The A-word

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Sparky617

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Cary NC
My wife is a real estate agent. One of her fellow agents has a listing that went under contract, ranch house built in the mid-1960s. It has popcorn ceilings (ugh) with 3% asbestos per the home inspector and the drywall compound on the walls has 2% asbestos.

Thoughts on abatement? My thought was to have the popcorn removed professionally, and then to encapsulate the walls and ceiling with wallpaper underliner and then paint. Tearing out all the drywall and redoing it would be a colossal expense. I've also seen a more durable covering used mainly in old plaster homes that is a fiberglass matt that is used to cover walls. Covering it all with a thin layer of drywall would be almost as bad as tearing it out.

For homes of this era, asbestos is becoming a game of musical chairs, in today's world you try to sell and the music stops and you're left standing without a chair.
 
While the ceiling finish can fairly easily be removed, why would you bother with the walls? Asbestos cannot be absorbed unless it becomes friable, IE airborne, generally as a result of sanding, and if the walls are already finished and painted, why would the paint covering the drywall seems be sanded off?
 
Snoonyb,
The agent hasn't seen what the buyer wants done to the house. I agree with what you are saying with respect to the asbestos in the walls unless you start a major renovation or start sanding the drywall the asbestos isn't going anywhere. Unfortunately, with what you see on TV home shows a potential buyer may walk away from the deal because of the scarlet A.

I think this is the first time the agent at my wife's firm has run into this and maybe a more experienced agent can walk her back from the ledge pending what the buyer and their agent request from their due diligence work. Like lead in paint, as long as it isn't crumbling, flaking or chewed it really isn't a problem. But it can become a big headache when you go to sell.
 
Our "Town" has gone from around 7,500 people at the time this house was built to around 150,000 today so our housing stock, for the most part, isn't that old and most of it doesn't have asbestos, lead paint or aluminum wiring issues. Just since we moved here almost 25 years ago the population has more than doubled, just in Cary, not including the other fast-growing communities of Apex, Morrisville, Holly Springs and of course Raleigh.
 
There are two people looking for asbestos, those that will never buy a house like that. And the rest that are likely planning on gutting it and are trying to get a discount. There is no money in the seller fixing it. There are people who will research it and just look for a little discount in price. I would like to see some research on how many people ate the lead paint or made the asbestos into dust in a home and had some effect from it.

These things can and do cause problems but a good agent should be able to run off the real stats on how many home owners got sick from the home because it was the only place they were in contact with the product.
 
We haven't heard what the buyer is asking for in the way of concessions from the seller. Certainly, TV home improvement shows aren't helping.
 

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