asbestos found in my fourplex - how to proceed - loan options etc

[Mario F.]

Hello, so I had my fourplex tested for asbestos and they have found it in a couple of areas.  This is in one unit of the fourplex so I'm assuming there is more in the other units.  This will likely blow up my budget and I don't think I'll have enough to get the work done at this point. Does anyone have advice on how to proceed from this point?  Was it a bad idea to get this test done?  Sounds like a lot of people just would rather ignore it.  But since I now know about it, I suppose I'll have to get rid of it all.  ARe there any loan programs out there that could help with the costs of asbestos abatement? 

Thanks

mario

[Michael Hayworth]

Asbestos is a great example of government intervention that turned into a major freak-out blown out of all proportion.

Asbestos just sitting there is not any real big problem. The problem comes with breathing asbestos dust into your lungs over a prolonged period of time. So, for example, mechanics who worked on asbestos brakes for years and years, with brake dust always being breathed in, developed pretty serious lung diseases. Eliminating it from products made a lot of sense, but common-sense regulation quickly turned into pretty ridiculous levels of regulation. And people don't really understand the particulars, so it's turned into this huge scary thing where the average overprotective soccer mom is convinced the asbestos monster is going to crawl out from under her kid's bed and kill him in his sleep.

The two main places it was used in our area are in siding and in popcorn ceilings. On my properties, I generally choose to not disturb it. If we need to re-side the property, we'll install new siding over the old asbestos siding, and it's perfectly fine. Popcorn requires more extensive measures - you'd be fine wetting it down and scraping it while wearing a respirator, but the law requires certifications, testing, blah blah so we typically just leave the popcorn in place in those homes. Thankfully, there's relatively few of those in our area.

You're in California, so whatever laws I have to deal with in Texas, you've probably got 3x as many there.  Now that you know it's there, you're probably going to need to hire someone who's certified and go through a full abatement process, unless you can just leave it undisturbed. Hopefully, it won't be too financially burdensome.