Environmental Issues Become Vital for Home Buyers, Sellers : Inspectors specialize in checking properties to determine if there are problems to be solved.

Wouldn’t it be great if when life offered up one of those difficult situations it also provided a warning sign like those on freeways that say Blockage Ahead Use Alternate Route? Buying or selling a house is just the sort of situation where it would be nice to know about trouble ahead of time, so one could exit or get around it.

There’s a new kind of trouble ahead in the ‘90s for home buyers and sellers. Environmental trouble. And a new professional, the environmental inspector, has emerged to deal with it.

I’m talking about people who can spot environmental problems lurking around a property you might want to buy or sell: soil or ground water pollution; formaldehyde or asbestos in the insulation; chemical fumes from the carpeting or heating and cooling equipment; or emissions from nearby power lines. Any of these can sink chances for financing the transaction. These days, to coin a phrase, banks duck muck.

Now there is the Environmental Assessment Assn., a nationwide professional standard-setting organization headquartered in Phoenix. The association, which has swelled from a few hundred members to 5,000 in three years, consists mostly of real estate brokers, real estate attorneys and real estate appraisers, as well as chemical and civil engineers. In order to get licensing, all members must have taken and passed professional training courses conducted nationwide by the association.

Currently, commercial property buyers and lenders are the big users of the members’ services. But more and more residential transactions are being screened for environmental problems, due to chemical spills near residential areas.

Alas, no one wants to hear about more hassles and detours ahead when buying a house, especially financial detours. But, according tJ. Warren, a spokesman for the Environmental Assessment Assn., “the testing for these problems can be quite inexpensive.” Ignoring the issue, he warned, is like “playing Russian roulette with a risk that could be extraordinarily expensive.”

Harry Feltman is a veteran real estate appraiser and environmental inspector with The Appraisal Center in Ventura. Some of his comments put me in mind of the freeway warning sign.

“The state of California is really protecting the (real estate) consumer now,” Feltman said. “Before 1988 it was buyer beware. Since the 1988 Disclosure Laws, selling is much more complicated.”

Recently, Feltman refused to list a large estate unless the owner disclosed there was once a private gas pump and tank on the property. Were any pollution to be discovered later, he said, the earlier failure to disclose would make owners, old and new, the lender and even the realtor, liable for the cleanup.

In this case, which is an extreme example, listing the property with the buried tank threatened to slow the sale. So the owner decided to remove the whole rig and clean up the place.

One kind of inspection done by the Environmental Assessment Assn. is a relatively inexpensive “Phase I.”

Bill Miklos, an inspector with TM Appraisals in Thousand Oaks, said this is where there is “reason to believe that an environmental problem may exist. (The appraiser) performs a visual inspection and sometimes a review of available documents regarding the property.” The appraiser looks for the icky stuff mentioned above; as well as radon, which is not much of a threat in our county; lead paint, present in older homes; and PCB’s--chemicals sometimes emitted by power-line transformers located too near a house.

The initial inspection should be enough to determine whether or not further and more complicated inspections are necessary, including engineering studies, Miklos said.

Details

* FYI: Real estate owners, sellers or lenders who wish to consult with an environmental inspector who is a local member in good standing of the Environmental Assessment Assn., call (602) 483-8100. Information on training courses for those interested in this new career is also available.