A recent article in the Washington Post offers practical guidance for homebuyers in search of a healthy home. The article focuses on those who are highly sensitive, but ideally, everyone should be aware of chemical hazards before purchasing a home.
For people who are seriously allergic or sensitive to common household chemicals, buying the right home is fraught with difficulty. But with a cooperative seller -- and some important protections written into the purchase contract -- the hazards can be manageable.
Highly sensitive buyers may need to avoid homes that have had any pesticide treatments; been recently painted; had repairs involving drywall, caulking, adhesives, glues or chemical finishes; had mold or moisture issues; or have elevated levels of radon. They may have to avoid homes with carpeting or that had smokers living there or air fresheners in use. Such buyers may think they are unique, but there are many people facing these issues. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy generally defines these concerns as Type I Hypersensitivity disorders, which are also sometimes called atopic allergies. According to the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge in England, some 20 to 30 percent of the population exhibits some Type I Hypersensitivity.
It is unlikely that most newly constructed homes will meet the requirements of a hypersensitive buyer because so many potentially troublesome products are used in the construction process. It may be better to focus on buying an existing allergy-free abode -- or a home that can be made "allergy-free."
Because the real estate contracting process is quite extensive, I highly recommend that hypersensitive buyers create an introductory contract addendum that they can present to sellers before even touring a home. That addendum would briefly explain Type I Hypersensitivity and the specific types of conditions that would eliminate the home as a potential match. In effect, it's a property disclosure and disclaimer form, which all sellers are required to provide to prospective buyers, only in reverse.
To read the full article, click here.
About Andrea Fabry
I am a former journalist and the mother of nine children ranging in age from 28 to 12. My husband Chris, myself, and our children find ourselves in the desert of Arizona attempting to rebuild our health and our lives following a massive toxic mold exposure. The organization momsAWARE comes out of this crisis as a means to help educate and empower others on the subject of environmental health. Our family has also launched a natural line of personal care products called Just So, available at our Online Store.
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Fantastic article ! Thank you ever so much YET again Andrea, for your hunting down of these GEM's of help!!!
ReplyDeleteYour digging, and researching are abundant in the blessing they do to people everywhere.. I can not BEGIN to tell you just HOW often I am led to share your wonderful blog with someone I meet, or some friend or aquaintance...
and here you go again, with another help for ME!
We are trying to sell, and yet in the back of our minds continue to wrestle with.. WHAT to do when it comes time to buy?? :)thank you thank you thank you for another help in that area! ;) blessings to you and yours as you continue to heal....
Good article, but I have to say that I feel it's a bit unrealistic. I don't think there's a chance in the world that you would be able to get a seller to allow you to check for mold in their home. If you were to find mold--and as Andrea knows, measuring mold is a highly subjective process in many ways--the homeowner will now have to disclose that to any future potential buyers, and will probably have to do an expensive remediation. Any real estate agent worth his salt would advise a homeowner not to allow any testing for mold or anything not required by law. And to be honest, I wouldn't blame them.
ReplyDeleteWe did what Andrea did--bought a new home. But we were lucky enough to find a spec home that had been finished nearly two years before we closed on it. That gave time for offgassing and for any potential moisture problems to have shown up, except, of course, for any plumbing issues. It has worked out very well for us.
We have lived for awhile in a difficult part of the country mold-wise--the southeast. The homes here are often quite old, and the environment is typically quite moist. Mold is everywhere. I have read many articles by builders who feel that there WILL be mold in most any home, but a savvy buyer will look for general good condition (indicating a previous owner who maintained the property and fixed things as they broke), not surrounded and shaded by trees, not on a boggy lot and NOT with basement. Avoid cheap construction, even new (and maybe especially the new cheap construction!) especially if you plan to be in the home any length of time. Slabs are good; crawls are iffy but can be sealed well, especially if they are not too tight to the ground.
We will be moving soon as well, and I am thinking that we may ask our own realtor to allow us to do a "vacuum test" without the owner knowing. This way we would be able to walk away from the home without giving the current owner any liability. But we fully expect that we will have to re-carpet, repaint and replace the HVAC system in most any house that we'd buy over 5 years old.
Blessings, and thank you for your blog!
Amanda in NC
Exactly what we did in buying a safe home last year -- and yes, Amanda, the seller was fine with our having mold testing and other environmental testing done on the house so long as it was at our own expense. Of course, it helped to have a down market and sellers who really wanted to sell.
ReplyDeleteWe've been in the new house for a year and our health has improved quite a bit!
Heather in WI