Meth - Best practices? What do you do?

[Bill S.]

So this is the story. Purchased a house where the tenant was being evicted. It was in fairly good condition as it had been rehabbed a few years ago so aside from the damage by the tenant it looked pretty good. I closed on the property and then turned around and offered it for sale in this hot market. I paid $115,000 and listed at $125,000. I put it under contract at $156,000 (did I mention the market was hot?). At any rate we were scheduled to close last Wed and the Saturday before that I got an email from the buyer's agent. "We are terminating the contract due to a positive test for Meth". The levels are fairly high levels but based on the environmental consultant probably did not include manufacturing just contamination from heavy use via smoking. I will be able to deal this but it'll likely evaporate most of my profit. Local law does not require disclosure if it has been properly mitigated so should be ok and at least not lose my shirt.

So my question is, how do I avoid this in the future? The "quick check" testing is about $400 per property and while it would have saved me on this property, it seems that in the long run it'll cost me more than it'll save me. What do you do to mitigate this risk?

I am familiar with meth lab signs and this place had none of them. The environmental consultants said that just smoking meth contaminates the property.