Am doing an inspection today on a building where the owners’ disclosures indicated that they previously had a mold problem. They also gave mold disclosures to some tenants.
So we’re bringing a mold inspector to the inspection. Here’s how they work (I didn’t know this until yesterday):
- You pay an inspection fee (they quoted $750 or something but quickly offered a “discounted” rate of $450)
- Then, you pay $90 / sample for them to take samples and send them to a lab to be tested
- They have a three sample minimum
- You get the sample results back in 48 hours
The concept is that the lab results give you a sense for whether the mold in the building is your garden-variety “moisture issue”, which can usually be cured by fixing whatever’s leaking and then swapping out the affected drywall / tiles, or whether it’s something more serious.
My general feeling is that these mold inspections are an unnecessary cost. But we’d feel kind of stupid, if, having seen the disclosure, we went ahead and bought the building without checking and then found ourselves with a major problem.