Handling old mold issue on current flip up for sale

[Robert Taylor]

I have a house up for sale right now, its a nice house built in 2001, 3200 sq ft, a former builder's model so it was built with a lot of little "extras" you don't see on every newer house like tray ceilings, inset columns and arched entries going into living rm and dining rm, nicer than usual tile, etc. Anyway, the place was foreclosed on about a year ago, old owners owed WAAAAAYYYYY more than it was worth but of course they took all the light fixtures! The old owners must have been rough on their brand new home, the kitchen appliances were trashed, dishwasher broken, Thermador range caked in grease (which they left-gee thanks!) Whole kitchen was greasy, I've seen more than my share of greasy kitchens but this one took the cake! I had someone degreasing it 100% for 3 days! Now the place is totally spotless, painted inside and out, new carpet/refinished hardwood, new appliances, etc, etc. ready to sell! Here's a link to our youtube video of the place:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nT1s5BoBzI

Anyway, my issue for posting this is about a mold issue that the house had when we bought it. I'd classify it as a "medium sized" mold issue, it was bigger than a few spots on a wall but much less than a big mold infestation covering several rooms or a whole house, it was confined to the master bath and was green mold. (I'm no mold expert, but I've always heard that black mold is the bad stuff!) I do know a little about mold, in that you need some sort of source of moisture to get it started, which we figured out was coming from the crank-out windows in the bathroom, which even though they weren't that old, were wood windows that had warped enough to let small amounts of water in during heavy storms. They were on the corner of the house that seems to get the worst of the storms, too. Whenever the old owners abandoned the place, the house was all sealed up otherwise, so whatever water and moisture got in through the faulty windows was trapped inside and of course we got mold! The bathroom wasn't caked with mold, there were just a few spots here and there, but it was listed in the REO listing for the house that there was a mold issue in one room.

So, to remedy the problem, I took what I knew already about mold and did some more research. We eliminated the moisture source by replacing the faulty windows with new ones. We thoroughly cleaned all the mold with cleaner and bleach, got rid of everything and then primed everything with Kilz primer and repainted the bathroom, along with the rest of the house. I'm confident the mold issue is 100% GONE!

That gets me to where I am today. Since I'm also the listing realtor for the house, I checked with our WI Realtors Assoc legal hotline to see about what the rules for disclosure on this. The attorney who staffs the hotline said that as long as the mold was gone, legally I didn't have to disclose anything, but as I thought, it would be a good idea liability-wise to disclose it in the seller's condition report. Now, I don't know about other states, but in WI we don't have to give a seller's condition report until after an offer is accepted, but its pretty common for sellers to write one up when listing the house for sale and then posting it in the "documents" section of the mls listing for buyers to see. I now have the house listed for sale but haven't posted a condition report yet. I'm sure that any seriously interested buyer's realtor will look up the listing from last year and see the note about the mold, so I'd just assume that most or all serious buyers will know there was a mold issue.

I'm just wondering how you'd handle this? I'm just about ready to write up a sellers condition report, which will be 100% clean, except for the note I'd add about the mold, where I'd thoroughly explain what was all done.

My other question, has anyone ever run into a problem with a lender in a "former mold house"? My brother, who's my partner, is suddenly freaked out that as soon as a bank hears there was once a relatively small mold problem, they won't want to loan on the house. I think he's upset over nothing, but I honestly don't know! Thanks!