DANGERS IN THE HOME: LEAD PAINT

I’m thinking of buying an old Victorian home but I’m worried about lead paint dangers. What do I need to know?

It’s no secret: lead poisoning is a serious issue and can cause serious problems. So serious, in fact, that one of the very few Federal regulations that are part of the standard Oregon Residential Real Estate Sale Agreement has to do with lead paint issues. Two things are vital to comply with the Federal regulations: 1) Every prospective buyer of a home built in 1978 or earlier must receive and read the EPA pamphlet “Protect Your Family from Lead in the Home” and 2) every seller of a home built in 1978 or earlier needs to submit to buyers a “lead paint disclosure” form, making known to the buyer any information pertaining to and  providing any records the seller may have regarding lead based paint in the home. Why all the sturm and drang? Well, in adults, lead paint exposure can cause illness to a pregnancy or harm a fetus, fertility problems in both sexes, nerve and memory disorders and other problems. The problems that paint exposure can pose to infants or children, or pets, can be much more severe. Just mild to moderate poisoning could cause nervous system and kidney damage, learning disabilities, hearing damage and other problems. Higher levels of lead poisoning can bring about worse dangers, including seizures and possibly death. So no one wants to kid around about lead paint dangers.

Lead paint dangers pose a more serious risk to children than adults because, not only are their bodies smaller and less able to defend against toxins and more likely to have a higher rate of absorption but, they are more apt to ingest paint chips or dusts than are adults. Children may pick up flakes of chipped paint and eat the chips, or rub soiled fingers in their eyes and nose, and so forth. If the paint were to remain entirely intact on the walls, this should present little problem, but in fact and with age, paint tends to flake and chip, particularly in friction-prone areas, such as door jams and window sills and ledges. With age and sun and rain and wind exposure, and especially with any cleaning and/or repair work done on the home, lead paint dust can fall and collect in the soil surrounding the home. On the inside, dust can fall to the floor, and children who wipe and touch the floor are less likely to wash their hands before putting fingers in their mouths. You get the picture.

In the workaday world of buying and selling homes, apart from complying with the Federal regulations mentioned above, any actual further involvement in lead paint issues during the sales process is extremely rare, at least in our Portland market. 99% of the time, sellers will say they have no specific knowledge of lead paint in their homes and they have no records or other information. I would approximate probably that 95% of buyers pursue no further remedies regarding lead based paint. With the seller’s knowledge and agreement, the buyer can bring in a lead paint inspector and for a few hundred dollars run a “risk assessment” to measure where lead paint hazards exist and to what degree. Can the buyer ask the seller to provide remediation to remove the lead based paint? Certainly, but they can also ask the seller to jump in the lake or sell their home for a nickel too. Good luck. In my thirteen plus years of working as a real estate broker in Portland, the incidents that I’ve heard of buyers asking for sellers to provide lead paint abatement are few and far between, and even less have met with success. In my personal experience, I have only had one transaction very early in my career where the buyer asked for this and the seller agreed to do anything. This was a large, old bungalow in Laurelhurst that was a beautiful structure but had seen better days. The seller was asking almost half a million dollars for the home and that was when a half-million dollars was still a lot of money J . Considering the buyers and their offer was otherwise very strong, and many other items could have been questioned by other buyers should that come to be, the seller chose to offer a credit of $5,000 towards the buyers’ closing costs, so they could apply this money towards conducting their own lead paint abatement after the sale was closed and the house was theirs. I would truly be surprised if I saw another transaction where the seller would be willing to provide any abatement or credits toward same.

My advice to buyers is always this: if you’re interested in purchasing an older home (and all my personal homes have been older, and most of my clientele prefer older homes) you will likely learn nothing informative from the sellers regarding specific lead paint issues. You have to assume that the home has lead paint in it and, the older the home, the more lead paint dangers it will have. If no abatement has been done in the past, know what the dangers are. Read the pamphlet. Be particularly careful about friction areas. Be especially careful about any repair work done on the home. You can hire a certified lead paint abatement contractor to permanently rid the home of lead paint dangers, but be prepared to spend a lot of money. The older the house is, the larger the painted surfaces, the more nooks and crannies and other areas to be protected, including all the natural wood trim and mouldings, etc., the higher the price to contract this sort of work. You could spend $5,000 to $10,000 and more for such abatement procedures.

In my experience, most of the folks I’ve encountered who are concerned about these dangers are pregnant women or folks with toddlers or small children, and you understand why. Some have taken upon themselves to perform lead abatement procedures and believe, as they’ve told me when going to sell their homes, that this will be a “selling feature.” I have to tell them no, I don’t think so. Surely, I understand it was worth it to them to spend the $7,000 or $12,000 or whatever they spent to clean up the lead paint risks, that this gave them peace of mind. But does that translate into their home being “worth more” by that amount, or for their home to sell substantially faster? No, it just doesn’t. Most people are aware of lead paint and it’s dangers, but it simply doesn’t translate into $$ for the overwhelming majority of folks.

Most importantly, be healthy and happy in your home!

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Zach Newman, Portland RealtorZach Newman is an experienced, reliable and trusted Realtor in the Portland area. He is an agent for Re/Max Equity Group and he is a longtime member of PABA - Portland’s GLBT Chamber of Commerce. Call Zach at 503.287.8989 or visit his website at: http://www.equitygroup.com/zach.

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