Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Real Talk with Sterling Real Estate Group is your go-to resource for all things real estate. In our episodes, we break down the latest market trends, share insider tips, and provide expert insights to empower your property journey. Whether you're buying, selling, building, or investing, we're here to help you navigate the dynamic world of real estate in New York's Capital Region and beyond. If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover in a future episode, we’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us at info@sterling518.com.
Lisa Licata (00:37)
Welcome to Real Talk. It's Sterling Real Estate Group. Today I'm honored and privileged to have John Adams here with us today from the Home Inspector. We're gonna talk about everything you need to know about home inspections. Welcome, John. How are you? Thanks, Lisa. I appreciate you having me here. I'm good. How are you? I'm well. Thank you for coming on. I know you're busy. You carve out some time for us. Happy to do it. Happy to do it, yeah. So let's get into it. Let's start with...
What happens during a typical home inspection? We jump right into it here. Let's jump right in. And that's what we do at home inspections. it's probably going to go over 30 minutes. There's a lot to talk about. Oh, gosh. right. Let's try and keep it quick. Typical home inspections. So, you know, we're there to look for defects in the house. And usually in this area, when you read our real estate contracts, they talk about major defects. Right. So, you know, they talk about there's usually a dollar amount, usually $2,000. And sometimes that keeps getting escalated here in this market.
We talk about those as major defects. So those are really the things I'm looking for. it's one single item at that threshold amount. It's not a lot of little items that add up. That's right. So we get that question a lot. Like, can we add up every little missing outlet cover and put it all together? No. No, We are talking about one single item. So those are the things for sure we want to find and talk about and make sure everybody's on the same page about. But in the midst of doing that.
we're gonna find the things like a missing outlet cover, like a ungrounded outlet, like the things that become more of a homeowner to-do list. And we're putting that together and some of those things could become major defects. We wanna spend $10 now or $20 now so they don't become a big thing down the road for a homeowner after they've owned the house for 10 years or 20 years. The example that always jumps to mind for me is I often see a bathroom exhaust fan.
venting into an attic. Not ducted outside. Everything's right up until that three inch hole and it's just not ducted to the outside. It's just venting shower steam into our attic space. And that causes what? That can cause mold. sometimes it hasn't yet caused mold. So I want to make sure people know they can spend 40 bucks, get this vented outside and buy the duct for it and avoid that maybe really costly mold remediation project down the road.
That's kind of some of the examples of like things that are, they don't make the major defect list, but they're the little things we can do to prevent the big things. So it's not really defects that you're looking for. You're looking homeowner education, how to care for their home. Exactly. and ⁓ that's why I always love when the, potential buyer is there with us. I really like that ⁓ because it's, it's this education. It's going through the house. One, they've seen any defects we're talking about, but also importantly, things like how do you turn off all the water to the house?
you know, how do you turn off the power to the house? How do you use your new home? Where's the air filter on my furnace that I'm gonna change out? Lots of times, you know, nearly 50 % of the homes I'm inspecting are for first time home buyers. You know, they've never had to do that stuff. It's overwhelming. Right, it can be a lot, especially if no one's held your hand a little bit and showed you where these things can be. So I try and point those things out that they're not broken and there's no issue, but someone over their lifespan of owning that house needs to know. Right, right.
Can you give us an example of what, let's assume we're at a $2,000 threshold. Give us an example what might be a major defect. That's a great question. one of the really common ones, I was already talking about it before, the really common one that comes up is mold. Right. Another one that comes up a lot that you think wouldn't come up as often ⁓ is furnace systems or heating systems that aren't working correctly. You know, this time of year, even when it's
We're talking summer, fall, spring. I'm still testing the heating systems. I'm still making sure they're working because it's not going to be long until we're needing those every day. So that's something that can have big cost and we want to make sure it's working correctly for someone right now. Other things that come up as major defects are electrical. lots of times, electrical systems, because it's not a real common homeowner thing to take your electrical system apart and get into the nitty gritty of it.
there's problems that grow and go unseen for a long time. And by that, I mean, I'll take off the cover for an electric panel sometimes, full of rust. Because little bits of water have maybe been leaking in from the outside down a wire into the electric panel. Not safe. Not safe. And a homeowner wouldn't have that cover off, shouldn't have that cover off. So they haven't seen that. But we're looking in the inside of that electric panel, we see there's tons of rust. So I had one those this morning. You the wire on the outside, the insulation was...
