On Sep 9, 5:41*pm, Norminn wrote:
On 9/9/2012 3:06 PM, Harry K wrote:





On Sep 8, 12:35 pm, "David Kaye" wrote:
wrote

I dont know anything about meth labs, but I'm sure the police or other
law enforcement people have removed all the drugs and/or materials used
to make the stuff. *That leaves nothing to cleanup [....]

Totally wrong.

It's so wrong you can't even categorize it as to how wrong - off the
scale.

Time the cost of cleanup is factored in, they could give the house
away and it wouild still be a losing game.

Harry K

Harry K

Well, sort of....several sites suggest first contacting police to get a
report of the conditions in the structure. *They should have a handle on
how long it operated, and when labs are discovered it is a big fat deal
to get it closed, the chemicals disposed of, etc. *I am certainly not
highly interested in buying a meth lab, but if the owner had a renter
that operated there a week or two, I'd *be much more interested than if
it was a cabin in the boonies cooking meth for months or years. *Also of
interest is the condition of the structure and how much the chems might
permeate. *State regs here are very exact on sampling surfaces before
and after cleanup. *There are industries in the area (do you know YOUR
neighborhood?) that pump out thousands of tons of chemicals that I
breathe every day, not to mention the neighbor's fireplace )- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Besides the cleanup issue, there is the issue of what you have to
disclose to buyers when you go to flip it. Like, if it's been
cleaned up
to all state regulations, procedures, etc, do you then still have to
disclose to buyers that it was a meth lab? My guess would be that
there might be laws specific to the state that might address that
issue
and that absent that, it's still to me of such major significance that
I
think you should disclose it. I could think of hypothetical cases
where
even if it's not required, if you didn't dsiclose and something were
missed
in the cleanup, it could come back to bite you.

And then having disclosed it, the next question is how do you figure
what impact that is going to have on the price? I'm not particularly
afraid of chemicals, but if there are similar houses selling for X,
this
one would have to be at a substantial discount to interest me. So,
you have multiple unknowns. How much it will cost to clean it up
and what the house will later sell for. I would not get involved in
this unless there was plenty of margin to cover all the above.