Did your mom ever tell you,
"Never assume, Dear." We all know what assuming gets us, right? This post is a slight deviation from my normal posts, as it is a newspaper article demonstrating the admonition, "Buyer Beware!" In my life I hope that I will be remembered as one who has integrity and conducts herself with honor in all matters with myself and others. Hopefully this article will remind you to do your due diligence in every endeavor you pursue
and to seek out those individuals, businesses, and institutions that will be trustworthy of guiding you in your process. After all, as your mom may have also told you (and as some parties in this article demonstrate),
"There are wolves in sheep's clothing...."
Meth
house auction provides cautionary tale - Tooele home auctioned
although seller had been alerted to possible contamination
by
Tim Gillie
STAFF
WRITER
Foreclosures
and short sales have brought home prices down, creating an attractive market
for investors hoping to improve a property and flip it later. However, as the
case of one Tooele home offered at auction last month illustrates, the
admonition “buyer beware” applies doubly these days.
Williams
and Williams Worldwide Real Estate Auction, an online real estate auction
company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, went ahead with an auction of a
Tooele home last month despite receiving evidence of possible methamphetamine
contamination at the property. Tooele
resident Marnie Beacham, along with her brother and father, make a
business out of purchasing homes and either flipping them for profit or using
them as rentals. In January, Beacham
found a small, bank-owned house listed at williamsauction.com that was located
880 South in Tooele. Once Beacham
decided she was interested in the property, she began doing her due
diligence. “As a routine matter, we have arbitrarily decided to test any property
selling for below $100,000 for meth contamination” said Beacham,
who also went door-to-door asking neighbors about the property and its former
occupants. One neighbor reported suspicious activity including unfamiliar cars
coming and going from the home at all hours.
Beachamcollected swab samples from the house and delivered them to ALS Environmental,
a Salt Lake City
environmental lab that routinely performs meth tests for state-certified
decontamination specialists. The test came back positive for meth at 15
micrograms per 100 square centimeters, compared to a threshold of 0.10
micrograms per 100 square centimeters established
in state code and county health regulations.
Beacham
shared the results with a customer service representative at Williams and
Williams and was surprised at the response she got back from their legal
department.
Denise
Richards, a paralegal with Williams and Williams, sent an email to Beacham explaining that after Richards had
contacted the local sheriff and searched a national database, no evidence was
found of methamphetamine activity at the address listed for the property. Richards also said the test Beacham had done could not be relied on
because of confusion about the address and the inability to verify the method
or areas of the sample collection.
“While
we agree that the confirmed presence of methamphetamine would be significant,”
wrote Richards. “We do not believe the evidence we have suggests such presence
and we cannot postpone the auction based on speculation.”
Beacham
remained worried that a young family could move in and their children would be exposed
to the contamination. After the auction
was completed, she contacted the high bidder, Jan and Marv Schaffer, of Erda. “We looked at the test results and it was
obvious that the property was very contaminated,” said Marv Schaffer. “I called
Williams and Williams and they were very gracious and without any problem they
allowed us to withdraw our bid.”
The
house currently is not listed for sale either at williamsauction.com or on the
Wasatch Front Regional Multiple listing service.
“We
have forwarded all the information on the home to the owner,” said Jacob
Erhard, Williams and Williams associate general counsel. U.S. Bank, the owner
of the home, had the property tested after receiving information about the test
done by Beacham. “It tested
positive for meth,” said Amy Frantti, spokesperson for U.S. Bank. “The property
will be cleaned up. We will follow the state’s decontamination guidelines.”
There
were no visual indicators of meth at the home, law enforcement records had no reports
of drug activity there, and the home was not on any health department lists of
contaminated property, according to Frantti.
Real
estate agents are bound both legally and ethically to disclose information
about what’s known in the real estate industry as “stigmatized properties,” including
those with meth contamination, according to Chris Sloan, owner/broker of Group 1
Real Estate in Tooele and a former president of the Utah Association of
Realtors. “As an agent for the seller, you
have to look out for their best interest, and when you have a reason to believe
that a home may be contaminated with meth that should be disclosed,” said
Sloan. “Disclosure protects all parties, if a seller is aware of contamination
at the time of the sale and does not disclose it to the buyer the seller may be
open to liability when the new owner discovers the contamination.”
Sloan
cautioned that in the case of a repossessed home being sold by a bank the
paperwork often includes a hold harmless statement including wording that the
bank, having never lived in the home, can not verify the condition of the home
at the time of sale.
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Vicki
Griffith, broker for Prudential Real Estate Tooele said she has been bitten by
selling a state-certified decontaminated meth home and would not accept a
listing for a home that she had reason to believe had been contaminated.
The
Tooele County Health Department requires the owner of a meth-contaminated property
to have the property decontaminated, but establishing contamination in the absence
of a police report of meth activity requires obtaining permission from the
property owner to access the property to take samples, according to Jeff
Coombs, deputy director of the Tooele County Health Department. “We had problems a few years ago with meth
labs in the county,” said Coombs. “So we adopted regulations on meth lab
cleanup procedures. Most of the meth labs have left the county and what we are
now seeing is homes contaminated with residue from meth use.”
Beacham
said she has learned some valuable lessons from this episode. “I
think it is very important for people to be aware of the possibility of meth
contamination when buying a home,” said Beacham. “I wouldn't want
to buy a contaminated home or put a family into a rental I own that is
contaminated.”
When you decide you are ready to buy your next property, please think of me. I would love to help guide you through the process. Visit
www.marniebeacham.com for more information.
Thank you for reading! See you next time.
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