really worn and that had allowed water in the panel and you know now we're talking about a fairly big replacement with a panel and the service wire. Right, right. What so for electrical sometimes does that fall under something is not grounded properly? Does that fall under a safety issue which then classifies it as a major even though it doesn't hit that $2,000 threshold because it is a safety issue? so
Lots of times, it's always good to talk to real estate attorney and sometimes they get into some back and forth about this. But something like an ungrounded outlet, certainly it's a safety item. Something like a junction box cover that's missing, safety item. But they're things that can be resolved pretty inexpensively. So they don't really hit the major defect threshold. There are some safety things that you hear.
people will bring up and they really wanna get things done before closing. Sometimes we have missing handrails or broken glass, and sometimes those can affect the loan type also. right. Exactly. So I try and point those things as we go through, even though everything we just talked about, I'm not gonna list as a major defect. It's not gonna become something where someone's looking for a multi-thousand dollar credit to fix any of those things. I always try and have people...
and I try and do this for them a little bit, but prioritize what we're fixing on the house. So if we see, you know, a outlet cover that's missing where, you know, it's in a kid's bedroom, that's really cheap to fix, that's really easy to fix, but that's high on our priority list when we move in the house. We don't want someone touching live wires. Exactly. I try and get people to do that because you're going to get a long list from us on any house. You're going to get a long list from us and you're not going to get through it all in one week. So you work through it.
slowly and you prioritize what needs to be done now. Just do your check marks all the way through. It does help. I know you did a pre-home inspection for me. That's right. And the homeowner went through and crossed everything off the list. Worked their way through it? Yeah, they did. impressive. they did. I know I'm jumping ahead because I said a pre-home inspection, so that is one of the questions we have on here. So why is a pre-home inspection a good idea for people thinking, you know, getting ready to sell? Right. I think that's a good topic and it's become...
It happens more and more lately, it seems like. People that are gonna sell their home, they have someone like me come in and inspect the home for them as though they were buying their own home. I'm gonna go through all the defects, create an inspection report for them, and it gives them the chance, like your clients, it gives them the chance to go through those defects and make sure they're not gonna be a bump in the road when they go to sell it. So sometimes we live in our houses for a long period of time and you're seeing the same thing every day so that defect doesn't jump out.
to you as the homeowner, but the home inspector can come in and say, Oh boy. Yeah, oh boy. Yeah, yeah. It's something you can fix. And also, then it avoids those, do I have to give somebody a credit? And are they going to maybe back out of the real estate contract? And then we've got to go back to market, which maybe you can talk about that. But obviously, that puts a little bit of a black mark on the house, right? Yeah. It gives, and you're right. We hear at Sterling Real Estate Group, when we're representing a seller, we do suggest that they get a pre-home inspection.
And it kind of puts their mind at ease, right? Because you're like, you guys show up if we're representing the seller and it never fails. When you go up in the attic, I'm like, please don't let there be mold, right? You know, that's one of the biggest things, or please don't let the roof, you know, be leaking. So if there is mold, you know, sometimes the buyers are like running out the door because they're scared, because they're not educated about the mold, but that can all get...
taken care of and obviously we know we disclose that it's been taken care of. The mold remediators usually have a nice warranty and the seller has a peace of mind. Sometimes too when you're doing, buyers are getting into multiple offers. Offers can be stronger by waiving inspections and if saying, the home is pre-inspected, we're going to show you the inspection report.
And this is everything there were, for instance, one you had just done for me, there were no majors. It was all very little things. And the homeowner wanted to make sure everything was taken care of prior to going on the market. So a new homeowner didn't have to deal with it. And it was little, right? I think it was some outlet covers and different things, but it was very simple and it's good. I had an agent here do a home inspection and the seller was like, okay, but I don't want to do septic. Why they didn't?
and she convinced them to do septic, the whole system was crumbled. The septic guy was like, I don't even know how the system is still working. They were mortified. You know, they're like, we didn't wanna do, you know, we weren't saying we didn't wanna do it because we, you know, they just didn't wanna deal with it. But they had to. So they got all the quotes and were given the credit right up front at closing. Awesome. So there was no, and the house sold right away. It was disclosed, it was up front, but you're right, it does take that pressure.
