CLEANED and SANITIZED....Really? Buyer BEWARE!

CLEANED and SANITIZED....Really? Buyer BEWARE!

If you are buying a home that has been in a flood situation or if you are a Realtor working with homes that have been in a flood situation you really need to understand what to expect when you hear the words "Cleaned and Sanitized".

As an Active Realtor in an area that has suffered from wide spread flooding I am very concerned about what is being sold as "Cleaned and Sanitized". The following pictures are from my own home that stood in 6' of water for more then a month due to the flooding. These pictures are AFTER $3,000.00 of cleaning and sanitizing by a very reputable company that spent 3 days (144 man hours) in my home.

The scary thing to me is that after the cleaning and sanitizing I could easily have said "good enough" and started sheet rocking and painting and no one except myself would have know about what was behind the sheet rock and paint.

The two pictures above are where the basement rafters meet the foundation. In our harsh winter climate it is important to place insulation against the board that sits on the concrete foundation. Now , 3 months after the flood waters had receded, this insulation was still wet when I pulled it out yesterday. Keep in mind besides having been out of the water for 3 months I've also had dehumidifiers running for a month and the furnace has run several times as well. When I placed the dehumidifiers in the home a month ago they showed a humidity level of 85 to 90% despite the fact the house had been wide open (with no rain) for nearly 2 months. Today they are showing a humidity level of 70 to 75%.

The pictures above are the shower head in the basement (again after the home was "cleaned and sanitized" and a spot on the wall where I removed a 3M brand sticky hook. The purpose of the 2nd picture is to show you that even in an area that was obviously cleaned it certainly is not the kind of clean we hold in our minds when we think of cleaned and sanitized.

The following two pictures were taken after I removed some of the framing in the basement from a wall that was installed less then a year ago. I make this point just so you know that the dirt on top of the 2 X 4 is not years of accumulation. To the cleaners credit this is the top board of the framing and not easily visible even with a ladder. The next picture is the crud that was behind the framing. Keep in mind that all of this could easily had been sheet rocked over and with the smell of fresh paint no one would have know the difference.

Finial the last two pictures are of the crawl space that was/is under the new kitchen we added to our home two years ago. The crawl space is open from the top at this time, and has been for 3 months, because the floor needs to be replaced. The 1st pic shows the basement entrance to the crawl space and you can plainly see the mold that is on the plastic that lined the space. The view from the top is after a lot of cleaning and frankly is not all that bad considering it is a crawl space with a dirt floor. The point of this picture is to show you how open it is yet after 3 months of being out of the water there is mold despite being cleaned and sanitized.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of homes like mine are being sold as "Cleaned and Sanitized". Buyer beware! If you are a Realtor and you have not personally experienced flooding as pictured in my past posts I implore you to make sure your buyers understand that being cleaned and sanitized is not perfect and doesn't always mean things are "just right". Although I will return to my home in the valley I can tell you I will be very diligent in inspecting a home for my buyers before assuring them that they are looking at a "healthy" home.