Planning To Buy Your Next Home? Here’s Why You Need To Carry Out A Mold Inspection First

Tuesday, August 27th, 2019

When most people are about to buy a new home, they carry out various checks to ensure that they are making a good deal by putting their money down on the property. They work with a lawyer, they consult their real estate agent, they check with a valuer, and so on. However, another check that many prospective homeowners forget is mold. Mold could be flourishing deep inside the walls of any house. And if you don’t have the property checked for it you could suffer the following risks:

  Health hazards
Mold is a dangerous growth to have within your indoor or outdoor spaces. Even when the growth itself is not visible, you still have the harmful mold spores floating about within your indoor air. And when you breathe those spores in you become exposed to various health hazards such as coughing, sneezing, difficulty breathing, asthma, respiratory infections, and more. And as long as the mold continues to grow unchecked, these health hazards will only get worse.

  Structural damage
Mold is not just a health issue. It can also wreck great structural damage to your house. Wherever mold grows, it tends to ‘eat away’ the very structure it’s on. This could be a ceiling, floor boards, wall panels, furniture, or any other surfaces. Soon enough, these surfaces will be weakened and heavily infected by the mold that they will need to be taken out and discarded. And in many occasions, such mold damage goes hand in hand with moisture damage. Over time, such surfaces will rot away and dilapidate, posing great risk to the structural integrity of your house.

  Repair and remediation costs
Another reason why you should always have a house that you intend to purchase checked for mold is the repair and remediation costs. As the old adage goes ‘prevention is better than cure’. It is far simpler and cheaper to have a property inspected for mold rather than ignore the possibility and then have to carry out extensive repairs and renovations allover your house. Such repairs can be expensive and could necessitate that you rip out old floorboards, ceiling boards, insulation panels, roofing timber, and so on.

  Living interruption
There’s also the issue of how a mold infestation will eventually interrupt your normal living conditions. This happens once it’s discovered, during mold testing, during indoor air testing, as well as during mold remediation and post-remediation repairs. Depending on the extent of the infestation you may even need to close off part of the house or vacate the entire home temporarily as remediation takes place. That’s an interruption that your family may not look forward to.

  Legal prosecution
Last but not least, buying a property without checking it for mold could land you in legal trouble later on. This is more likely to happen if you later rent/lease or sub-let the space out to third parties. When the third parties unearth the mold issue, they could sue you for putting their health at risk. They could also sue you for any medical and repair costs accrued as a result.

Optimum Mold Inspection is here for all your mold needs. We offer mold testing in San Francisco, as well as mold inspection. Let us give your property a clean bill of health before you put your money down.