Off the seller and and the buyer. Yeah Mold so we talked about mold. Did you have something you want to add? No. ⁓ okay Mold mold it's a it's a very trendy Yeah thing to be talked about in real estate transactions. It happens a lot, you know, we're our Home inspections we have mold conditions. We have what New York State calls a mold project
which is 10 square feet of mold staining or greater, we see that in greater than 50 % of the homes we inspect. It is really common. I know you've dealt with it many times. It's something that comes up a lot. And it's something that New York State regulates. So there's this process they've got in place where they want someone who's a licensed mold assessor. Which you are. I am. I do a lot of mold work. I do a lot of mold testing, a lot of air sampling, those kind of things. But New York State wants
a mold assessor to look at what's going on. A separate company is the remediation contractor, who I think you've talked to before. They come in, they do the work, they clean it up. And then there's even a third step where you need a clearance inspection done by a mold assessor. And like you said, a lot of these guys have warranties and those kinds of things that follow the house too. So it's good to find out that information. And that keeps everybody on the up and up because this all came about.
Was it in New York, one of the hurricanes that came through and all the homeowners were getting ripped off. So it really keeps everybody on the up and up. So you're in there during your inspection, you see the mold, typically you know what's causing the mold, i.e. being vented or not the proper ventilation in the attic or just even a wet basement. So you identify what the problem is and we bring in the mold remediation company to
not only get rid of the mold, but to fix the problem that caused the mold. That's a really important point. Right. And as a mold assessor, that's one of the things we have to identify is what's our source of moisture. Right. Because if we're not going to do what you just said, if we're not going to handle that, don't even bother. Right. It's waste of money. Waste of money. It's coming back. Right. So that is a huge point. And if someone's having a mold project fixed, make sure that everyone is telling you what the source of moisture is and how they're going to fix it.
Because if not, you're going to be doing it again. Yeah. So that's a really, really good point. And then you come back in to make sure once the work was done, the mold was remediated and then you sign off. Exactly. So we're signing off. And then all those documents together lots of times in a real estate transaction are making it to a buyer ultimately. And that's what gives them kind of the peace of mind. Hey, this has been done right. Really, when you've got a successful mold remediation project, usually it happens in attics or basements.
Those end up being the cleanest space in the entire house, microbially. You've got these coatings and these chemicals, these biocides that are used that are incredibly good at controlling mold growth and killing what was there. So you end up with really, really clean spaces. So most buyers, especially if they take just a little bit of time to kind of see what was done, I think they'll feel pretty comfortable if the project has been completed by licensed professionals. ⁓ It's when they- Not your neighbor, Right, exactly. I see buyers get-
get nervous when it hasn't been taken care of. they're seeing the mold. It's tough to imagine how this is going to get fixed and that they're going to be OK with it. So that steps into that, OK, well, that pre-listing inspection could call that out. And then maybe we can fix that ahead of time so it to that point. What about basements that are just damp? How do you combat the mold? So we know we run a dehumidifier constantly. For sure.
Yeah. Is there a paint, right? Could you paint your walls mold resistant along with the dehumidifier? Anything else that can be done? Right. That's great questions. There's dry lock paints. There's things you can put on our masonry foundations that can help create a little bit of a moisture barrier Paints are tough because there's really not a paint on earth that sticks to a damp surface. And that's what we're talking about with these foundation walls. starts crumbling. Right. So, you know, ultimately the
the biggest changes you can make, certainly a dehumidifier, you're pulling humidity out of the air and you can monitor that, but the biggest changes you can make are on the exterior of the home. Lots of times when I see we've got a really wet basement, there's no gutters in the house, so you can imagine you've got all this roof water that ends up right next to the foundation wall. Lots of times I see grating where we've got yards that are sloped towards the house. Towards the house, not away. Exactly. So those are the kind of things, the soil type, all these things on the outside of the house that sometimes you can change.
