.
Keep in mind that in the early 2000's Texas set the precedent in the Stachybotrys "black mold" liability/lawsuit push. Lawsuits in Texas helped other states (CA, Florida, NY, etc) establish guidelines & protocols. Mold & Asbestos are not the same animal, but they are close cousins in the liability world.
Best of luck,
Will