Or adjust and kind of tweak a little bit and that can help a lot that can go a long way towards Getting that maybe not dry all the time where there's never any humidity, but it can change it for the better. even downspouts Right. They usually have it come right down. But what at least five feet out? That's right from the house five feet But you know, it's five feet but also not five feet up a hill where it's going to run right back exactly. Yeah Some of that where you
you know, think logically about where water is going to run. But yeah, I see that all the time where gutters, you know, someone spent thousands of dollars, put great gutters in the house and then they discharge. just right there. Right. Right. We see that a lot. But yeah, an easy fix, you know, that to look at it. So everyone who has gutters on your house, go, go look now to make sure that they're going away from the house. Right. Exactly. Oh my God. So I want to talk to you. We talked a little bit about the New York state labor law, specifically article 32. Right. That's
we're speaking about the mold assessor for the clearance. That's right. So that Article 32 is all about mold remediation. So it covers who's the mold assessor, it covers the mold remediation contractor, it covers those clearance inspections, and it talks about what everyone's role is, what they're required to do, the license share requirement, all that that goes into it. So that's all homeowners can find that online. And New York State even has good fact sheets online.
At the Department of Labor website where you can see answers quick answers to your question, right? So you don't to scroll through pages and pages like what is a homeowner responsible to do? How should a homeowner hire somebody? you know those kind of quick answers. There's a lot of good information out there on this so You know you can you can check that out You can talk to a licensed mold assessor a lot of people in the the real estate industry now have so much experience with it because all of this regulation For mold remediation. It started in 2016
from New York state. Has it been that long? It's been that long now. Wow, okay. for a few years there, everyone was very unsure of how these things went and everyone was kind of finding their footing. I think now most people get the process, so usually you can talk to somebody who's been doing this a while in the real estate world. right. And they should have the right answers for you. And I think always with any of stuff, talk to people and find out, get referrals, you know, don't just...
get on Google and find the first person when it comes to this stuff. Get people that you know someone who's used them and trusts them and likes them. You're a real estate professional. We have a list of vendors that we trust, that we've worked with for over the years, that they're gonna be your go-to and they know that they're gonna treat your client right. I try and do that too universally on a house for my clients when I'm doing a home inspection for them too. So I get the question daily of,
Who would you recommend for a plumber? Who would you recommend for a pest guy? Who would you recommend? You know, any of these trades. So I keep this kind of ever evolving list that people come off it, you know, and you guys can come on it. You've been through the reasons people come off it, right? But I try and be a good resource for people. We were talking about kind of the education that happens in the home inspection. I also want to make sure someone's not paying $4,000 to replace a $500 water heater. You know, those kind of things too.
And someone that's a first time home buyer, doesn't have a ton of experience, that can happen. So, you know, I want to be, if I can give somebody referrals that I think are quality people and going to treat people well, I want to fill that role too. Yeah. Yeah. I know when we refer people, we ask our client when the work is done, were you happy with them? That's smart. Right? Because that's how they come and go off the list.
you know, if they're not happy, it's a phone call. Like, you know, why did this happen? We refer you business and we expect, you know, the level of service. If you refer us, you expect a certain level of service. The 10 square feet of mold, small, yeah, just a small little bit of mold. How would a homeowner remediate that themselves? That's a good question. you know, a lot of mold assessment and assessment of lot of environmental issues is
about PPE protecting the person doing it. It's about containment. you know, not taking an attic mold condition and spreading mold spores throughout the rest of the house. there's a lot in the setup before you've even done anything with the mold. Okay. You know, there's a lot of that. And that's one of the things that these pros are very good at, but also a homeowner can do that. So New York State says that as the homeowner, if you own the property,
you can do a mold remediation and you don't need to be licensed. You don't need to call any of these people we're talking about, but you've got to be the homeowner in that situation. typically after you've got good containment and you've protected yourself, respirators, those kinds of things, you're talking about a chemical application, a biocide, a fungicide that's going to kill the mold. Then usually the mold needs to be physically removed. So that's like sanding or media blasting or dry ice blasting. And then
We're calling someone. That's already too much. There's a final step that lots of times we see on home inspections where it looks like an addict's been painted white. Yes. And that is that final step that is an antimicrobial coating, a paint that goes on and that helps to prevent regrowth a little bit. It traps any mold spores that might be still on there. And that's a good final step. All of this stuff is something that a homeowner can buy.
Like you were saying, it's a lot. depending on the size of the project, that can be overwhelming for a homeowner. Even the 10 square feet, that's not a very big area, it's still a lot of work that has to go into it. Right. It's not a big area, but also ⁓ there's always the potential with lot of these environmental things where you can, by trying to do something good, like fix it, you can create a bigger problem. All of a sudden you've spread these mold spores to...
to areas where they weren't. And you were in this attic hatch and you left the hatch open and mold spores are kind of moving into different areas of the house and all stuff. You weren't trying to do that. You didn't want that to happen, but it can if you don't have the right initial conditions. Right. Or if you're not educating how to do that, it could be creating a bigger problem. Air sampling for mold. So New York State talks about this in some of the regulations we were talking about. They say that certainly air sampling and
lab reports and those kind of things, testing are not needed in every situation. The minority of the time are they needed, but that exists out there. So lots of times as a mold assessor, I get called to try and track down issues that might not be so obvious visually. So we've got maybe like a tenant complaining to a landlord that there's a mold smell, but they can't find the source or sometimes employee-employer relationships where there's kind of like mold questions. So air sampling is just
Using a machine, we're gathering a volume of air from areas that we think might be affected. And then we also do the same outside, which is the control sample. And labs analyze those samples and they're going to compare the species of mold between the outside and the inside. So we want to have the same species inside as we do outside. If we've got some weird species of mold inside, something is going on. Something's going on. Right. And then also a big part of that is the mold spore count. So, you know, if we've got 10 times
the mold spore count inside as we do outside. Also something's going on. Interesting. Yeah, it's not always as definitive as you want it to be. You want it to be, oh, yeah, that's 100 times the mold spores inside, so now I know, but it can be a good tool. not to be used every single time on every single house, but it can be a good tool in certain situations. Do you do the air sampling after the mold remediation has been completed? Is there any time that you do that? I do. So we do that a lot.
Lots of times if I'm doing sampling on the way out on the clearance inspection, we also want to do it on the way in because that gives us kind of another variable to take out of there and we can kind of compare what it looked like before and what it looked like after. But we do that a lot. you know, oftentimes people are calling us and they've gone to their doctor and they've had mold testing done on themselves and they find, hey, I'm allergic to this certain species. So that, you know, that becomes then pretty important for them.
But many, many times we can do the clearances and we can do the mold assessments without someone having the unnecessary cost of testing. So, you know, it's something we can offer, but we try and tell people, like if I go into an attic and I see, hey, this roof sheathing is covered in mold growth, visible mold growth, it almost looks like a carpet on there, you it's this fuzzy growth. You probably don't need to spend extra money on testing, you know? That testing's not gonna change your decision. You need to remediate this. I try and...
be careful with when to kind of tell people to do testing. it's something that's a tool in the bag that you can use. Interesting. Yeah. I'm going to jump though to the, we, off of the air testing, but I do want to come back and circle back on radons. Don't, don't want to forget that. Sure. Asbestos and especially vermiculite. Yeah. So you don't see a lot of vermiculite. I've dealt with it twice in my 25 year career.
Right. Asbestos is this, you know, category, it's this other air hazard, similar to mold, and it's licensed by New York State. You don't want to breathe in the fibers from asbestos. People have heard the mesothelioma commercial. Everyone has heard that. So there was over 3,500 building products that were used in the era where it was used that could have asbestos.
There is tons of different items that might have asbestos. So New York State has set up an entire licensure and industry around testing and figuring out if something has asbestos. So in a home inspection, I'll point out to a buyer, this potentially could have asbestos. You know, we'll see that like in the insulation on old heat pipes. they're almost wrapped in a gray. Right. Yeah. It's kind of like this like white chalky fabric. Yes. It looks like you'll see that.
We see these little nine inch by nine inch vinyl composite tiles that you see on flooring. The old way back in the day. exactly. So you'll see that as well. But what I'm saying is that could potentially have asbestos because we haven't tested it. Obviously we're there for home inspection. So someone can do that or someone can maybe just say, okay, I'll be very careful with that material. I won't disturb it. I don't want those fibers to be released in the air.
Vermiculite is the only, it's a weirdly handled product by New York State. It's the only product they have that years ago they came out and said, we're not testing vermiculite anymore. And vermiculite is typically used as an insulation. these, almost looks like little stones. You see it a lot in attics as insulation. older homes, right? Older homes, for sure. And that's something that they said, we're not testing anymore. It's very difficult to test.
labs in New York state aren't even allowed to test it anymore. You're just supposed to say, you're supposed to assume it's an asbestos containing material. So in home inspections, that kind of throws a wrinkle at us because, okay, we don't know for sure, but you should assume it's an ACM has asbestos. then that is a bunch of questions from home buyers and sellers have questions too. So we've got to work our way That's very expensive. That can be very expensive. Yes, I know that firsthand from
I've dealt with it twice. The second time though, they had it tested and it was fine. Apparently somewhere in this area, I can't remember, because it was years ago, there were two different types that somebody was manufacturing or using in this area and one had it and another area did not. We were lucky enough that this did not. Yeah, you got lucky. It's very difficult to test. You got to burn it and separate this product. Yeah, this was a while ago.
But yeah, you're right, it can have a ton of cost. I mean I was talking to a asbestos remediator a couple months ago and he said, yeah, average attic now is over $20,000. Yeah. Oh. So it to remediated this. So, you know big cost. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, because I'm trying to remember back when we had it done. it was, it had to be well above that. Yeah, yeah, you can get in big numbers and there's a big industry around it because there's a lot of dollars associated with it. Yeah.
The other thing New York State says though, and what's kind of the precedent out there is if you're not disturbing the material, then you don't need to remediate it. You're not under some obligation where you've got to remediate it. It's that if you're going to be disturbing it and you're potentially got this friable condition where you've got fibers in the air, that's when we're talking about remediation. So I think being educated on it and knowing how to handle it and when to handle it, all that's really important. It's relevant too. That's really important around that material in particular.
Radon. So I'm going to circle back to radon before we wrap up. Is important, should people do radon tests if there's a basement finish or even unfinished? Sure, super important. So it can, with long-term exposure to high levels of radon, it can cause lung cancer. That's our worry. Yeah. Of course it's important. So we're normally talking about that in basements because it's a gas that comes out of the soil. It's a radioactive decay particle from uranium in your soil as uranium decays. So...
There's it's very much a geological condition So there's areas in the capital region here that are hot spots and I test and I find high levels of radon often and there's areas in the capital region that I test many hundreds and thousands of times and we don't find high levels, so It depends a little bit on the soil. You're you're built in or a lot on the soil you're built in so I Think there's certain areas where before someone spends money on testing. I want to make sure they know hey, I would be very surprised
It would be high here. this is kind of the data that I've seen over years of doing this. And there's other areas where I'd say, hey, listen, it's certainly your option, but take Rotterdam Junction, for instance, or Voorheesville. These are places where more often than not when I test for radon, it's above the EPA standard. It's high. Which is 4.0. That's right. That's 4.0 picocures per liter. So I'd like everyone to know that and make their own decision.
you know, everyone's adults, they can make their own decision. I try and, other than just, do you want to do it, yes or no? You know, I want to give you, here's some information that I hope someone would share with me before I was going to spend money on something. It's well worth the money, especially if you're planning on finishing the basement or if it is finished and, you you're going be spending a lot of time down there. For sure. And radon, you know, mitigation systems. I mean, they're a little costly, but they're not.
I mean, when you look at the grand scheme of things, and they're fairly easy. Right. In this area, it's typically $1,500 to $2,000. But it's something where they're very effective. So you get them working. We've got these fans and this sub-slab depressurization. And as long as everything is installed right, usually those systems work a long time. They're very effective at lowering radon. And you kind of can take it out of the back of your mind. You never have to think about You never have to worry about it. Yeah. So yeah, peace of mind. Right.
Testing makes a whole lot of sense, but that's easy for me to say on my end. It's something that we do a lot of in our home inspections. If you were gonna buy a house, I'm sure you're gonna have a radon test time. So if you're gonna do it, everyone should do that. So it looks like we are running out of time.
we could probably spend another hour. So I think I have to have you back, right? And we'll dive into some other things. But if you could tell our listeners how they can contact you, that would be great. Yeah, so we're the Home Inspector LLC. You can find us online at 518mold.com. And you can call and text me directly anytime, 518-925-8617.
And John, we're also gonna embed all of your information into our show notes so people can get ahold of you easily. And I thank you so much for coming on and thank you again for tuning in to Real Talk at Sterling Real Estate Group.